language acquisition Flashcards
innate
determined by factors present from birth
language acquisition
the process by which children acquire the lexicon and grammatical rules of their native language.
innateness hypothesis
a hypothesis that humans are genetically predisposed to learn and use language.
imitation theory
theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear.
reinforcement theory
theory of language acquisition that 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.
active construction of a grammar theory
theory of language acquisition that says that children acquire a language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them.
connectionist theories
theory of language acquisition that claims that children learn language through neural connections in the brain.
social interaction theory
theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language through social interaction.
linguistic universals
property believed to be held in common by all natural languages.
universal grammar
the theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristics shared by all natural languages.
critical period
age span, usually described as lasting from birth to the onset of puberty, during which children must have exposure to language and must build that critical brain structures necessary in order to gain native speaker competence in a language.
neglected children
a child who is neglected by caretakers, often resulting in significantly lower exposure to langue as a child.
feral children
child who grew up in the wild without care by human adults, often with animals.
homesign
a rudimentary visual-gestural communication system that is developed and sued by deaf children and their families when a signed language is not made available for their communication.
imitation theory
children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear.
reinforcement theory
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.
active construction of a grammar theory
children acquire a language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them.
connectionist theory
children learn language through neural connections in the brain.
social interaction theory
children acquire language through social interaction.
child-directed speech
speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants.
identifying letter sounds
is recognizing upper and lower case letters and identifying appropriate sounds for each letter symbol.
physiological
relating to the branch of biology that deals with the normal functions of living organisms and their parts.
sound perception
the perception of sound as a meaningful phenomenon
sound production
a periodic disturbance in the pressure or density of a fluid or in the elastic strain of a solid, produced by a vibrating object.
high amplitude sucking
experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months.
conditioned head-turn procedure
experimental technique usually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases, conditioning and testing.
voice onset time
the length of time between the release of a consonant and the onset of voiced, that is, when the vocal folds start to vibrate.
producing sounds
a periodic disturbance in the pressure or density of a fluid or in the elastic strain of a solid, produced by a vibrating object.
articulatory gestures
a movement of a speech organ in the production of speech, for example, the movement of the velum for the production of nasal consonant.
babble
a phase in child language acquisition during which the child produces meaningful sequences of consonants and vowels.
repeated babbling
the continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like mamama by infants.
phonological acquisition
acquiring an understanding of the relationship between a phoneme and its allophones and the conditioning environment in which the allophone appears.
variegated babbling
production of meaningless consonant-vowel sequences by infants.
canonical babbling
the continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like mamama by infants
language development
is the process by which children come to understand and communicate language during early childhood.
stressed syllable
a property of syllables, a stressed syllable is more prominent than and unstressed one, due to having greater loudness, longer duration, different pitch, or full vowels.
not stressed syllable
a syllable with a less prominent standing compared to a stressed syllable.
communicative development
the use of communication to facilitate social development
holophrastic stage
consisting of a single word, such as go or whatever. pertaining to the stage of development where a child produces simple one-word utterances.
telegraphic
a phase during child language acquisition in which children use utterances composed primarily of content words.
