Midterm Flashcards
nature
[nativism/innateness] idea that that language is encoded in our dna, we are predisposed to it
nurture
[empiricism/environment] idea that we are born as a blank slate and language is learned
nature vs nurture debate - what is present when learning begins?
nature says that we have everything needed precoded, nurture says nothing
n vs n - what kinds of mechanisms or predispositions drive acquisition?
look on paper
n vs n - what kind of input drives acquisition?
look on paper
n vs n - what kind of evidence supports each position
Evidence of innateness – Lenneberg 1967 -[defined characteristics of biological system]
1. behavior is not the result of a conscious decision
2. not triggered by external events
3. direct teaching has little effecti on language acquisition
4. there is a set of milestones – even if deaf and stuff
5. there is a critical period for acquisition
learners go beyond input
pidgins and creoles – kids introducing own structure for language
kids who say things they haven’t heard before, going beyond the input
Evidence for experience
critical period
you learn your own language
once need to speak goes away can actually lose knowledge/ability to speak
once you learn one by the end of the critical period will be able to learn more
poverty of the stimulus
poverty of the stimulus – kids hear few sentence tokens than they know and understand
can’t just be imitating or memorizing
Even as adults we can make up sentences we haven’t heard before
learners who go beyond their input
learners go beyond input
pidgins and creoles – kids introducing own structure for language
kids who say things they haven’t heard before, going beyond the input
critical period
idea that there is a certain amount of time when kids have to acquire language or lose the ability to learn language fluently
Hart & Risley [1995]
link between amount of speech kids hear at home and school readiness, the more they heard at home
CHILDES database
Child language data exchange system - a database so linguists can easily share and analyze data from experiments
MLU
mean length of utterance, average length of phrases
MLT
mean length of turn, how many phrases said per turn
MLT ratio
ratio of kids mlt/mom mlt
TTR
type-to-token ratio, ratio of type [different words]/ tokens [total numbers of words]
what do kids have to learn about the sounds of their language and how?
- word/morpheme segmentation
- phonotactics of language - how able to combine sounds in a language [borrowings excluded]
- sounds/phonemes of the language and how to produce them
- intonation/stress
vowels
nope
consonants
nope
IPA chart - places of articulation
labial
IPA - manners of articulation
stop, nasal
IPA - voicing + VOT
voiced/voiceless, vot = voiced onset time, amount of time from when stop is released to voicing begins
IPA - natural classes
obstruents - obstructing air flow causing more air flow in vocal tract k, f, sonorants - continuous - n, s
categorical perception: identification vs discrimination
the unconscious automatic grouping of continuous stimulus into categories. once you define category, your ability to discriminate within worses
babbling, stages of
5 stages
- reflexive crying and vegetative sounds - from birth
- cooing and laughter - 6-8weeks
- vocal play 16-30weeks, includes sounds that wont be relevant in language
- reduplicated/cannonical babbling, 6-9 months
- varigated babbling/ non reduplicated babbling, adding prosody/intonation - 9months
markedness of speech sounds
unmarked sounds appear sooner and more often than more marked sounds, jakobsen 1968
tuning of phonological system to sounds of the ambient/native language
from 9-12 months, start realizing what sounds are produced in their language, and their ability to distingush other sounds not found in their language diminshes
infant-directed speech
higher pitch, clear long vowels, short utterances, slower, simple vocabulary, repeat stuff, variation in intonation, interactive, less grammar to parse, talk about things here and now, kids are shown to prefer it to non infant directed speech
what do kids have to learn about the words of their language and how do they learn it?
sound form - how to say it and correctly, what it means, what it doesn’t mean, syntactic knowledge - how to use in sentence, part of speech/grammatical category, morphology
phonological bootstrapping
theory that infants can find cues and properties of speech stream to find words and grammar
prosodic bootstrapping
info from intonation, stress pattern [pauses in speech stream to help them segment]