exam 3 Flashcards
morphology
rules for putting smallest units together to make words
syntax
rules for putting words together to make sentences
why is speech productive language
dynamic and language users come up with new combinations
inflectional morphology
modify meaning, required by the sentence (tense, plural, person)
derivational morphology
used to change the syntactic category of a words
syntactic categories
parts of speech
first word age
10-12 months
acceleration of vocabulary growth age
16-20 months
word combinations age
18-20 months
acceleration of morphosyntax growth age
24-30 months
mastery of a basic morphology and syntactic structure
3 to 3 1/2 years
morphosyntax requires sensitivity to (4)
syntactic constituents
syntactic categories
structural positions
thematic roles
grammaticality judgments
when you say something wrong and you know you did
syntactic constituents
prosody (emphasize subjects) and correlated prosody cues (pausing, pitch changes, lengthening at boundary)
syntactic categories
how particular words are being used in sentence
examples of syntactic categories
lexical categories, phrasal categories, phrase structure roles
do children have knowledge of syntactic categories?
only use words in the same context they have heard them, input impacts output
can children use distributional cues to discover syntactic categories?
pattern recognition does not equal learning
they can use distributional cues but not the meaning of them because they have not internalized learning
phrasal understanding or categorical understandings
are syntactic categories innate?
semantic bootstrapping: born with linking words for objects are nouns etc, doesn’t work for all words to they do have to switch to distributional cues
triggering theories (nativist)
ball vs idea: both are nouns but ball is physical and idea is abstract, they don’t know category of one before another, assign to correct syntactic category as soon as they use it
language has a lot of redundancy…
syntactic order is a clue to sentence meaning, parts of speech, and detecting speech errors
structural positions
determine relationship between noun phrase and verb phrase
that bear big
segmentation error where kids lose is as adults speak
why he can go?
failure to invert subject and auxiliary form, child’s form follows rules of typical English syntax better than adult form, exposure fixes this but question form is less frequent
infants prefer trained/familiar grammar will listen longer to new strings…
they can learn grammar/word order quickly, what are they learning though?
thematic roles
ways of keeping track of who did what to who
linking and relation to sentence types
agent
performs action
theme
which the action is done
experiencer
experiences a sensation
recipient
receives
location
where something ends up at the end of an action
word order
not just sensitive, but use to assign meaning, thematic roles have to be signals of meaning as verbs change
critical period
period in which human brain is prepared to take advantage of linguistic input
age of second language acquisition
steep decline after age 7
not all aspects of language are affected in the same way
accent: age most important
grammar/syntax: 8/10 importance
vocabulary: no, always learning more
Pigin
limited language simplification, no complex grammar, use of signs
creole
more sophisticated grammatical elements, not full-fledged language
SLI/DID
deviant language for age, absence of obvious neurological deficits, normal hearing, normal intelligence
genetic cause SLI/DID
suggestion of genetic basis but not clear that basis is language specific
signs of delay of SLI/DID
deficits in fast-mapping
lack of grammatical morphemes
working memory problems
speech perception problems
visual imagery problems
analogically reasoning problems
williams syndrome
better language than intelligence
but
delay in word learning, atypical word use, spatial reasoning language problems
Can linguistic ability be dissociated from general intelligence?
not clear that we can easily dissociate language and cognition, these develop together
Can specific proposed linguistic constraints be affected by a genetic disorder?
genetic components but it doesn’t just affect language, no single gene, atypical language is a developmental product
is language special yes
complicated, abstract system that we use productively, central to culture and functioning in society, immersive
is language special no
critical roles of attention, memory, perception
support from input including social cues/understanding
