Spoken Acquisition - Key Terms

Question 1

communicative competence

Answer 1

the ability to form accurate and understandable utterances, using the grammar system, and to understand social context for using them

Question 2

proto words

Answer 2

‘made up’ words that a child will use to represent a word they might not yet be able to pronounce, for example ‘ray rays’ for ‘raisins’

Question 3

pre-verbal stage

Answer 3

a period of time that involves experimenting with noises and sounds but without producing recognisable words - usually lasting for the majority of the baby’s first year

Question 4

cooing

Answer 4

distinct from crying but not yet forming recognisable vowels and consonants

Question 5

babbling

Answer 5

vocal play that involves forming vowel and consonant sounds, which can be reduplicated or variegated

Question 6

holophrastic stage

Answer 6

the point in a child’s development when they use just individual words to communicate

Question 7

two word stage

Answer 7

this involves children using two words to create mini-sentences, with the word order often resembling adult speech

Question 8

non-verbal communication

Answer 8

all the ways in which communication occurs that do not involve words (e.g. a parent shaking their head at a child will communicate a ‘no’)

Question 9

reduplication

Answer 9

repeated syllables within a word (e.g. baa baa for blanket)

Question 10

diminutives

Answer 10

the reduction in scale of an item through the way this word is created

Question 11

addition

Answer 11

adding an additional suffix to the end of a word in order to change the way in which a word is pronounced and interpreted (e.g. Mummy and dolly instead of Mum and doll)

Question 12

substitution

Answer 12

the process of swapping one sound for another (that is easier to pronounce)

Question 13

assimilation

Answer 13

one consonant or vowel is swapped for another

Question 14

deletion (final consonant or weak syllable)

Answer 14

omitting a particular sound within a word

Question 15

consonant clutter reductions

Answer 15

reducing phonologically more complex units into simpler ones - from two (or more) consonants down to one

Question 16

telegraphic stage

Answer 16

a stage where children produce abbreviated speech that, like SMS messages in the modern world, misses out the grammatical structures and markings that are not essential for understanding

Question 17

content words

Answer 17

words within a sentence that are vital to convey meaning

Question 18

grammatical words

Answer 18

words within a sentence that are necessary to demonstrate structural accuracy

Question 19

post-telegraphic stage

Answer 19

period of time when a child’s language will include both content and grammatical words and more closely resemble adult speech

Question 20

comprehension

Answer 20

the ability to understand language, which might differ from how much an individual can produce

Question 21

production

Answer 21

the language that people can produce, which might be different from how much they can understand

Question 22

productive vocabulary

Answer 22

vocabulary that can be put to use

Question 23

overextension

Answer 23

applying a label to more referents than it should have. for example, a child saying ‘sea’ to label any body of water

Question 24

underextension

Answer 24

applying a label to fewer referents than it should have. for example, a child saying ‘milk’ to refer to milk in their own cup, but not to a picture of milk in a book

Question 25

analogical overextension

Answer 25

extending a label from one item to another by connecting their functions or how they are perceived. although the connections may have some logic to them, they differ from existing categories e.g. a scarf might be called ‘cat’ when a child strokes it

Question 26

categorical overextension

Answer 26

inappropriately extending the meaning of a label to other members in the same category. for example, a child calling all leafy green vegetables ‘cabbage’

Question 27

mismatch/predicate statement

Answer 27

in child language studies, when a child makes a connection based on what is normally the case, but isn’t the case on one particular occasion e.g. referring to an empty cot as ‘doll’ when on this occasion the doll isn’t in the cot

Question 28

hypernym

Answer 28

the name of a category e.g. ‘vegetable’

Question 29

hyponym

Answer 29

the name of a category member e.g. ‘carrot’ is a hyponym within the ‘vegetable’ category

Question 30

bound morpheme

Answer 30

a morpheme that does not exist as an independent word but adds meaning to a free morpheme e.g. ‘un’, ‘ful’, ‘ly’ etc.

Question 31

free morpheme

Answer 31

a morpheme that can exist as an independent word

Question 32

gestalt expression

Answer 32

the way in which children at a certain stage can compress a string of words into a single utterance e.g. ‘wassat?’ for ‘what is that?’

Question 33

segment

Answer 33

to perceive the boundaries or breaks between the units e.g. ‘sponner’ - child had heard ‘once upon a time’ pronounced as ‘one sponner time’

Question 34

auxiliary verb

Answer 34

these are verbs that help other verbs and include the verbs ‘be’, ‘do’ and ‘have’

Question 35

pivot schema

Answer 35

the use by children of certain key words as a ‘pivot’ to generate many utterences

Question 36

aspect

Answer 36

this refers to the way in which certain grammatical markings on verb forms indicate whether an action or state is ongoing e.g. ‘ing’ form in ‘looking’ suggests continuous action

Question 37

tense

Answer 37

this refers to the way in which verbs can indicate time, for example, the ‘ed’ ending on a verb such as ‘look’ indicates past time

Question 38

virtuous error

Answer 38

a mistake that has an underlying logic, showing that learning has taken place e.g. ‘swimmed’ instead of ‘swam’

Question 39

overgeneralisation

Answer 39

applying a rule and assuming that every example follows the same sample, without realising that there are exceptions

Question 40

turntaking

Answer 40

the way in which participants take turns at talk in interactions

Question 41

politeness

Answer 41

an aspect of pragmatics that refers tot he cultural rules of a community and regulates how social relationships are negotiated. everyday use of the term ‘polite’ tends to be associated with surface aspects such as table manners and saying ‘please’ and ‘than you’. these aspects are connected with the academic concept but it goes much deeper than this, including all aspects of cultural rules about appropriate language use in social engagements