Linguistics Vocabulary Flashcards
The Innateness Hypothesis
Language is inherent in humans. Rules for grammar exist even before linguistic input is received. The aspect of the innateness hypothesis in which outside grammar rules for children are minimal at best is referred to as the poverty of the stimulus.
The Holophrastic Stage
The holophrastic stage in language acquisition is the stage when children utter only one word at a time.
Prosodic Bootstrapping
Prosodic Bootstrapping refers to the way in which both children and adults will rely on stressed syllables to suggest the presence of new words in a sequence.
Overextension
The concept that children will apply a learned word to more contexts than is appropriate. For example, Micah uses the proper noun “Tucker” to refer to any four-legged mammal because he cannot yet distinguish between cats and dogs, etc.
Underextension
This concept refers to when a child uses a learned word too restrictively. For example, if a child refers to their pet canary as a bird, but does not associate the word “bird” with all avian.
Mean Length of Utterance
MLU is the average length of utterances a child is producing at a particular point. This is a more reliable measurement for a child’s language development than chronological age.
Telegraphic Stage
The stage in which mostly content-words are uttered, and auxiliaries, function words, and verbal inflection may be missing. Similarities between text messages and old-fashioned telegraphs can be seen in the utterances.
Semantic Bootstrapping
The idea that children first use the meaning (semantics) of a word to figure out its category (noun, verb, etc.)
Codeswitching
Using aspects of bilingualism in a single sentence.
The Unitary System Hypothesis
This hypothesis states that a child initially only constructs one lexicon and one system of grammar.
The Separate Systems Hypothesis
This hypothesis asserts that a child will build a distinct lexicon and grammar for each language learned.
Metalinguistic Awareness
A conscious awareness ‘about’ language rather than ‘of’ language.
Bilingual Child: “I speak Hebrew and English”
Monolingual Child: “What’s English?”
The Fundamental Difference Hypothesis
This hypothesis asserts that second language acquisition by adults is done differently than second language acquisition by a child.
Babbling Stage
When a child begins to utter sounds that do not exist in his/her linguistic environment.
Fundamental Frequency
This term refers to the sounds we make in relation to the variations of the air pressure.
Intensity
Refers to the loudness of a sound.
Spectrogram
Also referred to as ‘voiceprints,’ a spectrogram is a pattern produced through a computer program which reduces speech signals into frequency components.
Formants
Dark bands on a spectrogram that denote vowels.
Categorical Perception
Categorical Perception refers to the way in which native speakers classify phonemes together even when they each have distinct sound differences due to coarticulation.
Top-down Processing
Involves processing language first at a higher level (semantics) and down toward basic phonology.
