Language Acquisition

Question 1

linguistic universals

Answer 1

basic features (typically
structural) shared by all languages
- Universal Grammar (UG)

Question 2

complexive concepts

Answer 2

a child associates different characteristics
with the meaning of a word on successive uses, creating a set of
objects that do not have a unifying characteristic

Question 3

overextensions

Answer 3

extending the range of a word’s meaning
beyond that typically used by adults

Question 4

underextensions

Answer 4

smaller set of objects than apporpriate

Question 5

simultaneous bilingualism

Answer 5

learning more than 1 language from
birth (two L1s)

Question 6

sequential bilingualism

Answer 6

begin learning second language as
young children
- people who have immigrated, bi/multilingual societies,
native vs. official language

Question 7

second language acquisition (SLA)

Answer 7

begin learning second
language as an adult

Question 8

code-switching

Answer 8

the practice of alternating between two or
more languages or varieties of language in conversation
- E.g., Sabes mi school bus no tiene un stop sign.
- E.g., Hoy, yo era line leader en mi escuela.
- E.g., Ponemos cranberries y marshmallows y despues se
pone el glitter con glue

Question 9

fossilization

Answer 9

(ungrammatical) forms from a speaker’s
non-native language usage become fixed and do not change
even after years of instruction

Question 10

transfer

Answer 10

influence of one’s native language on the learning of
subsequent languages

Question 11

innateness hypothesis

Answer 11

humans are genetically predisposed to
acquire and use language
- babies are born with the knowledge that
languages have patterns
- they have the ability to seek out and
identify those patterns

Question 12

lenneberg’s characteristics of biologically
controlled behaviors

Answer 12

1. The behavior emerges before it is necessary
2. Its appearance is not the result of a conscious decision
3. Its emergence is not triggered by external events
4. Direct teaching and and intensive practice have very little effec
5. There’s a regular sequence of “milestones”
6. Likely a “critical period” for the development of the behavior

Question 13

imitation theory

Answer 13

children learn language by listening to and absorbing the
speech around them, reproducing what they hear
- acquisition consists of memorizing words and sentences of the
language
- problems: children’s speech differs from that of adults (i.e., often
full of “errors”); fails to account for internal mental grammar of
children; neglects to explain novel sentences

Question 14

reinforcement theory

Answer 14

children learn to speak like adults because they are praised,
rewarded, or otherwise reinforced when they use the “right”
forms and corrected when they use the “wrong” forms
- problems: corrections very rarely actually happen; corrections
don’t cause children to actually change their behavior

Question 15

active construction of a grammar theory

Answer 15

children invent the rules of grammar themselves
- ability to develop rules is innate, but the actual rules are
dependent on the language/speech around them
- most influential theory of language acquisition:
- accounts for child errors
- explains why correction from adults doesn’t help
- gives children a fully functioning grammar from the start

Question 16

connectionist theory

Answer 16

children learn language by creating neural connections in the
brain through exposure to language and by using language
- children are able to learn associations between words,
sounds, meanings, etc., through neural connections
- connections have different strengths; acquisition is
adjusting the strengths of the connections
- accounts for child production of irregular forms for nonsense
verbs:
- E.g., This man is fringing. Yesterday he ___.
- child’s response: frang, frought but why not fringed?

Question 17

social interaction theory

Answer 17

children acquire language through social interaction with older
children and adults
- children and their language environment are seen as a dynamic
system
- emphasis on social interaction and the kind of input that
children receive; the ways in which older children and adults
interact with infants play a role in how children acquire
language
- problem: unclear how long children have to be exposed to
child-directed speech