Test 1 Flashcards
Definition of Communication
The primary function of language
The process of exchanging information and ideas (needs & desires)
An active process that involves encoding, transmitting, and decoding messages
Encoding
The first step the sender is faced with. Uses encoding in order to convey meaning (symbols are used to encode ideas into messages that OTHERS can understand); this process translates info into a message in the form of symbols that represent ideas / concepts.
Transmitting
To begin transmitting the message, the sender uses some kind of channel (also called a medium).
Decoding
conducted by the receiver. Once the message is received and examined, the stimulus is sent to the brain for interpreting, in order to assign some type of meaning to it. It is this processing stage that constitutes decoding. The receiver begins to interpret the symbols sent by the sender, translating the message to their own set of experiences in order to make the symbols meaningful. Successful communication takes place when the receiver correctly interprets the sender’s message.
Paralinguistic Aspects
Suprasegmental Devices)-
Why are Paralinguistic mechanisms called suprasegmental devices?
Paralinguistic mechanisms are called Suprasegmental devices because they can change the form & meaning of a sentence by acting across elements, or segments, of a sentence.
Examples of Suprasegmental Devices
Intonation: the use of pitch. The most complex. Stress: For emphasis Rate Pauses Pitch, pauses, and rhythm
Examples of Nonlingusitc Aspects
Gestures Body posture Facial expression Eye contact Head and body movement Physical distance or proximity
What are Metalinguistic skills?
Metalinguistic skills are the abilities to talk about language, analyze it, think about it, judge it, and see it as an entity separate from its content.
Examples of Metalinguistic skills
Phonological awareness:Phonemic awareness refers to the specific ability to focus on and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in spoken words. Phonemes are the smallest units comprising spoken language.
Grammatical judgment
Ambiguity:
Word awareness: is the knowledge that words have meaning.
The pre-linguistic stage
Infants are pre-wired” for communication. They focus on their mother’s eyes during feeding, have a preference for the human voice, and demonstrate complex facial expressions.
Within the first year of life, infants…
can discriminate phonemes and intonation patters. can tell speech from non-speech. They coo.
When is the first social smile?
3-6 weeks
Proto-conversations
An interaction between an adult (typically a mother) and baby, that includes words, sounds and gestures, that attempts to convey meaning before the onset of language in the child
Joint Reference
Reference is the ability to differentiate one entity from many and to note its presence.
Joint Reference: presupposes that two or more individuals share a common focus on one entity
Joint Action
Throughout the 1st year of life, a caregiver & infant develop shared behaviors in familiar contexts.Joint action: routine action that provides structure within which language can be analyzed. From this, the child learns turn-taking & conversational skills.
When does facial imitation begin?
4-6 months
3 developmental stages of early communication intentions
o Behaviors are undifferentiated & unknown (1-8 months)
o Use of gestures &vocalizations to express intent(8-12 months)
o Use of words to convey intentions(12 mos+)
Paralinguistic
the aspects of spoken communication that do not involve words. Ex)intonation, stress, rate, pauses
Presupposition
Even at the single-word stage, a child has some knowledge of the information to be included in a conversation, giving evidence of presupposition. It’s the assumption that the listener knows or does not know certain information that a child, as speaker, must include or delete from the conversation.
What is language?
A socially shared code or conventional system for representing concepts
The use of arbitrary symbols and rule governed combinations of those symbols
Dialects
Generative system aka Nativist approach
Children are able to acquire language because they are born with innate rules or principles related to structures of human languages.
Generativists assume that it is impossible for children to learn linguistic knowledge from the environment given. The input children hear is limited & full of errors & incomplete information. Even with these limitations, children are still able to acquire the linguistic knowledge quickly because of the guidance of innate linguistic hypotheses.
Language Components
Form, Content, Use
Form
Phonology, Morphology, Syntax
Content
semantics
Use
Pragmatics
Linguistic competence
A language user’s underlying knowledge about the system of rules. Even though the user can’t state the rules, performance demonstrates adherence to them.
