LECTURE 8- LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT 2

Question 1

What are the four key challenges in language learning for children?

Answer 1

Segmentation, learning word order rules, marking verbs, and generalizing appropriately.

Question 2

What is the segmentation challenge in language learning?

Answer 2

Identifying individual words from a continuous stream of speech with no clear boundaries.

Question 3

How do infants segment words in speech?

Answer 3

By using transitional probabilities and language-specific cues like stress patterns.

Question 4

What are transitional probabilities?

Answer 4

The likelihood that one syllable will follow another, helping infants identify words.

Question 5

What did Saffran, Aslin & Newport (1996) study?

Answer 5

How 8-month-olds use transitional probabilities to distinguish words from non-words.

Question 6

How was the head-turn preference procedure used in segmentation research?

Answer 6

Infants listened longer to non-words or part-words, indicating they could discriminate words from the speech stream.

Question 7

What did Fló et al. (2019) find about newborns?

Answer 7

Newborns show different brain responses to words and part-words, indicating early sensitivity to transitional probabilities.

Question 8

What stress pattern is dominant in English words?

Answer 8

Trochaic stress (STRONG-weak), like “CAN-dle” or “DOC-tor.”

Question 9

What did Jusczyk et al. (1999) demonstrate about stress patterns?

Answer 9

English-speaking 7.5-month-olds recognize trochaic-stressed words better than iambic-stressed words.

Question 10

What errors do English-speaking children make due to stress biases?

Answer 10

Simplifications like “RAFFE” for “gi-RAFFE” or “PU-ter” for “com-PU-ter.”

Question 11

When do infants become sensitive to language-specific cues like stress?

Answer 11

By 7.5 months old.

Question 12

What is the challenge of learning word order rules?

Answer 12

Children must understand how word order conveys meaning (e.g., SVO in English).

Question 13

What is the Verb-Island Hypothesis?

Answer 13

Children initially learn specific verbs in isolation and gradually generalize word order rules.

Question 14

What did Akhtar & Tomasello (1997) find about verb-general knowledge?

Answer 14

2-year-olds often lacked verb-general knowledge, performing at chance in novel word order tasks.

Question 15

What method did Gertner, Fisher & Eisengart (2006) use to study word order comprehension?

Answer 15

A preferential-looking technique to test if children looked longer at correct sentence interpretations.

Question 16

At what age do children show verb-general knowledge of SVO word order?

Answer 16

By 21 months, as shown by looking-time studies.

Question 17

What is the challenge of marking verbs?

Answer 17

Learning to mark verbs for agreement (e.g., “-s”) and tense (e.g., “-ed”).

Question 18

What did Brown (1973) observe about early verb marking?

Answer 18

Children’s early speech is often telegraphic, omitting verb markings like “-s” or “-ed.”

Question 19

What is Developmental Language Disorder (DLD)?

Answer 19

A language deficit affecting around 7.5% of children, marked by difficulty with verb marking and other areas.

Question 20

How do children with DLD struggle with verb marking?

Answer 20

They show significant deficits in marking past tense (“-ed”) and 3rd person singular (“-s”).

Question 21

What is MOSAIC?

Answer 21

A computational model simulating how children learn from child-directed speech, focusing on verb errors.

Question 22

Why do English-speaking children make frequent verb errors?

Answer 22

They rely on more frequent verb forms (e.g., “see” over “sees”) and learn from the right edge of sentences.

Question 23

What is the generalization challenge in language learning?

Answer 23

Children must learn patterns like adding “-ed” for past tense without overgeneralizing to irregular verbs.

Question 24

What are past tense overgeneralization errors?

Answer 24

Applying the “-ed” rule to irregular verbs, e.g., “bringed” instead of “brought.”

Question 25

How do children learn low-frequency irregulars like “bled”?

Answer 25

By analogy with similar-sounding irregulars like “read” → “read.”

Question 26

What did Blything, Ambridge & Lieven (2018) demonstrate?

Answer 26

Children use phonological similarity to group irregular verbs and produce correct past tense forms.

Question 27

How do children make overgeneralization errors in sentence structures?

Answer 27

By applying rules incorrectly, e.g., “Don’t giggle me” or “They just cough me.”

Question 28

How do children learn verb-specific sentence frames?

Answer 28

By analogizing verbs with similar meanings, e.g., understanding that “giggle” behaves like “laugh.”

Question 29

What did Ambridge et al. (2008) find about semantic classes?

Answer 29

Even 5-year-olds know you can’t “expression someone” (e.g., “The funny man giggled Bart”).

Question 30

What is the difference between language-general and language-specific cues?

Answer 30

Transitional probabilities are language-general; stress patterns are language-specific.

Question 31

What is the prevalence of DLD in the UK?

Answer 31

About 7.5%, equivalent to 2 children per classroom.

Question 32

How do children with DLD compare to typically developing children in verb errors?

Answer 32

They make errors for longer and struggle more with long-distance dependencies.

Question 33

How do transitional probabilities help segmentation?

Answer 33

Infants identify word boundaries by tracking how likely syllables are to follow one another

Question 34

How does stress replace transitional probabilities in older infants?

Answer 34

By 7.5 months, infants rely more on stress patterns like trochaic stress in English.

Question 35

How do children handle novel verbs like “wug”?

Answer 35

They start with simple structures and gradually learn to use complex patterns as vocabulary grows.

Question 36

What did Rice, Wexler & Hershberger (1998) find about verb marking in DLD?

Answer 36

Children with DLD show deficits in verb marking compared to both age-matched and language-matched peers.

Question 37

What is the role of input frequency in verb errors?

Answer 37

Children are more accurate with verb forms they hear more frequently in child-directed speech.

Question 38

How do children generalize appropriately in grammar?

Answer 38

By building families of similar-sounding or similar-meaning verbs to support rules and exceptions.