Lecture 8

Question 1

What is comprehension ?

Answer 1

refers to understanding what others say (sign or write)

Question 2

What is production ?

Answer 2

refers to speaking, signing, or writing

Question 3

What is generative ?

Answer 3

A system in which a finite set of words can be combined to generate an infinite number of sentences

Question 4

What are phonemes ?

Answer 4

the smallest unit of recognizable sound

Question 5

What are morphemes ?

Answer 5

the smallest units of meaning

Question 6

What is syntax ?

Answer 6

refers to the permissive combinations of words from different categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives)

Question 7

What is pragmatics ?

Answer 7

refers to the understanind of how lanuage is typically used in a specific cultural context

Question 8

What is species-specific behaviour ?

Answer 8

only humans acquire knowledge in the normal course of development

Question 9

What is species-universal ?

Answer 9

language learning is achieved by typically developing children across the globe

Question 10

What is infant-directed speech (IDS) ?

Answer 10

the distinctive mode of speech used when speaking to infants

Question 11

What is prosody ?

Answer 11

the characteristic rhythmic and intonation patterns with which a language is spoken

Question 12

What is categorical perception ?

Answer 12

the perception of phonemes as beloning to discrete categories

Question 13

What is voice onset time (VOT)?

Answer 13

the length of time between air passes through the lips and when the vocal cords start vibrating

Question 14

What is experience-independent ?

Answer 14

infants can discrminate between speech sounds they have never heard before

Question 15

What is word segmentation ?

Answer 15

discovering where words begin and end in fluent speech

Question 16

What is babbling ?

Answer 16

repetitive consnant-vowel sequence (“bababa) or hand movements (sign language)

Question 17

What is a vocabulary spurt ?

Answer 17

learning appears to accelerate

Question 18

What is mutual exclusivity ?

Answer 18

children expect that a given entity will only have one name

Question 19

What is the whole-object assumption ?

Answer 19

children expect a novel word to refer to a whole object rather than to a part, property, action, or other aspect of the object

Question 19

What are pragmatic cues ?

Answer 19

aspects of the social context used for word learning

Question 20

What is cross-situational word learning ?

Answer 20

determining word meanings by tracking correlations between labels and meanings acorss scenes and contexts

Question 21

What is synaptic boostrapping ?

Answer 21

The strategy of using grammatical structure to infer the meaning of a new word

Question 22

What is telegraphic speech ?

Answer 22

short utterances that leave out non-essential words

Question 23

What is overregularization ?

Answer 23

speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular

Question 24

What are collective monologues ?

Answer 24

conversation between children that involves a series of non sequiturs

Question 25

What are narratives ?

Answer 25

story-like structured descriptions of past events

Question 26

What is pragmatic development ?

Answer 26

allows children to understand how language is used to communicate

Question 27

What is Universal Grammar ?

Answer 27

a hard-wired set of principles and rules that govern grammar in all languages

Question 28

What is connectionism ?

Answer 28

a type of computational model that emphasizes the simultaneous activity of numerous interconnected processing units