Vocabulary 8 - Language Acquisition

Question 1

homesign gestures

Answer 1

communicative gestures that are invented by deaf children and the people with whom they routinely interact in cases where a signed language is not made available

Question 2

innateness hypothesis

Answer 2

hypothesis that humans are generally predisposed to learn and use language

Question 3

Imitation Theory

Answer 3

claims that children learn language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear

Question 4

Reinforcement Theory

Answer 4

asserts 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 wrong forms.

Question 5

Active Construction of a Grammar Theory

Answer 5

holds that children actually invent the rules of grammar themselves

Question 6

Connectionist Theories

Answer 6

assume that children learn language by creating neural connections in the brain

Question 7

Social Interaction Theory

Answer 7

assumes that children acquire language through social interaction, with other children and adults in particular

Question 8

linguistic universals

Answer 8

property believed to be held in common by all natural languages

Question 9

transfer

Answer 9

the influence of one’s native language on the learning of subsequent languages (which can facilitate or inhibit the learning of the second language)

Question 10

fossilization

Answer 10

process through which forms from a speaker’s non-native language usage become fixed and do not change, even after years of instruction

Question 11

foreign accent

Answer 11

an accent that is marked by the phonology of another language or other languages that are more familiar to the speaker

Question 12

second-language acquisition

Answer 12

acquisition of a second language as a teenage or adult (critical period)

Question 13

language mixing

Answer 13

using words or structural elements from more than one language within the same conversation (or even within a single sentence or phrase)

Question 14

What is the difference between simultaneous bilingualism and sequential bilingualism?

Answer 14

one is learned at infancy whereas the other is learned as a young child

Question 15

bilingual

Answer 15

state of commanding two languages; having linguistic competence in two languages; in machine translation, a system that can translate between only one language pair

Question 16

multilingual

Answer 16

state of commanding three or more languages; having linguistic competence in three or more languages; in machine translation, a system that can translate between more than two languages

Question 17

How do adults talk to children?

Answer 17

Slow down, use short simple sentences, use a higher pitch of voice, and repeat themselves

Question 18

conversational turns

Answer 18

contribution to a conversation made by one speaker from the time that she takes the floor from another speaker to the time that she passes the floor on to another speaker

Question 19

attention holders

Answer 19

tactic used to maintain children’s attention for extended amounts of time

Question 20

attention getters

Answer 20

word or phrase used to initiate an address to children

Question 21

child-directed speech

Answer 21

speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants. In many Western societies, this speech is slow and high-pitched and has many repetitions, simplified syntax, exaggerated intonation, and a simple and concrete vocabulary

Question 22

deictic expressions

Answer 22

word or expression that takes its meaning relative to the time, place, and speaker of the utterance

Question 23

relational term

Answer 23

type of relationship between adjective and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to the noun reference

Question 24

underextension

Answer 24

application of a word to a smaller set of objects than is appropriate for mature adult speech of the usual definition of the word

Question 25

overextension

Answer 25

relationship between child and adult perception of a word meaning: the child’s application of a given word has a wider range than the application of the same word in adult language

Question 26

complexive concept

Answer 26

term used in the study of child language acquisition. group of items that a child refers to with a single word for which it is not possible to single out any one unifying property

Question 27

overgeneralization

Answer 27

in the study of child language acquisition, a relationship between child and adult application of rules relative to certain contexts: a process in which children extend the application of linguistic rules to contexts beyond those in the adult language

Question 28

telegraphic stage

Answer 28

phase in which children use utterances composed primarily of content words

Question 29

holophrastic stage

Answer 29

holophrase being a one-word sentence

Question 30

holophrase

Answer 30

one word sentence

Question 31

variegated babbling

Answer 31

production of meaningless consonant-vowel sequence by infants

Question 32

repeated babbling

Answer 32

continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants by infants

Question 33

Repeated babbling can also be called what?

Answer 33

canonical babbling

Question 34

babble

Answer 34

phrase during which the child produces meaningless sequences of consonants and vowels; generally begins around the age of six months

Question 35

articulatory gestures

Answer 35

movement of a speech organ in the production of speech

Question 36

voice onset time

Answer 36

length of time between the release of a consonant and the onset of voicing, that is, when the vocal folds start vibrating

Question 37

conditioned head-turn procedure

Answer 37

experimental technique usually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases: conditioning and testing

Question 38

high amplitude sucking

Answer 38

experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months. Infants are given a special pacifies that is connected to a sound-generating system; each suck on the pacifier generates a noise, and infants’ sucking behavior is used to draw conclusions about discrimination abilities

Question 39

telegraphic utterances

Answer 39

utterances containing primarily content words

Question 40

Out of all the theories, which is the most influential theory of language?

Answer 40

Active Construction of a Grammar Theory