Task 6 language development

Question 1

Phonological development

Answer 1

first step in children’s language development, the mastery of the sound system of their language

Question 2

Sematic development

Answer 2

learning the system for expressing meaning in a language, including word learning

Question 3

Syntactic development

Answer 3

learning how words and morphemes are combined (learning the syntax of language)
o S-structure: surface structure, which roughly corresponds to the spoken sentence (young children often lack on s-structure e.g. one word period and two word period)
o D-structure: deep structure, which is more abstract representation of a sentence (important fro the meaning of a sentence)

Question 4

Pragmatic development

Answer 4

the acquisition of knowledge about how a language is used (recognising moods and hidden messages in the style of language)

Question 5

Metalinguistic knowledge

Answer 5

(adults) an understanding of the properties and functions of language, that is an understanding of language as language (recognising an unknown language as language

Question 6

Critical period

Answer 6

the time during which language develops readily and after which (sometime between age 5 and puberty) language acquisition is much more difficult and ultimately less successful
o Second language is processed differently when learned in adulthood than in infancy
o Less is more: children store and extract smaller chunks of language because of their limited capacities (beneficial for learing of morphenes)

Question 7

Holophrastic period

Answer 7

the period when children begin using words in their small productive vocabulary one word at a time
o Overextension: the use of a given word in a broader context than is appropriate (labelling any four legged animal as dog)
 They know the word of the different animals but it is not included in their productive memory so they don’t use them but react appropriate

Question 8

Later development

Answer 8

o From 5-6 years children continue developing language skills although with less dramatic accomplishments (double meaning of same words)

Question 9

Prosody (perceiving)

Answer 9

the characteristic rhythm, tempo, melody, intonational patterns, and os forth which a language is spoken (very early in development already in the womb)

Question 10

Categorical perception

Answer 10

the perception of speech sounds as belonging to distinct categories
 Voice onset time: the length of time between when air passes through the lips and when the vocal cords start vibrating (measured with b and p)

Question 11

Early word recognition

Answer 11

 6 month react accordingly to mommy or daddy by looking at the parent, they understand far more in this age
 24 months old already look at named stimuli when they just heard the beginning of the word

Question 12

Syntactic bootstrapping

Answer 12

the strategy of using the grammatical structure of whole sentences to figure out meaning

Question 13

Categorical perception

Answer 13

young infants engage in cartegorical perception of phonemes
 Phonemes: a set of sounds that are not physically identical to one another, but with speakers of an language treat as equivalent sounds (ba and pa)

Question 14

Word segmentation

Answer 14

the process of discovering where words begin and end in fluent speech (second half of the first year)
o 8 months of age children start to expect stresses syllables in as beginning of a new word
o Distributional properties: the phenomen that in any language, certain sounds are more likely to appear together than others

Question 15

Reflexive vocalization (birth-2 months)

Answer 15

cries, coughs, burps and sneezes, they communicate by varying there type of crying

Question 16

Cooing and laughing (2-4 months)

Answer 16

start to combine sounds with one another, expressing happiness through cooing, when parents coo back children learn turn taking in conversations

Question 17

Babbling and vocal play (4-6 months)

Answer 17

comes with gained motor mouth control. Neither hearing human speech or having someone to respond is necessary for babbling (plays role in continuing not starting)

Question 18

Modulated babbling (10 months on)

Answer 18

characterised by variety of sounf combinations, stress and intonation. May play a role in learning the intonation of the childs mother language

Question 19

Early interactions

Answer 19

 Interaction with care givers such as peek a boo or give and take, they learn to alternate between passive and active role in communication (bidirectional communication)
 Intersubjectivity: in which to two interacting partners share a mutual understanding
• Joint attention: commenting everything the infant looks at

Question 20

Reference (first words)

Answer 20

in language and speech, the associating of words and meaning

Question 21

Productive vocabulary (first words)

Answer 21

Starting to say understood words between 10 and 15 months (contains 50 words at age of 18 months)

Question 22

Simplification strategies (first words)

Answer 22

leaving out difficult parts of word (saying nana instead of banana)

Question 23

Fast mapping (word learning)

Answer 23

the process of rapidly learning a new word simply from hearing the contrastive use of familiar and the unfamiliar word (when they hear a new word and see a new stimulus they are likely to pair them)

Question 24

Whole object assumption (word learning)

Answer 24

children expect the word to describe the whole object rather a single part of it

Question 25

Pragmatic cues´(word learning)

Answer 25

aspects of social context used for word learning (eye gaze) (intentionality) (linguistic context – grammatical category)

Question 26

Telegraphic speech

Answer 26

the term describing children’s first sentences that are generally two-word utterances (hurt knee, all wet, mommy sleep)

Question 27

First sentences

Answer 27

end of their second year

Question 28

Grammar

Answer 28

language specific rules of the use of the certain language

Question 29

Overregulation

Answer 29

speech errors in which children treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular

Question 30

Conversation skills

Answer 30

internalized speech
 Collective monologues: conversation of children in which each childs turn has nothing or less to do with what the other child sad
 Narratives: age of 5 years, description of past events that have the basic structure of a story

Question 31

Preferential listening test

Answer 31

introducing a certain auditory stimulus and starting with a habituation period. Then the researcher present a different stimulus and record if the infant reacts to it
o Detecting word segmentation: repeating a word like cup in different sentences and then record if the infants reacts more to the known word than to a different

Question 32

Measuring early word recognition

Answer 32

Dog and cat are in the scene and it is measured how fast or if the infant looks at the appropriate stimulus after hearing the name
o Plural use is achieved at age of 4 years

Question 33

Symbols

Answer 33

system for representing our thoughts, feelings and knowledge and for communicating them to other people
o Used to 1. Represent our feelings, thoughts and knowledge and 2. Communicate our thoughts, feelings and knowledge to other people

Question 34

Generativity

Answer 34

by using the finite set of words in our vocabulary, we can generate infinite number of sentences, expressing an infinite number of ideas

Question 35

Phonemes

Answer 35

the elementary units of meaningful sound used to produce language

Question 36

Morphemes

Answer 36

the smallest units of meaning in a language, composed of one or more phonemes.

Question 37

Syntax

Answer 37

refers to possible connections of words (verbs nouns and adjectives)

Question 38

Infant-direct speech (IDS)

Answer 38

the distinctive mode of speech that adults adopt when talking to babies and very young children