language development

Question 1

phonemes

Answer 1

smallest units of sound recognizable as speech rather than random noise

Question 2

morphemes

Answer 2

smallest meaningful units of language

Question 3

syntax

Answer 3

rules of governing how words are combined to meaningful phrases and sentences

Question 4

chomsky’s view on syntax

Answer 4

all languages share some features in common but differ in terms of word order

Question 5

pragmatics

Answer 5

do not consist of spoken words, but can change meaning

include: context, intonation, facial configuration, body lang.

Question 6

pragmatic development

Answer 6

early infancy, continues throughout lifespan

Question 7

phonological development

Answer 7

• before birth to adolescence
• learn to differentiate sounds of native lang.
• learn to produce sounds of native lang.
• much perceptual phonological development complete by 10 months

Question 8

semantic development

Answer 8

• birth throughout lifespan
• high rate of acquisition after 1- months through early school age
• requires segmenting speech
• mostly nouns

Question 9

syntactic development

Answer 9

• pronouns in third year
• development slows by 5-6 years

Question 10

evidence for critical period

Answer 10

• comparing adult 2nd lang. learners to child 2nd lang. learning

Question 11

quinean reference problem

Answer 11

Hearing a label doesn’t immediately tell you what it is - doesn’t tell you if it’s the name of the object, a feature of the object, etc..

Question 12

word learning constraints

Answer 12

• whole object bias: when we hear a novel word, we assume it’s referring to entire object
• mutual exclusivity: each label applies to one and only one object; each object has one and only one label

Question 13

basic level bias

Answer 13

Superordinate: (Mammal)
Basic: (Rabbit)
Subordinate: (Arctic Hare)

Question 14

pragmatic cues

Answer 14

pointing- orienting children toward what is being referenced

Question 15

4 hypotheses for language development

Answer 15

behaviorist (watson), nativist (chomsky), connectionist, statistical learning

Question 16

behaviorist account

Answer 16

All about reinforcement - kids learn language through reinforcement

Caregivers support language learning through reinforcement

Parents correct children when they make mistakes

Parents reward children when they are correct

Question 17

nativist account

Answer 17

Modularity hypothesis -specific part of the brain to learn language)
- A dedicated language module has evolved in humans (modularity hypothesis)
- Specific brain areas are used for language
- Universal grammar
- All (typically developing) children acquire language

Question 18

Nicaraguan Sign Language

Answer 18

reinforces idea of universal grammar - kids who made up their own grammatical structures without being exposed to another system/language

Question 19

connectionist acocunt

Answer 19

We have. The ability to process information like computer - on multiple levels
- Opposite of nativism
- Children learn language the same way that they learn everything (general-purpose associative learning mechanisms)
- Computer simulations show that some features of language can be learned with repetitive input

Question 20

Parallel processing

Answer 20

allows for a lot of information to be processed at once (e.g, processing word form, meaning and grammar)

Question 21

statistical learning account

Answer 21

Children sensitive to the statistical probabilities of the input
- Not language specific (i.e., not evolved specifically for language learning), but used in service of learning language (conditional probabilities
- Can learn rules as well as sound (phoneme patterns)
- Don’t think learning language is reason why we have this ability - but (same as connectionist and behaviouralist)

Question 22

fast mapping

Answer 22

How much input we need to learn the meaning of a word - expose a child to a word once, or twice and they learn it - very fast learning

Question 23

syntactic bootstrapping

Answer 23

Using syntax to figure out meaning - using syntactical cues

Question 24

collective monologues

Answer 24

Seen in early childhood - engage in turn taking conversation, but no shared meaning. Children are talking to each other, taking turns, but each about their own individual topic

Question 25

three critical parts of human language

Answer 25

symbols, generativity, recursion

Question 26

symbols

Answer 26

Arbitrary pairings between the words we speak and the things we refer to

Consensus - sounds that map out (represent) objects in the world

System of symbols

Question 27

Generativity

Answer 27

Where you get structure in grammar

Allow you to combine words you’ve never heard together before, and make sense of it

We have a structure that allows us to take words that we know, and combine them in unique ways to express ideas

e.g., Green rabbits hop through the night on their way to school

Question 28

recursion

Answer 28

Meaning is not lost from change in utterance

Our grammar allows us to retain meaning even if the order in which we express words changes

e.g., “Sally met Joey.” “Joey was walking to school.”
“Joey’s school is on the other side of the field.” “The field belongs to Mr. Smith.”
* “Sally met Joey while he was walking to school on the other side of Mr. Smith’s field