Vocab List - 11/22/2020

Question 1

universal grammar

Answer 1

set of structural characteristics shared by all languages

Question 2

language acquisition

Answer 2

the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate

Question 3

phonetics

Answer 3

sounds of a language

Question 4

phonology

Answer 4

sound patterns of a language

Question 5

morphology

Answer 5

rules of word-formation

Question 6

syntax

Answer 6

how words combine into phrases/sentences

Question 7

semantics

Answer 7

how to derive meaning from a sentence

Question 8

pragmatics

Answer 8

how to properly use language in context

Question 9

lexical items

Answer 9

words, morphemes, idioms, etc.

Question 10

innateness hypothesis

Answer 10

an expression coined by Hilary Putnam to refer to a linguistic theory of language acquisition which holds that at least some knowledge about language exists in humans at birth.

Question 11

active construction of a grammar theory

Answer 11

the theory that children invent the rules of grammar themselves and that this ability is innate

Question 12

connectivist theory

Answer 12

theory that claims that exposure to language develops and strengthens neural connections

Question 13

critical period hypothesis

Answer 13

there is a critical period in development during which a language can be acquired like a native speaker and after this period it is impossible to acquire a language as a native speaker

Question 14

stages of development

Answer 14

three broad stages of development are early childhood, middle childhood and adolescence organized by primary tasks of development in each stage

Question 15

prelinguistic stage

Answer 15

stage when babies begin making noise but not yet babbling, sensitive to both native and non-native sound distinctions

Question 16

babbling stage

Answer 16

starts at about 6 months of age, not linked to biological needs and pitch and intonation resembles language spoken around them

Question 17

one-word stage of development

Answer 17

begins around age 1, one-word sentences, 1-syllable words with CV structure

Question 18

two-word stage of development

Answer 18

starts at about 1.5/2 years of age, about 50 words acquired, sentences consist of two words, lack function words and inflectional morphology

Question 19

explicit instruction

Answer 19

a term that summarises a type of teaching in which lessons are designed and delivered to novices to help them develop readily-available background knowledge on a particular topic

Question 20

ASL (American Sign Language)

Answer 20

a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States and most of Anglophone Canada.

Question 21

NSL (Nicaraguan Sign Language)

Answer 21

sign language that was largely spontaneously developed by deaf children in a number of schools in Nicaragua in the 1980s

Question 22

spoken language

Answer 22

a language produced by articulate sounds, as opposed to a written language

Question 23

reinforcement theory

Answer 23

theory of child language acquisition which says that children learn to speak like adults because they are praised, rewarded, or otherwise reinforced when they use the right forms and are corrected when they use the wrong ones.

Question 24

utterance

Answer 24

an utterance is the smallest unit of speech

Question 25

working grammar

Answer 25

the idea of the grammar that children have which is grammar that is innately built

Question 26

nativist theory

Answer 26

children are born with an innate propensity for language acquisition

Question 27

language acquisition device

Answer 27

a purported instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language

Question 28

linguistic competence

Answer 28

the child’s grammar, linguistic input and construction of the grammatical structures

Question 29

performance

Answer 29

the nature of the child’s rule system- psychological processes the child uses in learning the language and how the child established meaning in the language input

Question 30

economy of derivation

Answer 30

a principle stating that movements only occur in order to match interpretable features with uninterpretable features

Question 31

economy of representation

Answer 31

the principle that grammatical structures must exist for a purpose

Question 32

transformation

Answer 32

a rule that takes an input called the deep structure and changes it in some restricted way to result in a surface structure

Question 33

motherese theory

Answer 33

a theory that mothers have a special way of talking to their young children that fosters language development