Definitions Flashcards
What are innate factors present in an organism by virtue of its genetic makeup called?
biological capacity
Biological capacity refers to the inherent abilities and traits that an individual is born with.
What is one of the names for the speech register used with young children?
child-directed speech (CDS)
CDS is characterized by a higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated intonation.
What term describes the purposes for which language is used?
communicative functions
Communicative functions include expressing rejection, making requests, and sharing comments.
What are the vowel-like sounds made by infants starting at about 8 weeks of age called?
cooing
Cooing is an important early stage in language development.
In Vygotskyian theory, what do adults provide that helps children develop at a faster rate?
format/scaffold
This interaction is crucial for intellectual development.
What is the early communicative behavior exhibited by infants and their caregivers, involving eye contact?
gaze-coupling
Gaze-coupling is a foundational aspect of social communication.
What is defined as any communicative act that an individual engages in purposefully?
intentional communication
This marks a significant milestone in language development.
What is the situation called when two individuals are paying attention to the same thing at the same time?
joint attention
Joint attention is important for social and cognitive development.
What concept refers to the notion of causality that appears around the same time as intentional communication?
means-ends concept
This concept suggests that certain cognitive developments are prerequisites for language acquisition.
What term describes knowledge about language, including an understanding of words and sounds?
metalinguistic awareness
This awareness is essential for language learning and literacy.
What is the term for a newborn?
neonate
Neonates undergo rapid development in the early stages of life.
What understanding do infants gain about objects during the later part of the first year?
object permanence
Object permanence is crucial for cognitive development.
What are the aspects of the speech stream that convey differences in meaning, such as stress and intonation, called?
prosodic features
Prosodic features play a key role in communication.
What is the first stage of Piagetian theory that occurs during the first eighteen months of a child’s life?
sensorimotor stage
In this stage, cognition is primarily through sensory experiences and motor actions.
What is assimilation?
The process by which a sound in a word is changed to make it resemble an adjacent or nearby sound
Example: ‘greenbeans’ pronounced as ‘greembeans’.
Define auditory discrimination.
The process of hearing accurately the individual sounds of language
For instance, the ability to hear the difference between ‘sat’ and ‘fat’.
What is babbling?
Prespeech consisting of relatively long strings of syllables that may be used communicatively or as solo sound-play.
What does canonical form refer to?
A sequence of phonological features expressing the properties that a group of highly similar words have in common
Example: CVCV.
Explain categorical perception.
Two sounds with the same magnitude of acoustic difference are heard as different sounds if they fall into different phonemic categories.
What is high amplitude or non-nutritive sucking (HAS or NNS)?
A technique used to study infant perceptual abilities by recording an infant’s sucking rate as a measure of its attention to various stimuli.
Define modulated babble.
Babble with intonation contours resembling those of adult speech
Can be used for communicative purposes despite meaningless sound sequences.
What is a progressive phonological idiom?
A word in a child’s vocabulary that is pronounced more accurately than most other words of the same general adult target form.
Define protoword.
A sequence of sounds used by a child that has a relatively consistent meaning but is not necessarily based on any adult word.
What is reduplicated babbling?
Babbling in which consonant-vowel combinations are repeated, such as ‘bababa’.
Also called repetitive babbling.
Explain regression in language development.
A change backward from behavior that is more adult-like to behavior that is a poorer approximation of the adult model.
What is variegated babble?
Babbling that includes a variety of sounds, such as ‘babideeboo.’
What does VOT stand for?
Voice onset time.
What does VOT measure?
Describes the point during the production of a speech sound at which vocal cord vibration, or voicing begins.
What is semantic development?
The acquisition of words and their many meanings and the development of that knowledge into a complex hierarchical network of associated meanings.
This involves understanding how different meanings relate to each other.
Define core group in the context of child vocabulary.
A small subset of the vocabulary of a child, used very frequently.
This group represents the most commonly used words by the child.
What is meant by functional core?
A concept that underlies children’s early words, implying that early meanings are based on how objects are used.
Labels are later extended to similar objects.
What does holophrastic refer to?
Infants’ one-word speech that embodies a complete intention.
This speech form indicates the child’s understanding and intent.
What is metalinguistic awareness?
Knowledge about language, including understanding what a word is and consciousness of the sounds of language.
