Module 9 Vocabulary and Terms Flashcards
First language acquisition
process by which children acquire the lexicon and grammatical rules of their native language
Innate
determined by factors present from birth
Innate hypothesis
hypothesis that humans are genetically predisposed to learn and use language
Imitation theory
theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear
Reinforcement theory
theory of language acquisition that says that children learn to speak like adults because they are praised, rewarded, or reinforced when they use the right forms and are corrected when they use the wrong ones
Active construction of a grammar theory
theory of language acquisition that says that children acquire a language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them
Connectionist theory
Theory of language that claims that children learn language through neural connections in the brain, which are built by exposure and use of language
Social Interaction theory
theory of language that claims that children acquire language through social interaction and prompt their caregivers to supply them with the appropriate language experience
Linguistic universals
property believed to be geld common by all natural languages
Universal grammar
the theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristics shared by all natural languages
Critical period
age span, usually described as lasting from birth to the onset of puberty, during which children have exposure to language and must build the critical brain structures necessary in order to gain native speaker competence in a language
Homesign
visual-gestural communication system (not a language) that is developed and used by deaf children and their families when a signed language is not made available for their communication
Child-directed speech
speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants
High amplitude sucking
experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months
Conditioned head-turn procedure (HT)
experimental technique where the infant learns to associate a change in sound with the activation of visual reinforcers (conditioning phase) and reaction to visual reinforcer immediately after a change in sound, demonstrating the ability to discriminate between two sounds involved
Voice onset time (VOT)
the length of time between the release of a consonant and the onset of voicing
articulatory gestures
a movement of a speech organ in the production of speech
babble
a phrase in child language acquisition during which the child produces meaningless sequences if consonants and vowels
Canonical babbling
the continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants by infants
Variegated babbling
production of meaningless consonants-vowel sequences by infants
One-word stage
stage in first-language acquisition during which children can produce only one word at a time; holophrastic stage
holophrase
a one-word sentence
Two-word stage
stage in firs-language acquisition at which children produce two-word utterances in addition to one-word utterances
telegraphic stage
a phase during child language acquisition in which children use utterances composed primarily of content words
Overgeneralization
a process in which children extend the application of linguistic rules to context beyond those in the adult adult language
Complexive concept
a group of items (abstract or concrete) that a child refers to with a single word for which it is not possible to single out anyone unifying property
Overextension
a relationship between child and adult perception; the child’s application of a given word has a wider range than that application of the same word in adult language
Underextension
application of a word to a smaller set of objects than is appropriate for mature adult speech or the usual definition of the word
relative intersections
type of relationship between adjective and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to the noun reference
deictic expressions
words referring to personal, temporal, or spatial aspects of an utterance and whose meaning depends on the context in which the word is used
attention getter
word or phase used to indicate an address to children
attention holder
a tactic used to maintain children’s attention for extended amounts of time
Conversational turns
the contribution to a conversation made by one speaker from the time that she takes the floor from another speaker to the time that she passes the floor to another speaker
simultaneous bilingualism
bilingualism in which both languages are acquired from infancy
sequential bilingualism
bilingualism in which the second language is acquired as a young child
second-language acquisition
acquisition of a second language as a teenager or adult
code switching
using words or structural elements from more than one language within the same conversation
Transfer
the influence of one’s native language on the learning of subsequent languages
foreign accent
an accent that is marked by the phonology of another language or other languages that are more familiar to the speaker
multilingual
speakers of more than two languages
