Language acquiistion

Question 1

Name the parts of speech

Answer 1

SYNTAX: sentence structure
SEMANTIC: meanings of words and sentences
ORTHOGRAPHY: structure of writing
Morphology: word structure
Phonology: Sound structure

Question 2

What are receptive language and expressive language?

Answer 2

Receptive language is the “input” of language, the ability to understand and comprehend spoken language that you hear or read
Expressive language is the “output” of language, the ability to express your wants and needs through verbal or nonverbal communication
Receptive language is generally better than expressive

Question 3

What is receptive phonology?

Answer 3

Receptive phonology (speech perception): rapid development of the ability to discriminate and categorize speech sounds

Question 4

Speech development in infancy

Answer 4

birth: crying
2 months: cooing
4 months: marginal babbling
8 months: reduplicated babbling
10 months: variegated babbling
12 months: jargon babbling- first words
Average 12-months-old: receptive vocabulary of 10 words or more, expressive of 5 words
– Average 24 months old: expressive vocabulary of 150 words (may vary considerably)

Question 5

What is a vocabulary spurt

Answer 5

Vocabulary spurt (rapid increase in naming) after a critical mass of 150 words is reached
From then on, several new words a day are mastered

Question 6

Name some Word-learning biases
(constraints) - how we learn words?

Answer 6

Social constraints: using joint attention to identify a referent
Lexical constraints: rules of thumb as to what new words may refer to, e.g.
– Mutual exclusivity
– Whole object
Linguistic constraints: relying on grammatical cues to make an educated guess at word meaning

Question 7

Name some phonological processes?

Answer 7

Weak syllable deletion:
– e. g. /nænæ/ for ‘banana’, /foʊn/ for ‘telephone’, etc.
Cluster reduction:
– e.g. /paɪdə/ for ‘spider’, /æt/ for ‘ant’, etc.
Consonant harmony:
– e.g. /gog/ for ‘dog’;/ɡʌk/ for ‘duck’, etc.

Question 8

Syntax and morphology acquisition

Answer 8

2nd year of life: two word utterances: e.g.
more car, more read, bye-bye Papa, there potty, mommy stair
- The importance of combining words
2-4 years: children’s discovery of grammatical rules apparent e.g. in language errors
- Neologisms: I’m supping, I’m talling, I’ll have to unhang it, etc.

Question 9

What are metalinguistic skills?

Answer 9

Metalinguistic awareness refers to the ability to consciously reflect on the nature of language and to use metalanguage to describe it