Chp 8 Language Acquisition

Question 1

innate

Answer 1

this is determined by factors that are present from birth

Question 2

innateness hypothesis

Answer 2

a hypothesis that humans are genetically predisposed to learn and use the language

Question 3

imitation theory

Answer 3

theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear

Question 4

reinforcement theory

Answer 4

theory of language acquisition that says that children learn to speak like adults because they are praised, rewarded, or otherwise reinforced when they use the right forms and are corrected when they use the wrong ones

Question 5

active construction of a grammar theory

Answer 5

theory of language acquisition that says that children acquire a language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them

Question 6

connectionist theory

Answer 6

theory of language acquisition that claims that children learn language through neural connections in the brain. A child develops such connections through exposure to language and by using language

Question 7

social interaction theory

Answer 7

theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language through social interaction–in particular with older children and adults–and prompt their caregivers to supply them with the appropriate language experience they need

Question 8

linguistic universals

Answer 8

property believed to be held in common by all natural linguistics

Question 9

universal grammar

Answer 9

the theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristics shared by all natural languages. Also, the name of this set of shared characteristics

Question 10

critical period

Answer 10

age span, usually described as lasting from birth to the onset of puberty, during which children must have exposure to language and must build the critical brain structures necessary in order to gain native speaker competence in a language

Question 11

neglected children

Answer 11

child who is neglected by caretakers, often resulting in significantly lower exposure to language as a child

Question 12

feral child

Answer 12

child who grew up in the wild without care by human adults, often with animals

Question 13

homesign

Answer 13

a rudimentary visual-gestural communication system (not a language- that is developed and used by deaf children and their families when a signed language is not made available for their communication

Question 14

child-directed speech

Answer 14

speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants. In many western societies, child-directed speech is slow and high pitched and has many repetitions, simplified syntax, exaggerated intonation, and a simple and concrete vocabulary

Question 15

high amplitude sucking (has)

Answer 15

experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months. Infants are given a special pacifier that is connected to a sound-generating system.

Question 16

conditioned head turn procedure

Answer 16

experimental technique usually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases: conditioning and testing

Question 17

voice onset time

Answer 17

the length of time between the release of a consonant and the onset of voicing, that is, when the vocal folds start vibrating

Question 18

trends in word learning

Answer 18

complexive concepts, overextension, underextension, relational terms, diectic expressions, complex verbs

Question 19

complexive concepts

Answer 19

associating a word with many others things by making many small leaps in meaning

Question 20

Overextension

Answer 20

extending word’s meaning beyond what is appropriate.

example: “Fly” used to refer to not only small insects but specks of dirt, dust, break crumbs.

Question 21

Underextension

Answer 21

applying words to smaller sets of objects than appropriate

less common than overextension. generally among older children acquiring category names like mammal and fruit.

example: a tomato is a fruit; whales and dolphins are mamma

Question 22

Relational Terms

Answer 22

Example: Large vs Small.

6 foot tall elephant vs. 6 foot tall dog

Question 23

Diectic Expressions

Answer 23

Personal, temporal, or spatial aspects - depends on situation

example: here/there, this/that, close/far

Question 24

Complex Verbs

Answer 24

give/take, sell/buy, abstract - think, believe

Question 25

Bilingualism

Answer 25

notoriously difficult to define.

for our purposes: the ability to hold a conversation with monolingual speakers of both languages

Bilingual children differentiate languages at 4 months

Question 26

Simultaneous Bilingualism

Answer 26

learning both languages from birth (two L1s)

Question 27

Sequential Bilingualism

Answer 27

beginning learning L2 as a child. (immigrants, bi/multilingual societies, native vs official languages)

Question 28

Second Language (L2) Acquisition

Answer 28

learning L2 as an adult.

• various levels of competence
• native like acquisition is rare; even “good” speakers often have accent

Question 29

code switching

Answer 29

Not a sign of not knowing either language very well.

Code switch only with people who know both languages

Question 30

bilingual children

Answer 30

1. take a little longer to acquire full vocabulary for both language (does not really impede communication and catch up by puberty)
2. generally no problem with phonology, morphology, or syntax in either language
3. are not confused by additional linguistic input/output
4. develop metalinguistic skills earlier
5. have higher creativity levels, literacy level at least in L1, verbal and nonverbal IQ
6. are better at analogies, word problems in math, puzzles

Question 31

fossilization

Answer 31

When an error becomes fixed and will not change even after years of instruction, this is called fossilization

Question 32

arguments against Behaviourism (2)

Answer 32

There obviously some kind of imitation in language acquisition, especially in learning sounds and vocabulary. What is interesting is when a child seems unable /unready to imitate; Reinforcement (adult corrections, repetitions, other reactions) don’t seem to work much. In any event, we tend to reinforce truth value, not linguistic forms

Question 33

characteristics of motherese

Answer 33

Motherese is not usually syntactically restricted, so actually it’s NOT “structured input”

Question 34

Innateness Hypothesis: The Principles and Parameters Approach

Answer 34

Much of language seems to be in-built: Children extract from the input language-specific rules, but they do not need to learn other principles that are innate.

Question 35

parameters

Answer 35

Language learning is not really something that the child does; it is something that happens to the child placed in an appropriate environment, much as the childs body grows and matures in a predetermined way when provided with appropriate nutrition and environmental stimulation

Question 36

Children construct grammars

Answer 36

Language learning is not really something that the child does; it is something that happens to the child placed in an appropriate environment, much as the childs body grows and matures in a predetermined way when provided with appropriate nutrition and environmental stimulation

Question 37

segmenting the speech stream

Answer 37

One of the cues that English-speaking children attend to that helps them figure out word boundaries is stress; Infants are also sensitive to phonotactic constraints and to the distribution of allophones in the target language

Question 38

By a year old which phonemes have come in

Answer 38

they have almost the whole adult inventory, but not in all positions.

Question 39

How fast do children acquire vocabulary?

Answer 39

At the start of two-word stage - around 20 months - about 50

Question 40

The Wug experiment

Answer 40

Jean Berko) very small children can form plurals and past tense forms (this is morphology) from nonsense words and understand the phonological rule of [s/z] application, e.g. plurals of ‘wug’ vs ‘bik’