Language Acquisition

Question 1

Language

Answer 1

communication system consisting of sounds, morphemes, words, and rules for combining all of these

Question 2

Inateness Hypothesis

Answer 2

humans are genetically predisposed to learn and use language

Question 3

Linguistic Universals

Answer 3

basic features shared by all languages

Question 4

Universal Grammar

Answer 4

the theoretically inborn set of structural characteristics shared by all languages

Question 5

Homesign

Answer 5

gestures made up in the home, when signed language is not available. Extremely limited and without grammar

Question 6

Imitation Theory

Answer 6

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

Question 7

Reinforcement Theory

Answer 7

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 incorrect forms

Question 8

Active Construction of a Grammar Theory

Answer 8

children invent the rules of grammar themselves

Question 9

Connectionist Theories

Answer 9

assume that children learn language by creating neural connections in the brain. The child develops such connections through exposure to language by using language

Question 10

Social Interaction Theory

Answer 10

assumes that children acquire language through social interaction, with older children and adults in particular

Question 11

Child-directed speech

Answer 11

slow and high-pitched and contains many repetitions, simplified syntax, exaggerated intonation, and a simple and concrete vocabulary

Question 12

High Amplitude Sucking (HAS)

Answer 12

infants are given a special pacifier that is connected to a sound-generating system. Each suck on the pacifier generates a noise, and infants learn quickly that their sucking produces the noise.

Question 13

Conditioned Head-Turn procedure (HT)

Answer 13

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

Question 14

VOT: Voice Onset time

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Babble

Answer 15

producing sequences of vowels and consonants if they are acquiring spoken language, or producing hand movements if they are acquiring signed language

Question 16

Repeated/canonical babbling

Answer 16

starts around the age of seven to ten months. The continual repetition of syllables helps the infant practice a sequence of consonant and vowel sounds. (mamamama)

Question 17

Variegated babbling

Answer 17

10-12 months. infant strings together different syllables as in [buɡɑbimo].

Question 18

Attention getter

Answer 18

Word or phrase used to initiate an address to children

Question 19

Attention holder

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Bilingual

Answer 20

State of commanding two languages; having linguistic competence in two languages. In machine translation, a system that can translate between only one language pair

Question 21

Code-Switching

Answer 21

Using words or structural elements from more than one language within the same conversation

Question 22

Complexive Concept

Answer 22

A term used in the study of child language acquisition. A group of terms that a child refers to with a single word for which it is not possible to single out any one unifying property

Question 23

Conversational Turn

Answer 23

The contributions to a conversation made by one speaker from the time that she takes the floor from another speaker to the time that she passes the floor on to another speaker

Question 24

Critical period

Answer 24

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 25

Feral child

Answer 25

Child who grew up in the wild without care by human adults, often with animal

Question 26

First-Language Acquisition

Answer 26

The process by which children acquire the lexicon and grammatical rules of their native language

Question 27

Foreign Accent Fossilization

Answer 27

An accent that is marked by the phonology of another language or other languages that are more familiar to the speaker

Question 28

Articulatory gesture

Answer 28

A movement of a speech organ in the production of speech, for example, the movement of the velum for the production of a nasal consonant

Question 29

Rules

Answer 29

children exploit statistical information from linguistic input

Question 30

Neglected children

Answer 30

neglected by their caretakers

Question 31

Holophrase

Answer 31

one-word sentence

Question 32

Telegraphic

Answer 32

Young children tend to omit the function of words, their speech is often called this

Question 33

Complexive concept

Answer 33

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

Question 34

Overextension

Answer 34

when a child extends the range of a word’s meaning beyond that typically used by adults

Question 35

Underextension

Answer 35

application of a word to a smaller set of objects than is appropriate for mature adult speech

Question 36

Deictic expressions

Answer 36

words referring to personal, temporal, or spatial aspects of an utterance and whose meaning depends on the context in which the word is used

Question 37

Baby talk

Answer 37

words that are considered appropriate in talking only to very young children

Question 38

Simultaneous bilingualism

Answer 38

learning more than one language from birth

Question 39

Sequential bilingualism

Answer 39

being learning a second language as a young child

Question 40

Foreign accent

Answer 40

this occurs when a person speaks one language using some of the rules or sounds of another one