File 8 - Language Acquisition

Question 1

innate

Answer 1

determined by factors present from birth

Question 2

innateness hypothesis

Answer 2

a hypotheses 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 theory

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 propt their caregivers to supply them with the appropriate language experience they need

Question 8

linguistic universal

Answer 8

property believed to be held in common by all natural languages

Question 9

universal grammar

Answer 9

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 the 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

Question 11

neglected child

Answer 11

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

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

communicative gestures that are invented by deaf children and the people they interact with regularly where sign language is not available

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

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

Question 16

conditional 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

articulatory gestures

Answer 18

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 19

velum

Answer 19

soft part of the roof of the month behind the hard palate, also known as the soft palate. when the velum is raised the passage between the pharynx

Question 20

babble

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

one word stage

Answer 23

stage 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

content words

Answer 25

word whose primary purpose is to contribute semantic content to the phrase in which it occurs. all free content morphemes are content words

Question 26

complexive concepts

Answer 26

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

relationship between child and adult perception of word meaning: the child’s application of a given word ha a wider range than the application of the same word in adult language

Question 28

relative intersection

Answer 28

type of relationship between adjective and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relatable to the noun reference

Question 29

underextension

Answer 29

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

Question 30

diectic (expression)

Answer 30

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

Question 31

child-directed speech

Answer 31

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

Question 32

attention getter

Answer 32

word or phrase used to initiate an address to children

Question 33

attention holder

Answer 33

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

Question 34

conversational turn

Answer 34

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

Question 35

multilingual

Answer 35

state of commanding three or more languages; having linguistic competence in three or more languages.

Question 36

bilingual

Answer 36

state of commanding two languages; having linguistic competence in two languages

Question 37

linguistic competence

Answer 37

what we know when we know a language; the unconscious knowledge that a speaker has about her or his native language

Question 38

simultaneous bilingualism

Answer 38

in which both languages are acquired from infancy

Question 39

sequential bilingualism

Answer 39

bilingualism in which the second language is acquired as a young child

Question 40

second language acquisition

Answer 40

acquisition of a second language as a teenager or adult