Exam 2: Ch. 7-9 Flashcards
Initial Lexicons: Structure & Phonemic Properties
Structure: 50+% consist of a single CV syllable with the remainder split between single vowels and two CV syllables (CVCV)
Phonemic Properties: front and back consonants predominate; no consonant clusters present
3 Typical Categories of a Child’s Early Lexicon
1) animals
2) foods
3) toys
Early Lexicon Growth
initially is slow and may appear to plateau for short periods;
child’s lexicon has a small core of high-usage words;
vocabulary (especially receptive) “spurt” between 18-24 months
First 50 Words
acquired by 18 months of age;
nouns predominate–over 60% of lexicon consists of nouns;
most entries are people/animals in child’s environment or objects the child can manipulate;
not all noun types are represented–no collections or abstractions
timing of “vocabulary spurt”
cause of and reason for timing is unknown, but may be related to:
(1) development of more articulation control
(2) the role of syntactic patterns–syntactic frames that child can “fill”
(3) underlying growth in cognitive capacities
(4) learning and using words
cause of “vocabulary spurt”
pairing of the semantic learning with quickly developing phonological advances, a system of syntactic patterns, or cognitive advances
explanations for the early predominance of nouns:
- child may already have the concept of objects
- nouns are perceptually/conceptually distinct–represent concrete “things”
- linguistic predictability makes nouns easier to use (nouns = things, things relate to each other/other words in specific ways)
- higher frequency of adult use
- location at the end of adult utterances for emphasis
- fewer morphological adaptations than other parts of speech
- mothers prompt children to produce nouns more frequently
- more frequent in toy play and short maternal utterances
vocabulary development may consist of a process of…
…continually fine-tuning lexical/vocabulary system in order to increase storage and accessibility to information
the lexical system is enhanced through _______.
use
verbs are more frequent in…
- non-toy (social) play
* conversations
individual children have either ______ style or ______ style.
- referential
* expressive
referential style
- “noun lovers”
- use many nouns
- tend to elaborate the noun/noun phrase of sentences
- seem to have more adult contacts, use more single words, and employ an analytic (bottom-up) strategy to build longer utterances from individual words
expressive style
- “noun leavers”
- use few nouns, prefer interactional and functional words
- tend to elaborate on verb/verb phrase of their sentences
- seem to have more peer contacts, attempt to produce longer utterances, and employ a holistic (top-down) strategy to break longer utterances up into their parts
holistic acquisition of adult expressions
- “swallowing language whole”
- acquiring multi-word expressions as if they were single-word expressions, unaware of the smaller units of meaning
- example: “I-wanna-do-it”
modifiers and verb-like words (such as “down”) appear…
…soon after the first word
true verbs
(ex: “eat” and “play”)
appear after modifiers and verb-like words
relational function of verbs
bring together items or events
unlike nouns, verbs…
(1) are not permanent
(2) may not be accompanied by any consistent maternal gesturing
challenges in learning a verb
(1) to establish meaning, child must find underlying concept; concepts of verbs are abstract and hard to determine from the physical environment
(2) some describe momentary actions, others have more duration
(3) some nouns can be verbs
(4) child must be able to identify verb in the speech stream
as many as 60% of the verbs in maternal speech refer to…
…future action