Child Language Flashcards
What is the quote by Broomfield about learning to speak?
“Learning to speak is the greatest intellectual feat any of us is ever required to perform”.
What is Innateness (Nativism)?
The idea that at least some knowledge about language exists in humans at birth; a built-in capacity for language development.
What does Behaviourism emphasize?
The role of environmental factors in influencing behaviour, to the near exclusion of innate or inherited factors.
What is the Behaviourist view of the mind at birth?
The mind is ‘tabula rasa’, a blank slate (Skinner); we must mimic the speech we hear, reinforced by caregivers.
What is the concept of Social interaction in language acquisition?
Caregivers design speech for children, giving them opportunities to participate in discourse; positive relationships form the basis for future communication.
What does Cognitivism focus on?
Viewing speech acquisition in relation to a child’s mental and emotional development; linguistic structures are used when the concept is understood (Piaget).
What are the stages of Pre-speech development?
Biological noises > cooing > vocal play > babbling > melodic utterance.
What is the Language Acquisition Support System (LASS)?
A child’s social support network; the caregivers and help they provide towards speech acquisition.
Who are More Knowledgeable Others (MKO)?
Caregivers, parents, older siblings - anyone who interacts with a child who has more experience of speech.
What is Child Directed Speech (CDS)?
Linguistic features used to accommodate children.
What is The Baby Talk Register?
A list of typical CDS features.
What is The Motherese Hypothesis?
The idea that the special restrictive properties of caretaker speech play a causal role in language acquisition - not generally accepted today.
What is the Language Acquisition Device (LAD)?
An instinctive mental capacity enabling acquisition and production of language.
What is Universal Grammar?
A set of principles upon which all languages build.
What is a Virtuous error?
A nonstandard utterance from a child based upon logical conclusions about grammar and morphology.
What is receptive vocabulary?
Lexis a child can understand.
What is productive vocabulary?
Lexis a child can produce.
What is Holophrasis?
Where a single word represents the meaning of a potentially longer utterance.
What is Over-extension?
Overly broad (mis)use of a lexeme based on perceived similarities/relationships; divided into categorical, analogical, and mismatch statements (Rescorla).
What is Under-extension?
Overly narrow (mis)use of a lexeme.
What did Nelson’s study on Children’s Fifty First Words suggest?
Four categories for early lexis: 1) naming things or people 2) actions and events 3) describing/modifying 4) personal and social words.
What are the Stages of Child’s Acquisition of Vocabulary (Aitchison)?
1) Labelling: linking sounds and objects 2) Packaging: understanding a word’s range of meaning 3) Network building: grasping connections between words.
What is Holophrasis in terms of expression?
The expression of a whole phrase in a single word.
Taxonomy of Language Functions (Halliday)
Classification of the functions of (potentially non-standard) utterances of a child: instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, representational, heuristic, imaginative.
Categories of Children’s Speech Functions (Dore)
Categorisation of the speech functions of 12-18 month old children: labelling, repeating, answering, requesting (action), requesting (answer), calling, greeting, protesting, practising.
Fis Phenomenon (Berko and Brown)
Concept of phoneme perception occurring earlier than the ability of the child to produce those phonemes.
Telegraphic speech
Stage in children’s language development where utterances are created without function words.
Word spurt
Highly productive phase of acquiring lexis triggered by a child’s newfound ability to construct interrogative clauses.
Stages of interrogative acquisition (Klima and Bellugi)
Questioning function is initially expressed prosodically with rising intonation. Children structure closed interrogatives with an initial auxiliary element before they can employ initial interrogative pronouns.
Stages of negation (Bellugi)
1) Children use ‘no’ to begin an utterance. 2) Negation (no/not) moves inside the clause. 3) Child achieves the standard form.
The Critical Period Hypothesis (Lenneberg)
Claim that there is an ideal ‘window’ of time to acquire language in a linguistically rich environment, after which further language acquisition becomes much more difficult.
Genie
Case name for a girl kept in social isolation. Discovered at age 13, linguists explored whether she could still acquire speech outside of the Critical Period. She never fully acquired the grammatical structures of English.
Jim
Case name for the son of deaf parents (studied by Bard and Sachs) whose speech development was severely limited until attending speech therapy, indicating the importance of verbal interaction.
Wug Test (Berko Gleason)
Research tool designed to test acquisition and application of the morphological system.
Principles and Parameter Theory (Pinker)
By hearing the principles and parameters of a native language, children can define and retain the rules.
Truth value vs. reinforcement (Brown, Cazden and Bellugi)
Parents often respond to the truth value of what their child is saying, rather than how standard the grammar is.
For example, a parent is more likely to respond to ‘there doggie’ with ‘Yes, it’s a dog!’ than ‘No, it’s there is a dog.’
Reading meaning into social situation (Macnamara)
Children have an innate capacity to read meaning into social situations, making them capable of learning language.
Pre-speech interaction (Clarke-Stewart)
Children whose parents talk to them a lot during pre-speech have larger vocabularies later on than other children.
Sociodramatic play (Garvey)
Children often adopt roles and identities, acting out storylines, practising negotiation and social interaction. Dramatic play has explicit rules and reflects real world behaviour.
