Grammar and Pragmatics

Question 1

What does grammar enable us to do?

Answer 1

Combine words of our language in different ways so that they can convey different meanings

Question 2

Components of grammar

Answer 2

Syntax

Morphology

Question 3

Syntax

Answer 3

Deals with organisation of words into large structures

Question 4

Morphology

Answer 4

Dealing with the analysis of word structure

Question 5

Testing syntactic development

Answer 5

Shown two videos of a dog and a lion 
Novel verb used "weefed" 
Explained what this made up word meant 
Asked which video the lion weefed the dog 
Two year old points to correct video

Question 6

Inflectional morphology uses

Answer 6

Marks.. 
Tense (walk, walkED) 
Person (I walk, he walkS)
Number (dog, dogS)
Possession (my dog'S bone)

Question 7

How do you know when children understand the function of inflectional morphemes?

Answer 7

The wug test (Berko, 1958) 
Told this is a wug (novel noun) 
The shown there is another one 
Asked there are two \_\_\_\_
If they say wugs then we infer that they have abstract knowledge of inflectional morphemes to reflect the plurality

Question 8

Developmental trajectory of morphological productivity

Answer 8

• Discover and inflection (make errors of omission) before this
• Begin to over apply the inflection (he blewed it up, I like mouses - overregularisations)
• Manage to balance applying inflectional productively and remembering exceptions

Question 9

Chomsky (1965, 1981)

Answer 9

Argued that children cannot learn by creatively copying what they hear around them because of…
The poverty of the stimulus problem
The no negative evidence problem

There are inborn structures in the brain (language acquisition device - LAD) which allow us to organise what we hear into speech

Question 10

The poverty of the stimulus problem

Answer 10

Lack of hearing this stimulus before

Question 11

The no negative evidence problem

Answer 11

No direct feedback that what they say is wrong, nothing to stop children overgeneralising their grammar

Question 12

What is a Universal Grammar?

Answer 12

Grammatical categories and principles used to generate the grammatical sentences of the world’s languages

Question 13

Problems with UG

Answer 13

No complete account of…
What innate knowledge makes up UG
How children could use it to learn their specific language they are exposed to
Little consideration of possible learning algorithms or children as social beings

Question 14

Constructivist approaches to language learning

Answer 14

There is no problem of the poverty of the stimulus nor of no negative evidence: grammar is learnable an therefore the proposal of an innate grammar is redundant

Question 15

What is the emphasis on in the constructivist approach to learning language?

Answer 15

Social context of development

Learning mechanisms

Question 16

What is the challenge in the constructivist approach to learning language?

Answer 16

No fully worked out account of how different learning mechanisms interact to allow children to creatively produce language based on what they have previously heard and stored in memory

Question 17

Learning mechanisms

Answer 17

Intention reading 
Imitation 
Statistical learning 
Generalisation 
Analogy making

Question 18

Pragmatics

Answer 18

The ability to use language in the context in which we are speaking and the people we are speaking to

Question 19

Pragmatic skills

Answer 19

Turn taking 
Using the right expression to refer to something (choosing between he vs the dog vs the spotty dog) 
Understanding implicatures (I ate some biscuits, adults assume this implies I didn't eat them all, children under 4 don't) 
Being able to talk in different registers (talking to a friend vs in a job interview) 
Narrative skills (talking about things not in the here and now)

Question 20

Pragmatic development - infancy

Answer 20

Early inclination to engage in conversation, to take turns, to engage one’s interlocutor and check for and maintain comprehension of interest

Question 21

Referential choice preschool years

Answer 21

Children sometimes refer to something in an ambiguous way

• Pointing to something their addressee cannot see
• Referring to someone as ‘he’ or ‘she’ when the addressee does not know who this is

Question 22

Clarification of ambiguous referencing

Answer 22

Children respond well to questions for clarification and this may help them to learn how to refer to things better in the future

Question 23

Scaffolding language development

Answer 23

Child-directed speech or motherese
Following in - commenting on object of child’s attention
Adjusting language to child’s level
Expansion of child’s telegraphic speech
Recasts of incomplete or unconventional speech
Clarification requests

Question 24

Atypical development

Answer 24

Problems due to…
Hearing loss or difficulty in producing speech sounds
Learning disabilities (Down Syndrome)
Delayed communication or unusual language is one of the diagnostic features of Autism

Question 25

Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)

Answer 25

A language impairment that cannot be explained by hearing loss, other developmental disorders or brain injury
Affects 2 in 30 children yet the disorder is hardly heard of

Question 26

Children begin to combine words into sentences some time around ______

Answer 26

Their second birthday