It is the ability to think about language.
What are operating principles in language learning?
Cognitive strategies that a child might employ in learning language, such as ‘pay attention to the ends of words.’
These principles guide children’s understanding of language.
What is overextension in language use?
A child’s use of a word in a broader context than is permissible in adult language.
For example, an infant may call all men ‘daddy’.
Define probabilistic concept.
A concept characterized by a variable set of criteria, unlike a classical concept.
For instance, ‘bird’ is a probabilistic concept as no single criterion defines it exclusively.
What is a prototype?
An instance of a category that best exemplifies it.
For example, a robin is a prototypical member of the category bird.
What are semantic features?
Criteria by which a concept is defined and distinguished from other concepts.
For instance, + male and + relative are features of the concept brother.
Define semantic network.
A word and all of the words that are related to it through various hierarchies of meaning.
This network illustrates the connections between different meanings.
What does semantic transparency mean?
Obvious meaning, such as in the creation of new words like ‘plant man’ for ‘gardener.’
It reflects how children create and understand new terms.
What is shape bias?
A constraint on early word learning that leads a child to assume a new word refers to the shape of an object rather than its color, texture, or other properties.
This bias influences how children categorize objects.
Define underextension.
Use or understanding of a word that does not include its full range, such as assuming ‘dog’ refers only to collies.
This indicates a limited understanding of the term.
What is the whole object assumption?
The assumption that a new word refers to a whole object.
This is a common assumption made by children when learning new vocabulary.
What does the type assumption state?
A new word refers to a type of thing, not just to a particular individual.
This helps children generalize their vocabulary.
What is the basic level assumption?
A new word refers to types of objects that are alike in basic ways.
For example, ‘sheep’ have elements in common that other animals don’t share.
What does the mutual exclusivity assumption entail?
The belief that things should have only one label.
This assumption simplifies the learning process for children.
What is bootstrapping in language learning?
Process of learning language in which the child uses what he or she knows to decode more mature language.
For example, the child may use semantic knowledge to aid in decoding and learning syntax.
What does mean length of utterance (MLU) measure?
A measure applied to children’s language to evaluate syntactic development; the average length of the child’s utterances is calculated in morphemes.
What are overregularization errors?
A common tendency among children and second language learners, applying regular grammatical rules to exceptions.
Examples include ‘hurted’ and ‘mouses’.
What do semantic relations refer to in children’s language?
Characterizing the limited set of meanings conveyed by children’s early utterances.
What is telegraphic speech?
Speech that consists of content words, without function words, much like a telegram.
What is universal grammar?
Hypothetical set of restrictions governing the possible forms all human languages may take.
classical conditioning.
–A form of learning of receptive skills in which previously neutral
stimuli (i.e., words) through repeated pairings with other stimuli come to elicit similar
responses
Competence
competence–Linguistic term for the knowledge one has of language and all of its
linguistic rules and structures.
Constructivism
constructivism–In Piaget’s theory, the idea that behaviours or knowledge are neither
totally inherited nor learned, but derived from continual, active interaction of innate
structures acting upon environmental data, and vice versa.
Empiricism
empiricism–A theoretical approach emphasizing observable, environmental explanations
of behavior.
Functionalism
functionalism–A theoretical approach emphasizing the functions or uses of any behavior
(e.g., the function of requesting) rather than the structure of the behavior itself.
Logical problem of language acquisition
logical problem of language acquisition—In the linguistic view, without an endowment
such as proposed by Universal Grammar, language learning would be impossible because
the input data are insufficiently rich to allow acquisition ever to occur, much less to occur
so uniformly and so quickly.
Nativism
nativism–A theoretical approach emphasizing the innate, possibly genetic contributions
to any behavior.
Operant conditioning
operant conditioning–Behavioral training of expressive-production skills as a result of
reinforcement and punishment.
Performance
performance–Linguistic term for the actual use of language.
Scaffolding
scaffolding—in the sociocultural view, refers to the role of teachers and others in
supporting the learner’s development and providing support structures to get to that next
stage or level.
Structuralism
structuralism–A theoretical approach emphasizing the organization or structure of a
behavior as opposed to its use or function.
Zone of proximal development
zone of proximal development—refers to Vygotskian concept of the distance between
what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help
