Language Development I Flashcards
Three main questions for language development I
1/ What is language
2/ Do infants have language skills
3/ When do children use words and sentences.
What are the three levels of language?
Grammar
Semantics
Phonology
What is the phonology of a language?
The phonology of a language is the set of sounds used to create spoken words.
What are sounds known as in language?
phoneme
How many phonemes are there in English?
40
What does a change in phoneme create?
A change in phoneme creates a change in meaning.
What are the semantic of language?
The meaning of words in a language.
What is the smallest unit of meaning?
A morpheme
What is a morpheme?
A morphemes is the smallest unit of meaning.
Give an example of one morpheme and two morphemes.
WALK = 1 morpheme
WALK-ED = 2 morphemes
What is our ‘mental dictionary’ known as?
Our ‘mental dictionary’ is known as the lexicon.
What is the lexicon?
The lexicon is the name given to our ‘mental dictionary’
Give a word that can characterize words in general?
Words are arbitrary. For example there is no pattern of common theme between ‘WHALE’ and ‘MICRO-ORGANISM’.
What are grammatical rules?
Grammatical rules govern how words combine to create sentences.
What does the meaning of a sequence of words depend on?
The meaning of a sequence of words depends on its order… Eg, JOHN LOVES MARY, MARY LOVES JOHN. but LOVES MARY JOHN doesn’t make grammatical sense.
What is syntax?
Syntax means the rules for word order in sentences.