Language Acquisition

Question 1

innateness hypothesis

Answer 1

humans ability to acquire language is innate, or genetically encoded

Question 2

universal grammar

Answer 2

set of structural characteristics shared by all languages

Question 3

sign languages

Answer 3

gesture system, morphology rules, syntactic rules, semantic rules, arbitrary signs

Question 4

imitation

Answer 4

children imitate what they hear

Question 5

reinforcement

Answer 5

how children learn

Question 6

active construction

Answer 6

children make mistakes and are expected to follow non-random patterns

Question 7

connectionist theories

Answer 7

says that exposure to language develops and strengthens neural connections

Question 8

critical period

Answer 8

certain period in development where language can be acquired like native speaker

Question 9

prelinguistic

Answer 9

babies make noises like crying and cooing

Question 10

babbling

Answer 10

matched to pitch and intonation language spoken around them

Question 11

one-word

Answer 11

holophrastic sentences and words learned as a whole instead of as sequence of sounds now

Question 12

two-word

Answer 12

at 2 years of age child can produce two word sentences and has vocab of 50 words

Question 13

beyond 2-word stage

Answer 13

begin to use function words and learn some aspects of grammar

Question 14

Skinner

Answer 14

one of the first to give explanation of language acquisition

Question 15

Chomskian approach

Answer 15

gave idea of innate, biological grammatical categories that facilitate entire language development

Question 16

thoughts of language

Answer 16

process of imitation and reinforcement

Question 17

conditioned behavior

Answer 17

response process of language

Question 18

repetitions

Answer 18

one way that children learn to strengthen their responses

Question 19

language acquisition device

Answer 19

chomsky believed this was apparent in child’s brain as they developed

Question 20

primary data

Answer 20

used to make sentences or structures after a process of trial and error

Question 21

knowledge of language

Answer 21

subconscious mental representation of language which underlies all language use

Question 22

linguistic competence

Answer 22

concerned with child’s grammar; input and construction of grammar structures

Question 23

performance

Answer 23

nature of child’s rule system–psychological

Question 24

structure dependency

Answer 24

language is organized in a way that is crucially depends on the structural relationships between elements in a sentence

Question 25

parameters

Answer 25

determine ways in which languages can vary

Question 26

surface structure

Answer 26

physical properties of language

Question 27

deep structures

Answer 27

core semantic relations of sentence

Question 28

economy of derivation

Answer 28

principle states that movements only occur in order to match interpretable features with uninterpretable features

Question 29

economy of representation

Answer 29

grammatical structures must exist for a purpose to satisfy constraints on grammaticality

Question 30

transformations

Answer 30

rule that takes an input deep structure and changes it to result in surface structure

Question 31

generalized transformations

Answer 31

take small structures which are either atomic or generated by other rules and combine them like embedding

Question 32

cognitive theory

Answer 32

language acquisition viewed within context of child’s intellectual development

Question 33

input theory

Answer 33

children learn from ways that mother changes her language to speak to child

Question 34

motherese

Answer 34

extra information included while talking to child, sentences are expanded and different sounds and pitches

Question 35

constructivists

Answer 35

support gradual developmental process

Question 36

contemporary research

Answer 36

suggest that instead of language specific mechanisms, children utilize cognitive and learning principles

Question 37

telegraphic

Answer 37

two word sentences

Question 38

language acquisition

Answer 38

process by which humans acquire capacity to perceive and comprehend language

Question 39

child acquisition

Answer 39

occurs quickly without explicit instruction

Question 40

input

Answer 40

another term for motherese