language Flashcards
Language
It is regular; regulated by the rules of grammar. Arbitrary. Lack of resemblance between words and meaning. Productive meaning infinite words can be combined
Sapir whorf hypothesis
Language influences our thoughts and the way we perceive and experience the world.
Morpheme
The smallest unit of sound that contains information (table)
IN ASL it would be units are signs
Often a word but can also be combined to form other words (tablecloth- 2 morphemes)
Not all morphemes can be individual words; they need to be added to other words (tables- s is also morpheme, cleaning- morpheme clean and morpheme ING)
Phonemes
The smallest unit of sound in speech
Example the morpheme dog has three phonemes d, o, g
Languages have different libraries of usable phonemes and rules about how they can be combined
Syntax or grammar
The rules that govern how words in a sentence are put together. Relates to regularity. Sentences can be syntactically correct without any semantic meaning
Semantic
Meaning of words
Babbling at 8 weeks (cooing sounds;vowels)
Characterized by drawn out sounds made up of a variety of combinations of vowels and consonants. May sound like a real sentence coz of the use of inflection and rhythm in the production of the babble. Combinations progress to real words
When does language explode in comlexity
Between 1.5 to 6 years. Vocabulary increases
Early speech segmentation
Speech segmentation has a strong positive correlation to expressive vocabulary in infants (2 years)
Good speech segmentation children had larger expressive vocabulary
Poor speech segmentation= smaller expressive vocabulary
Infants can distinguish between more what
Distinguish between more phonemes than adults.
Universal phoneme sensitivity
The ability of infants to discriminate between any sounds they’re tested on. Includes sounds from non native language. The head turn procedure is used to differentiate between phonemes. BY the end of first year they lose this ability
Over extension
Categorize objects too broadly. For eg family dog is called doggie and the kid starts calling all four legged animals doggie
Over regularization (grammar): using I played and I runnned
Under extension
Categorize objects too specifically. Example calls her dog doggie only and no other dogs.
Language acquisition device (universal rules)
An innate mechanism present only in humans that helps language development rapidly according to universal rules
Onomatopoeia
Exception to the arbitrary nature of language. Sound of the word is associated with the meaning. Meow, splash, hiccup.
Transparent orthographies
Consistent letter to sound correspondence so that a given letter will always make the same sound. Children learning languages with TO will learn it faster
Perceptual narrowing
The process where one loses the ability to distinguish between contrasts in sounds not used in one’s native language
Infant directed speech
Talking in a high pitched voice with infants. Helps distinguish the vowels
Broca area
Damage leads to difficulty in production of fluent speech but can perfectly understand
Wernicke’s area
Speak fluently but it makes no sense. Also have difficulty understanding written and spoken languages
Pragmatics
The skill that allows children to communicate appropriately and effectively in a social situation such as taking turns in a convo
Holophrastic phase
Children use a single word to indicate the meaning of an entire sentence
Fast mapping
when children learn the meaning of the word only within one to two encounters with it
Expressive vocab
Words that children can actually speak
Receptive vocab
Words that children can understand but may not yet speak. Develops before expressive vocab
