Language Acquisition

Question 1

innate

Answer 1

determined by factors present from birth

Question 2

innateness hypothesis

Answer 2

a hypothesis that humans are generally predisposed to learn and use language

Question 3

Imitation Theory

Answer 3

child language acquisition theory that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear

Question 4

Reinforcement Theory

Answer 4

theory of child language acquisition which says that children learn to speak like adults because they are praised, rewarded, or otherwise reinforced when they use the right forms and are corrected when they use the wrong ones

Question 5

Active Construction of a Grammar Theory

Answer 5

theory of child language which says that children acquire language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them

Question 6

Connectionist Theories

Answer 6

theory of language acquisition which claims that children learn language through neural connections in the brain. A child develops such connections through exposure to the language and by using language

Question 7

Social Interaction Theory

Answer 7

theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language through social interaction-in particular with older children and adults-and prompt their caregivers to supply them with the appropriate language experience they need

Question 8

linguistic universals

Answer 8

property believed to be held in common by all natural languages

Question 9

Universal grammar

Answer 9

the theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristics shared by all natural languages

Question 10

critical period

Answer 10

age span, usually described as lasting from birth to the onset of puberty, during which children must have exposure to language and must build the critical brain structures necessary in order to gain native speaker competence in a language

Question 11

feral child

Answer 11

child who grew up in the wild without care by human adults, often with animals

Question 12

neglected child

Answer 12

child who is neglected by caretakers, often resulting in significantly lower exposure to language as a child

Question 13

homesign system

Answer 13

a rudimentary visual-gestural communication system that is developed and used by deaf children and their families when a signed language is not made available for their communication

Question 14

rules

Answer 14

formal statement of an observed generalization about patterns in language

Question 15

child-directed speech

Answer 15

speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants. In Western society characterized by slow and high-pitched speech with many repetitions, simplified syntax, exaggerated intonation and simple, concrete vocab

Question 16

High Amplitude Sucking (HAS)

Answer 16

experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months. Infants are given a special pacifier that is connected to a sound generating system. Each suck on the pacifier generates a noise, and infants sucking behavior is sued to draw conclusions about discrimination abilities

Question 17

Conditioned Head-Turn Procedure

Answer 17

experimental technique used with infants between five and eighteen months with conditioning and testing phase. Conditioning phase= infant learns to associate a change in sound with the activation of visual reinforcers, 1st presented at same time, then in succession so that the infant begins to anticipate the appearance of visual reinforcers and look at them before they are activated. Testing phase= when infant looks to the visual reinforcers immediately after a change in sound, it suggests that the infant has perceived a change in sound, thereby demonstrating the ability to discriminate between the two sounds involved

Question 18

voice onset time (VOT)

Answer 18

The length of time between the release of a consonant and the onset of voicing, that is when the vocal folds start vibrating

Question 19

articulatory gestures

Answer 19

movement of a speech organ in the production of speech. (i.e. velum moves to produce a nasal consonant)

Question 20

babble

Answer 20

phase in child language acquisition during which the child produces meaningless sequences of consonants and vowels. Generally begins around the age of six months

Question 21

canonical babbling

Answer 21

continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like [mamamamama] by infants. (repeated babbling)

Question 22

variegated babbling

Answer 22

production of meaningless consonant vowel sequences by infants

Question 23

holophrastic stage

Answer 23

stage in first language acquisition during which children can produce only one word at a time

Question 24

telegraphic

Answer 24

phase during child language acquisition in which children use utterances composed primarily of content words

Question 25

overgeneralization

Answer 25

in the study of child language acquisition, a relationship between child and adult application of rules relative to certain contexts; a process in which children extend the application of linguistic rules to contexts beyond those in the adult language

Question 26

complexive concept

Answer 26

a group of items (abstract or concrete) that a child refers to with a single word for which it is not possible to single out any one unifying property

Question 27

overextension

Answer 27

a relationship between child and adult perception of word meaning; the child’s application of a given word has a wider range than the application of the same word in adult language

Question 28

underextension

Answer 28

application of a word to a smaller set of objects than is appropriate for mature adult speech or the usual definition of a word

Question 29

relational term

Answer 29

type of relationship between adjective and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to the noun reference

Question 30

deictic expressions

Answer 30

word or expression that takes it meaning relative to the time, place and speaker of the utterance

Question 31

attention getters

Answer 31

word or phrase used to initiate an address to children

Question 32

attention holders

Answer 32

a tactic used to maintain children’s attention for extended amounts of time

Question 33

conversational turns

Answer 33

the contribution to a conversation made by one speaker from the time that she takes the floor from another speaker to the time she passes the floor to the other speaker

Question 34

bilingual

Answer 34

state of commanding two languages

Question 35

multilingual

Answer 35

state of commanding 3 or more languages

Question 36

simultaneous bilingualism

Answer 36

bilingualism in which both languages are acquired from infancy

Question 37

sequential bilingualism

Answer 37

bilingualism in which the second language is acquired as a young child

Question 38

second-language acquisition

Answer 38

acquisition of a second language as a teenager or adult

Question 39

code-switching

Answer 39

using words or structural elements from more than one langauge within the same conversation

Question 40

fossilization

Answer 40

process through which forms from a speaker’s non-native langauge usage become fixed and do not change even after years of instruction

Question 41

transfer

Answer 41

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