Vocabulary File 8.0

Question 1

Innateness Hypothesis

Answer 1

A hypothesis that humans are genetically predisposed to learn and use language.

Question 2

Imitation Theory

Answer 2

Theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear.

Question 3

Reinforcement Theory

Answer 3

Theory of language acquisition that 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 4

Active Construction of a Grammar Theory

Answer 4

Theory of language acquisition that says that children acquire a language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them.

Question 5

Connectionist Theory

Answer 5

Theory of language acquisition that claims that children learn language through neural connections in the brain. A child develops such connections through exposure to language and by using language.

Question 6

Social Interaction Theory

Answer 6

Theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language through social interaction- in particular with older children and adults- and prompt their caregivers to supply them with the appropriate language experience they need.

Question 7

Linguistic Universal

Answer 7

Property believed to be held in common by all natural languages.

Question 8

Universal Grammar

Answer 8

The theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristic shared by all natural languages.

Question 9

Critical Period

Answer 9

Age span, usually described as lasting from birth to the onset of puberty, during which children must have exposure to language and must build the critical brain structures necessary in order to gain native speaker competence in a language.

Question 10

Neglected Children

Answer 10

A child who is neglected by caretakers, often resulting in significantly lower exposure to language as a child.

Question 11

Feral Children

Answer 11

A child who grew up in the wild without care by human adults, often with animals.

Question 12

Homesign

Answer 12

A rudimentary visual-gesture communication system (not a language) that is developed and used by deaf children and their families when is signed language is not made available for their communication.

Question 13

Child-directed speech

Answer 13

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

Question 14

High Amplitude Sucking (HAS)

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Conditioned Head-Turn Procedure (HT)

Answer 15

Experimental technique usually use with infants between 5 and 18 months with two phases: conditioning & testing. During the conditioning phase, the infant who learns to associate a change and sound with the activation of visual reinforcers, first presented at the same time and then into session, such that the infant begins to anticipate the appearance of the visual reinforcers and look at them before they are activated. During the testing phase, when the infant looks to the visual reinforcers immediately after a change and sound, it suggests that the infant has perceive the change and sound, thereby demonstrating the ability to discriminate between the two sounds involved.

Question 16

Voice onset time (VOT)

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Articulatory Gestures

Answer 17

The movement of a speech organ in the production of speech, for example, the movement of the vellum for the production of a nasal consonant.

Question 18

Babbling

Answer 18

A phase in child language acquisition during which the child produces meaningless sequences of consonants and vowels. Generally begins around the age of six months.

Question 19

Canonical Babbling

Answer 19

Continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like “mamama” by infants, also called repeated babbling.

Question 20

Variegated Babbling

Answer 20

Production of meaningless consonant-vowel sequences by infants.

Question 21

Holophrastic Stage also known as One-Word Stage

Answer 21

Stage in first-language acquisition during which children can produce only one word at a time.

Question 22

Telegraphic Stage

Answer 22

A phase during child language acquisition in which children use utterances composed primarily of content words.

Question 23

Overgeneralization

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Complexive Concept

Answer 24

.

Question 25

Overextension

Answer 25

In the study of language acquisition, a relationship between a child and adult perception of word meaning; the child’s application of a given word has a wider range then the application of the same word in adult language.

Question 26

Underextension

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Relational Term

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Deictic Expression

Answer 28

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

Question 29

Infant-directed speech

Answer 29

Speech directed at an infant or child. Modification of speech by an adult when speaking to a child.

Question 30

Attention Getters

Answer 30

Word or phrase used to initiate an address to children.

Question 31

Attention Holders

Answer 31

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

Question 32

Conversational Turns

Answer 32

The 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 onto another speaker.

Question 33

Simultaneous Bilingualism

Answer 33

Bilingualism in which both languages are acquired from infancy.

Question 34

Sequential Bilingualism

Answer 34

Bilingualism in which the second language is acquired as a young child.

Question 35

Second-language Acquisition

Answer 35

Acquisition of a second language as a teenager or adult (after the critical period).

Question 36

Multilingual

Answer 36

Speaker of more than two languages.

Question 37

Bilingual

Answer 37

Speaker of two languages.

Question 38

Monolingual

Answer 38

Speaker of one language.

Question 39

Code-Switching

Answer 39

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

Question 40

Fossilization

Answer 40

Process through which forms from a speakers non-native language usage become fixed (generally in a way that would be considered ungrammatical by native speaker) and do not change, even after years of instruction.