Language Development

Question 0

Continuity hypothesis

Answer 0

Babbling foundation of language - start producing all sounds and learn which are relevant from reinforcement from parents

Question 1

John Locke on language

Answer 1

-common sense view of language - words used for recording thoughts and communicating our thoughts to others

Question 2

Discontinuity hypothesis

Answer 2

Babbling has no relationship to language

Question 3

Overregularizarion

Answer 3

Over generalize grammatical rules to irregular cases

Question 4

Syntax

Answer 4

Rules, word order, structure that underlie meaningful utterances

Question 5

Phones

Answer 5

Speech sounds

Question 6

Phonemes

Answer 6

Speech sounds that are meaningful in a particular language

Question 7

Categorical perception

Answer 7

Adults perceive speech sounds in categories

Question 8

Infant directed speech

Answer 8

"Motherese"
Short simply syntax 
Many questions and commands 
Simply words
High redundancy and repitition 
High pitch and variability in speech

Question 9

Word boundary problems

Answer 9

Seeing perceived breaks

Some words have other embedded words

Question 10

Meaningful melodies - 4 types of mother infant interactions:

Answer 10

• attention (to new toy)
• approval (praise infant)
• prohibition (tries to stop infant fro, touching)
• comfort (mother soothing infant)

Infants respond pos or neg to approvals or prohibitions even in unfamiliar languages

Question 11

Constraints approach to word learning

Answer 11

Word learning biases beginning at 18 months - constraints to deal with indeterminacy problem - what does it mean part, whole - helps them figure this out
- whole object assumption, mutually exclusivity assumption and taxonomic assumption

Question 12

While object assumption

Answer 12

A new label is a likely to refer to the whole object not its parts

Question 13

Mutually exclusivity assumption

Answer 13

Each object only has one label - prevents redundant guessing

Question 14

Taxonomic assumption

Answer 14

A novel label refers to objects of the same kind not objects that are thematically related

Question 15

Problems with constraints

Answer 15

• Are they in place for early word learning or are they a developmental outcome
• children must overcome them to learn many words
• they only apply to object labels
• must be used in conjunction with social pragmatic cues to figure out intent

Question 16

Two views of language

Answer 16

1) code model of language - constraints - yes but doesn’t get on everything
2) language as activity - social pragmatic approach - how words used

Question 17

Social pragmatic approach

Answer 17

Social nature of words- word learning based on what is Most relevant in that situation

• part of activity -lots of cues to figure out language
• what does the speaker want the listener to attend to - importance of joint attention

Question 18

Syntactic bootstrapping

Answer 18

Use of syntax to infer word meaning

• see if verb, count noun or mass noun
• if not enough info children use their general knowledge