File 8 - Language Acquisition

Question 1

Innate

Answer 1

Determined by factors present from birth.

Question 2

Innateness Hypothesis

Answer 2

A hypothesis that humans are generally predisposed to learn and use language.

Question 3

Imitation Theory

Answer 3

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

Question 6

Connectionist Theories

Answer 6

Theory of language acquisition which 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 languages.

Question 9

Universal Grammar

Answer 9

The theory that posits a set of grammar 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 Child

Answer 11

A 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 humans, 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

Rule

Answer 14

A formal statement of an observed generalization about patterns in language.

Question 15

Child-Directed Speech

Answer 15

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 16

High Amplitude Sucking

Answer 16

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. Each suck on the pacifier generates a noise, and infants’ sucking behavior is used to draw conclusions about discrimination abilities.

Question 17

Conditioned Head-Turn Procedure

Answer 17

Experimental technique usually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases: conditioning and testing. During the conditioning phase, the infant learns to associate a change in sound with the activation of visual reinforcers, first presented at the same time and then in succession,such that the infant begins to anticipate the appearance of the visual reinforcers and look at them before the are activated. During the testing phase, when the infant looks to the visual reinforcers immediately after a change in sound, it suggests that the infant has perceived the change in sound, thereby demonstrating the ability to discriminate between the two sounds involved.

Question 18

Voice Onset Time

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Articulatory Gesture

Answer 19

A movement of a speech organ in the production of speech, for example, the movement of the velum for the production of a nasal consonant.

Question 20

Babbling

Answer 20

A phase in child language acquisition during which the child produces meaningless sequences of consonants and vowels. Generally begins around the age of six months.

Question 21

Canonical Babbling

Answer 21

The continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like [mamama] by infants; also called repeated babbling.

Question 22

Variegated Babbling

Answer 22

Production of meaningless consonant-vowel sequences by infants.

Question 23

Holophrastic Stage (One-Word Stage)

Answer 23

Sage in first-language acquisition during which children can produce only one word at a time.

Question 24

Telegraphic Stage

Answer 24

A phase during child language acquisition in which children use utterances composed primarily of content words.

Question 25

Overgeneralization

Answer 25

In the study of child language acquisition, a relationship between child and adult application of rules relative to certain contexts: a process in which children extend the application of linguistic rules to contexts beyond those in the adult language.

Question 26

Complexive Concept

Answer 26

A term used in the study of child language acquisition. A group of items (abstract or concrete) that a child refers to with a single word for which it is not possible to single out any one unifying property.

Question 27

Overextension

Answer 27

In the study of child language acquisition, a relationship between child and adult perception of word meaning: the child’s application of a given word has a wiser range than the application of the same word in adult language.

Question 28

Underextension

Answer 28

Application of a word to a smaller set of objects than is appropriate for mature adult speech or the usual definition of the word.

Question 29

Relative Intersection

Answer 29

Type of relationship between adjective and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to the noun reference.

Question 30

Deictic Expression

Answer 30

Word or expression that takes its meaning relative to the time,, place, and speaker of the utterance.e

Question 31

Attention Getter

Answer 31

Word or phrase used to initiate an address to children.

Question 32

Attention Holder

Answer 32

A tactic used to maintain children’s attention for extended amounts of time.

Question 33

Conversational Turn

Answer 33

The contribution to a conversation made by one speaker from the time that she takes the floor from another speaker to the time that she passes the floor on to another speaker.

Question 34

Bilingual

Answer 34

State of commanding two languages; having linguistic competence in two languages. In machine translation, a system that can translate between only one language pair.

Question 35

Multilingual

Answer 35

The state of commanding three or more languages; having linguistic competence in three or more languages. In machine translation, a system that can translate between more than two languages.

Question 36

Simultaneous Bilingualism

Answer 36

Bilingualism in which both languages are acquired from infancy.

Question 37

Sequential Bilingualism

Answer 37

Bilingualism in which the second language is acquired as a young child.

Question 38

Second-Language Acquisition

Answer 38

Acquisition of a second language as a teenager or adult.

Question 39

Language mixing (code-switching)

Answer 39

Using words or structural elements from more than one language within the same conversation (or even within a single sentence or phrase).

Question 40

Fossilization

Answer 40

Process through which forms from a speaker’s non-native language usage become fixed (generally in a way that would be considered ungrammatical by a native speaker) and do not change, even after years of instruction.