Language Acquisition

Question 1

Language Acquisition

Answer 1

humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware of language and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate.

Question 2

Innateness Hypothesis

Answer 2

argues that our ability to acquire

human) language is innate (genetically encoded

Question 3

Universal Grammar

Answer 3

refers to the “set of structural

characteristics shared by all languages”

Question 4

Connectionist Theories

Answer 4

Claims that exposure to language develops and strengthens

neural connections.

Question 5

Reinforcement

Answer 5

is virtually unsupported.

Question 6

Active Construction of a Grammar

Answer 6

nicely accounts for predictable
deviations from adult grammars, and the various stages of grammar
development.

Question 7

Connectionist theory

Answer 7

claims language is formed through neural connections and comes natural, not by imitation.

Question 8

Active Construction of a Grammar

Answer 8

contends that children use speech they hear to acquire language

Question 9

Critical Period

Answer 9

states that the first few years of life is the crucial time in which an individual can acquire a first language if presented with adequate stimuli

Question 10

Imitation

Answer 10

can be defined as the act of copying, mimicking, or replicating behavior observed or modeled by other individuals

Question 11

Behaviorism

Answer 11

the theory that human and animal behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning, without appeal to thoughts or feelings, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns.

Question 12

Innateness or mentalism

Answer 12

based on the rationalistic or mentalisitic

Question 13

Cognition

Answer 13

based on the cognitive-physiological approach

Question 14

Motherese or Input

Answer 14

based on the maternal approach to language acquisition

Question 15

Language Acquisition device (LAD)

Answer 15

the LAD concept is an instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language. It is a component of the nativist theory of language.

Question 16

Universal Grammar

Answer 16

in modern linguistics, is the theory of the genetic component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky. The basic postulate of UG is that a certain set of structural rules are innate to humans, independent of sensory experience.

Question 17

Parameters

Answer 17

Determine the ways in which languages can vary

Question 18

Head parameter

Answer 18

Specificies the position of the head in relation to its compliments within phrases for different languages

Question 19

Criticism of UG Theory

Answer 19

linguistically, this approach’s primary concern is only syntax
*semantics, pragmatics, and discourse are completely excluded

Question 20

deep structure

Answer 20

is the abstract structure that allows the native speaker of a language to know what the sentence means

Question 21

surface structure

Answer 21

is the outward form of a sentence. In contrast to deep structure (an abstract representation of a sentence), surface structure corresponds to the version of a sentence that can be spoken and heard.

Question 22

Semantic Relations

Answer 22

the associations that there exist between the meanings of words (semantic relationships at word level), between the meanings of phrases, or between the meanings of sentences

Question 23

Semantic theory

Answer 23

is a theory which assigns semantic contents to expressions of a language.

Question 24

Economy Derivation

Answer 24

is a principle stating that movements only occur in order to match interpret able features with uninterpretable features

Question 25

Economy of representation

Answer 25

is the principle that grammatical structures must exist for a purpose: the structure of a sentence should be no larger or more complex than required to satisfy constraints on grammaticality.

Question 26

Phrase structure rules

Answer 26

are a type of rewrite rule used to describe a given language’s syntax and are closely associated with the early stages of transformational grammar, proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1957.

Question 27

Binding theory

Answer 27

identify the syntactic relationship that can or must hold between a given pronoun or noun and its antecedent (or postcedent), e.g. Johni)

Question 28

Cognitive Theory

Answer 28

is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of language, mind, and sociocultural experience that first emerged in the 1970s. Cognitive linguistics is characterized by a commitment to the inseparability of meaning and form in the study of language.

Question 29

motherese theory

Answer 29

also called Parentese, Baby talk, Caretaker speech, Infant-directed speech (IDS), Child-directed speech (CDS), is defined as a term used in the study of child language acquisition for the way mothers often talk to their young children.

Question 30

Context-free grammars

Answer 30

can describe all regular languages and more, but they cannot describe all possible languages.

Question 31

Behaviorist Theory

Answer 31

which is basically a psychological theory in its essence, founded by J.B. Watson, is actually a theory of native language learning, advanced in part as a reaction to traditional grammar.

Question 32

Noam Chomsky

Answer 32

that linguistics should be a branch of cognitive psychology, or the study of mental processes like critical thinking, problem solving and, of course, language.

Question 33

Structure Dependency

Answer 33

The linguistic principle that grammatical processes function primarily on structures in sentences, not on single words or sequences of words is termed structure-dependency.

Question 34

Syntactic Structures

Answer 34

is an influential work in linguistics by American linguist Noam Chomsky, originally published in 1957. … At its base, Chomsky uses phrase structure rules, which break down sentences into smaller parts. These are combined with a new kind of rules which Chomsky called “transformations”.

Question 35

Phonology

Answer 35

is the study of how sounds are organized and used in natural languages.

Question 36

Linguistic Minimalism

Answer 36

refers to a family of approaches exploring a conjecture, first formulated by Noam Chomsky in the early 1990s, concerning the nature of the human language faculty.

Question 37

Cognitive Theory

Answer 37

is an approach to psychology that attempts to explain human behavior by understanding your thought processes.

Question 38

Transformations

Answer 38

n linguistics refers to a rule that takes an input, typically called the Deep Structure (in the Standard Theory) or D-structure (in the extended standard theory or government and binding theory), and changes it in some restricted way to result in a Surface Structure

Question 39

Critical Period

Answer 39

that there is a critical period during which the human mind is able to learn language; before or after this period language cannot be acquired in a natural fashion.

Question 40

Linguistic Inferiority principle

Answer 40

refers to the tendency of speakers of the socially dominant group in a society to interpret speech of a subordinate group as linguistically inferior to that of their own.