Language Acquisition Module 9 Flashcards
Language Acquisition
Innateness Hypothesis
argues that human language skills are innate.
Language Acquisition Device
the instinctive mental capacity that enables children to acquire and produce language. This theoretical concept was expanded into the concept of Universal Grammar.
Universal Grammar
a set of structural characteristics shared by all languages.
Theoretical Linguistics
a scientific discipline that investigates the conditions and characteristics of well-formed human language
Connectionist models of language
artificial models that mimic the structure and functioning of the human central nervous system
Active Construction of a Grammar and Connectionist Theories
assumes that children produce words like goed or growed because they have formed a rule that tells them to add -ed to a verb to form the past tense
Critical Period
a period during someone’s development in which a particular skill or characteristic is believed to be most readily acquired.
Prelinguistic stage of development
babies make noise but cannot form real language
Holophrastic
a term used in language acquisition to describe when a single word or gesture is used to express a complex idea
Telegraphic Sentences
concise sentences that usually contain 2 words (or the absolute minimum needed to convey meaning)
Function Words
words that have little lexical meaning that express grammatical relationships within a sentence
Dependency grammar
is the idea that language operations are based on the internal structure of a sentence, not just word order.
Linguistic parameters
the general principles and parameters that guide the syntactical structure of language.
Head parameter
specifies what position the head is in within language structure, the head can either be first or last.