Linguistic performance
Linguistic knowledge in actual usage.
5 aspects of cognitive development important for language
- Imitation
- Object permanence:Seen when infants search for a missing object. It’s knowing that an object exists even when it is not readily visible.
- Causality: The relation of cause and effect?
- Means-Ends:
- Play
Toddler Productive Vocabulary
• Growth of productive vocabulary to about 50 words
Child’s productions are ___________ of adult’s productions
approximations
Categories of toddler’s lexicon:
- Animals, food and toys
- Co-ordinates
- People and animal within the child’s environment
- Words represent individual objects
Nouns account for _____ of toddler vocabulary
60-65%
modifier
• Modifier- is a word, phrase, or clause which functions as an adjective or an adverb to describe a word or make its meaning more specific.
There is a vocabulary spurt from _____ months.
18-24 months
How many words a day do infants add to their lexicon?
10-20 new words per day
Under-extensions:
Overly restricted meanings. Ex) Using the word “cup” for ONLY the CHILD’S cup. Child doesn’t apply the word ‘cup’ to other cups.
Overextensions
Meanings that are too broad when compared to the adult meaning. Example, Calling all men “Daddy”. The child doesn’t necessarily think that ALL men are his/her daddy, the child just ASSUMES that all men are CALLED ‘daddy’
Categories for overextensions
- Visual similarity: Perceptual similarities are mostly visual. 60% of extensions.
- Functional similarity:25% of extensions.
- Contextual similarity of an object with an event (blanket with a nap)
- Emotional similarity:Accounts for a very small number of extensions
first sounds
plosives, nasals, glides, vowels
Two word utterances begin when?
18-24 months
To remain on topic, preschoolers often use what tactic?
Repetition
Presupposition
Adaptation to the listener’s knowledge
Which is first? Form or Function?
Form follows function
• A communication base is established first.
• Language is then used to express verbally those intentions and functions that were previously expressed non-verbally
Bootstrapping
-the process of learning language in which children use what they know to decode more mature language
How many words do preschoolers add to their vocabulary a day?
2-5 words
fast-mapping
Word meanings are inferred without direct teaching by adults
1st year milestone
single word utterances
2nd year milestone
grammatical morphems
3rd year milestone
embedded phrases and clauses within sentences; conjunctions
Narratives begin at age…
2
Time Order is acquired by age..
3
Speech
• Speech is the verbal means by which humans communicate
Phoneme
the smallest meaningful unit of speech
Allophones
subtle phonetic realizations of a phoneme.
Phonemes are classified by:
Place and manner of articulation. Voiced or Voiceless.
Place of articulation:
- Bilabial (both lips)
- Dental (touching the tongue to the teeth)
- Velar (touching the tongue to the velum)
- Alveolar
- Glottal
- Labio-dental
- Palatal
Manner of articulation
- Plosive(p,b,t, d, k,g)
- Fricative(f,v,s,z,)- a manner class of consonants characterized by construction of (but not stopping) the air flow, with the constriction creating turbulence or friction.
- Affricates(ch sound’ /ʧ/ and ‘j sound’ /ʤ/)–a consonant produced by briefly stopping then releasing the oral airflow as a fricative.
- Liquids (r, l) a type of approximant produced by the articulators approaching one another but not coming so close as to create turbulence
- Glides(w, j)
- Nasal(m,n) phonemes
Coarticulation
the articulation of two or more speech sounds together, so that one influences the other
Development of Speech Stages
Phonation, Cooing Expansion, Canonical, Variegated babbling, Jargon/gibberish, pre-representational, representational,
Phonation stage
(0-1 month)- vocalization is limited to crying to signal hunger and discomfort.
Cooing stage
(2-3 months)- babies may begin to laugh and make sounds in the back of their throats that sound like “goo”.
