Lecture 5

Question 1

What Is Language?

Specifically, Arbitrariness?

Answer 1

• Uses symbols not related to the concept that they represent

Question 2

What Is Language?

Specifically, Productivity?

Answer 2

• Produce communications that are unique; express novel ideas

Question 3

What Is Language?

Specifically, Semanticity?

Answer 3

• Language represents a form of patterned information

Question 4

What Is Language?

Specifically, Displacement?

Answer 4

• Language is independent of time, past, present, and future

Question 5

What Is Language?

Specifically, Duality?

Answer 5

• Language is represented on two levels: sounds, underlying meaning

Question 6

What is the different stages of Language Development?

Answer 6

• Crying (0-4m)
• Cooing/babbling (4-12)
• Initial words (12-18)
• Two-word sentences (18-36)
• Short sentences (2.5-5y)
• Adult usage (5y+)

Question 7

What is Phonological Development?

Answer 7

• Refers to learning the sounds of a language

- Babbling includes subset of language sounds that serves a social function

Question 8

What is Atypical Language Development?

Answer 8

• Can be impaired if there are significant delays in early learning of language
• Makes early intervention a priority (e.g., cochlear implants)

Question 9

What is Morphological Development?

Answer 9

• Free morphemes stand alone, bound morphemes attach to free morph.
• Children learn rules for attaching free morphemes to bounds morphemes (adding “ed” to “talk”)
• Mean Length of Utterance is the number of morphemes per sentence
• This increases with age/lang. Mean Length of Utterance refers to number of morphemes per sentence – this increases with age/lang. devel.

Question 10

What is Syntactic Development?

Answer 10

• Syntax are rules of grammar
• How words are arranged into sentences
• Relating events within a sentence through the use of conjunctions
• Doesn’t usually appear until around 3 years

Question 11

What is Semantic Development?

Answer 11

• Refers to a word’s meaning
• There is a major spurt in word acquisition that begins at around 18 months of age
• Typically begins after around 50 or so words are known

Question 12

What is the Holophrastic Period?

Answer 12

• Whole object assumption: new word applies to whole object
• Taxonomic assumption: words can be generalized to a group of things
• Mutual exclusivity: assumption – different words refer to different things
• Children use these rules/constraints along with social cues to learn semantics
  over/under-extension

Question 13

What does Pragmatics Development refer to?

Answer 13

• Refers to how language is actually used, particularly in social situation

Question 14

Name three Theories of Language Development?

Answer 14

• Learning Theory (students absorb, process and retain info)
• Chomsky/nativist (preprogrammed)
• Social-interactionist (Lev Vygotsky)

Question 15

Examples of Learning theory?

Answer 15

• Operant conditioning (Skinner)
• Imitation (Bandura)
• Adults shape child’s speech through reinforcement

Question 16

What is the Nativist/Chomsky Theory in greater detail?

Answer 16

• Environmental input was necessary. They rejected language development and solely driven by the environment
• Proposed that structure of language was what we hear when people talk
• The Deep structure is universal to all languages (spoken or not)
• In humans, the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) processes incoming stimuli and detects underlying patterns

Question 17

What is the Critical Period?

Answer 17

• Language-deprivation in childhood produces non-optimal language development despite intensive learning efforts (e.g., Genie or Victor)
• Differences in grammatical competence based on age of language acquisition
• Children show better language plasticity after l.h. damage

Question 18

Why Is There A Critical Period?

Answer 18

• Newport’s “Less Is More” theory
• Young kids have cognitive immaturity, which limits the amount of linguistic information they can process at a time
• This automatically breaks down and simplifies language, making it easier to learn

Question 19

What does it mean to be a Social Interactionist?

Answer 19

• Bruner notes that learning language is emphasized by differences and meanings
• Learn through posture and gestures
• Children do not learn extra languages through passive learning (e.g., TV)

Question 20

What are the Gender Differences when it comes to linguistic advantage?

Answer 20

• There is mixed evidence of women having a linguistic advantage
• A learned/cultural difference in that girls are given more “intense” exposure to language
• Some very early differences in language acquisition suggest that women may have innate differences