First Language Acquisition

Question 1

Cognition

Answer 1

the study of how language interacts with cognition, and how the two are connected

Question 2

Imitation

Answer 2

a key part of language development, and is used in a variety of ways to help children learn to speak and communicate

Question 3

Language acquisition device

Answer 3

a hypothetical tool in the brain that helps children learn language

Question 4

Competence and Performance

Answer 4

two aspects of language ability that are often studied separately

Question 5

Structure Dependency

Answer 5

the principle that grammatical operations and rules in a language are applied based on the hierarchical structure of a sentence

Question 6

Output

Answer 6

the language that a learner produces through speaking or writing in a target language

Question 7

Input

Answer 7

the language data that people are exposed to while learning a language, especially as children

Question 8

Innateness or Mentalism

Answer 8

Innateness refers to something that is present at birth and not learned, while mentalism is a skill that is acquired through study, practice, and learning

The mentalist learning theory emphasizes the role of the mind in language acquisition by arguing that humans are born with an innate and biological capacity to learn languages.

Question 9

Deep Structure

Answer 9

represents the underlying meaning of a sentence

Question 10

Surface Structure

Answer 10

the visible, spoken form of a sentence, essentially how a sentence is actually constructed and expressed

Question 11

Semantic Relations

Answer 11

the meaningful connections between words based on their meaning

Question 12

Phonological

Answer 12

the study of how speech sounds are organized and used in a language, including the patterns of sounds and the rules for combining them

Question 13

Syntactic Structures

Answer 13

the arrangements of words and phrases within a sentence, following the rules of syntax in a specific language

Question 14

Semantic Theory

Answer 14

a theoretical framework that attempts to explain how meaning is constructed and represented in language, focusing on the relationships between words, phrases, and sentences, and how they combine to create meaning within a given context

Question 15

Context-free grammars

Answer 15

a system of rules used to describe the structure of sentences in a language by defining how phrases can be combined, without considering the surrounding context of a word

Question 16

Phrase Structure Rules

Answer 16

a set of formal guidelines that describe the syntactic structure of sentences by outlining how phrases and their constituents are organized within a sentence

Question 17

Cognitive Theory

Answer 17

an approach that views language as intrinsically linked to cognitive processes

Question 18

Input Theory

Answer 18

refers to the idea that language acquisition happens primarily through exposure to comprehensible input, meaning language that is slightly above a learner’s current level of understanding

Question 19

Post-Deep Structure

Answer 19

the stage of a sentence derivation in transformational grammar that occurs after the initial “deep structure” has been established

Question 20

Government and Binding Theory

Answer 20

focuses on the underlying principles that govern sentence structure by defining abstract syntactic relationships like “government” (a relationship between a head and its dependents) and “binding” (the rules governing the interpretation of pronouns with respect to their antecedents) within a sentence, aiming to explain how humans can understand and produce an infinite number of sentences based on a set of universal principles and language-specific parameters