Module 9 Vocabulary & Terms Flashcards
Imitation Theory
The idea that children primarily learn language by directly coming the speech patterns they hear around them, essentially acting as a passive listener and reproducing what they are exposed to.
Behaviorism Theory
Suggests that language acquisition is primarily learned through environmental stimuli and reinforcement. Children acquire language by imitating sounds, receiving positive feedback for correct utterances, and essentially conditioning their speech based on interactions with their caregivers and environment.
Innateness Theory
The nativist hypothesis; proposes that humans are born with an innate capacity for language acquisition. They have pre-programmed knowledge of linguistic structures that allows them to learn language naturally and relatively easily.
Cognitive Theory
“Cognitive linguistics” approach, which studies language as a mental phenomenon, believing that language structure directly reflects how humans conceptualize the world, essentially viewing grammar and meaning as inseparable and reasoning; An interdisciplinary approach to the study of language, mind, and sociocultural experience.
Motherese Theory
The concept that adults, typically mothers, naturally adjust their speech patterns when talking to infants and young children, using a simplified form of language with higher pitch, exaggerated intonation, and repetitive words, often called “baby talk” or “infant-directed speech (IDS),” to facilitate language acquisition in the child.
Input Theory
The idea that language learners acquire language most effectively by being exposed to “comprehensible input,” or language that is slightly above their current level of understanding. This allows them to progress in their language acquisition through exposure to slightly more advanced language structures and vocabulary.
The Universal Grammar Approach
The theory that humans are born with an innate set of grammatical rules and principles, known as Universal Grammar (UG), which allows them to acquire any language naturally by providing a basic framework for understanding and producing language structures, regardless of the specific language they are exposed to.
Deep Structure
A theoretical construct that seeks to unify several related structures; the abstract representation of the syntactic structure of a sentence; the underlying meaning of a sentence.
Surface Structure
The structure of a well-formed phrase or sentence in a language; the actual spoken sentence comprising phonemes, syllables, words, phrases, and sentences; outward form of a sentence.
Head Parameter
A proposed parameter within Universal Grammar that specifies the relative position of the head of a phrase in relation to its complements; classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial or head-final.
Economy of Derivation
The principle stating that movements (i.e. transformations) only occur in order to match interpretable features with uninterpretable features.
Economy of Representation
The principle that grammatical structures must exist for a purpose, i.e. the structure of a sentence should be no larger or more complex than required to satisfy constraints on grammaticality.
Parameters
Language-specific properties that distinguish one language from another; determines the ways in which languages can vary.
Semantic Theory
A theoretical framework that attempts to explain and describe the meaning of words and sentences in a language, focusing on how meaning is constructed and interpreted with a linguistic system, essentially providing a set of rules to assign meaning to expressions within a language.
Phonological
realizing to the study of sound patterns in a language, specifically how sounds are organized and used to distinguish meaning within a particular language system.
