problem 5

Question 1

What these 5 components of language (phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, pragmantics)?

Answer 1

• Phonology
  
  • the sound system of a language and the rules for combining these sounds to produce meaningful units of speech
• Morphology
  
  • rules governing the formation of meaningful words from sounds
• Semantics
  
  • the expressed meaning of words and sentences
• Morphemes: smallest meaningful language units
  
  • Free morphemes: morphemes that can stand alone as a word (e.g., cat, go, yellow)
  • Bound morphemes: morphemes that cannot stand alone but that modify the meaning of free morphemes (e.g., the -ed attached to English verbs to indicate past tense)
• Syntax
  
  • the structure of a language; the rules specifying how words and grammatical markers are to be combined to produce meaningful sentences
• Pragmatics
  
  • principles that underlie the effective and appropriate use of language in social contexts
  • sociolinguistic knowledge: culturally specific rules specifying how language should be structured and used in particular social contexts

Question 2

What is the nativist perspective of language development?

Answer 2

• nativists believe that humans are biologically programmed to acquire language
• (Chomsky) Language acquisition device: we are born with a language acquisition device. Language is an innate mechanism that we all have. It’s activated by verbal input; it’s universal
• (Slobin) Language making capacity: set of cognitive and perceptual abilities that are highly specialised for language learning

Question 3

What are the pros and cons of the nativist approach?

Answer 3

• Support:
  
  • children reach universal milestone despite cultural differences
  • animals can’t be taught to speak; must be biological
  • the existence of the Broca’s/Wernicke’s area (support for bio)
• Criticism:
  
  • doesn’t explain language development; it’s descriptive but not explanatory
  • don’t explain what LMC or LAD are
  • many language contradict the statement that it’s universal
  • languages have different patterns (not universal)
  • overlooks influence of environment in language production

Question 4

What is the sensitive period hypothesis in the development of language?

Answer 4

• idea that human beings are most proficient at language learning before puberty

Question 5

What is evidence for the sensitive period hypothesis?

Answer 5

• child aphasics recover their lost language functions without therapy and adult aphasics don’t
• it’s harder to acquire a new language after puberty
• when learning a new language after puberty it activates a different part of the brain than before puberty.
• kids of immigrants acquire language better before puberty.

Question 6

What is the learning perspective of language?

Answer 6

• Skinner: we are reinforced to learn language through reward
  
  • this reinforcement is called operant conditioning
• Bandura: children imitate the people in their surrounding
  
  • siblings play an important role

Question 7

What are the pros and cons of the learning perspective?

Answer 7

• Criticism:
  
  • children don’t acquire grammatical rules through imitation
  • parents don’t influence syntax in children through reinforcement
  • this doesn’t account for the naming explosion
• Support:
  
  • existence of accents and different languages
  • the influence of low social-economic standard of language

Question 8

What is the interactionist perspective of language?

Answer 8

• language is learned by learning but also aided by biological factors.
• LMC and LAD are not a part of this theory

Question 9

What happens in the pre-linguistic phase of language development?

Answer 9

• from birth to 10/13 months
• kids can’t speak but they can discriminate between speech pattern
• 2-6 months: child produces a vocalisation that matches what they’ve heard
• receptive language (hearing speech) comes before productive language (speaking)

Question 10

What happens in the holophrase period (12 - 18 months)?

Answer 10

• babies produce their first meaning phrase
• fast mapping: babies acquire words after hearing it
• naming explosion: babies realise that everything has a name

Question 11

What are these common errors and when do they occur (overextension and underextension)?

Answer 11

• holophrase period
• overextension: using a very specific term to refer to a category
• underextension: using a very broad term for something very specific

Question 12

What are these processing constraints and when do they occur (mutual exclusivity constraint, taxonomic constraint, object scope constraint, lexical contrast constraint)?

Answer 12

• holophrase period
  processing constraints: children are cognitively biased to favouring certain interpretations
• mutual exclusivity constraint: children assume that different words mean different things
• taxonomic constraint: objects with the same properties fall under the same category
• object scope constraint: only refers to whole objects and not little parts (cap, bottle)
• lexical contrast constraint: child understands new words by contrasting them to others

Question 13

What are syntactical clues?

Answer 13

• syntactical clues: looking at sentences and trying to understand the meaning based on the context

Question 14

What happens in the telegraphic period?

Answer 14

• 2-3 years old
• children are able to combine words together to form simple sentences
• A sentence will only have the most important words
• this period is more culture-specific → most important words depend on the language
• child starts to learn grammar rules
• pragmatics: children start to learn etiquette

Question 15

What happens in the preschool period?

Answer 15

• 2.5 - 5 years old
• pronunciation improves
• children understand more grammatically complex sentence structures

Question 16

What happens from 6 - adolescent?

Answer 16

• able to understand underlying meanings
• morphological knowledge is acquired