Expansion stage
(4-6 months)-vocal behavior diversifies has infants approach the end of their first six months of life. New forms include more substantial vowel-like sounds, as well as a variety of less “speechy”soundssuch as bilabial trills (“raspberries”), squealing, and growling.
Canonical stage
(7-9 months)- During the canonical stage, the babbling involves reduplicated sounds containing alternations of vowels and consonants, for example, “baba” or “bobo”.Reduplicated babbling (also known as canonical babbling) consists of repeated syllables consisting of consonant and a vowel such as “da da da da” or “ma ma ma ma”.
Variegated babbling
(10-12 months)- Variegated babbles contain mixes of consonant vowel combinations such as “ka da by ba mi doy doy”. Variegated babbling differs from reduplicated babbling in terms of the variation and complexity of syllables that are produced.
First words - The Pre-Representational Stage
(12-18 months)
• Simple syllabic structure: CV (“no”), VC (“eat” or “up”), CVCV- reduplicated (such as “mama”, “dada”), and CVCV-not reduplicated (such as “doggie”).
• Limited repertoire of sounds: stops (plosives) (b,p,t,d,k,g) nasals (m,n) and glides (w, j)
• Most frequent vowels: i, a , and u.
Two-word combinations-The Representational Stage
(18-mos-4-yrs) –
• Number of different soundsincreases
• Syllabic structures become more complex
• Phonological processes:
Phonological processes:
Cluster reduction, Reduplication, Weak syllable deletion, Final consonant deletion, Fronting, Stopping, Gliding
Cluster reduction
(/poon/ for /spoon/)- the child eliminates a consonant cluster that they do not like to produce
Reduplication
(/wawa/ for /water/)
Weak syllable deletion
(/nanna/ for /banana/)-Children will leave out the unstressed syllable. For example, telphone for telephone
Final consonant deletion
(/hea/ for /head/)
Fronting
a phonological process referring to the substitution of a consonant further back in the mouth with a consonant produced further forward, typically velar fronting
Stopping
(/tun/ for /sun/)-Fricative (ongoing) sounds are replaced by stops. For example, toup forsoup or pit for peach.
Gliding
(/wed/ for /red/)/r/ and /l/ are replaced by /w/. For example, wun for run.
Labial assimilation
When a sound is changed to a labial sound (b, p, m, w) because of another labial sound in a word.
Velar assimilation
(/gog/ for /dog/)-When a non-velar sound is changed to a velar (k, g, ng) sound.
Nasal assimilation
(/munny/ for /bunny/)- When a non-nasal sound is changed to a nasal (m, n, ng) because of the influence of another nasal sound in the word.
Liquid assimilation
(/lellow/ for /yellow/)- a non-liquid sound changes to a liquid sound
assimilation is also called:
consonant harmony
acquirement of articulation
The classes of nasals, stops, and glides are acquired before fricatives, affricates, and liquids.• Front consonants are acquired beforeback consonants (labial (first), THEN alveolar, palatal and velar).
• Sounds are FIRST AQCUIRED in the initial position of words.
• Most consonantclusters are acquired LATE (age 7-8)
types of morphemes
free or bound
bound morphemes
‘s (possession) er (more) un (negative) ly (manner) s (plural)
Derivational morphemes
(mad-madly; mad-madness; judge-judgment
Inflectional morphemes
(big-bigger- biggest)
phonology includes:
Phoneme - the smallest meaningful units of speech
o Allophones
o Distributional rules
o Sequencing rules
Distributional rules
describe which sounds can be employed in various positions in words
Sequencing rules
Sequential constraints in phonology refer specifically to the clusters of sounds that you are allowed to use when making words happen.
Semantics
Rules govern the meaning of words and word combination
o Word meaning includes:
Semantic features (the semantic features of “bachelor” include “unwed” and “male”)
Selection restrictions (“bachelor’s wife” ;“unwed bachelor”)
Pragmatics
Discourse & conversational skills. Ex. turn-taking
