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WEEK 1- THEORY AND METHODS Flashcards

1
Q

what does the first group of theoretical approaches to child language acquisition include?

A

nativist, generativist, and universal grammar approach

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2
Q

what does the second group of theoretical approaches to child language acquisition include?

A

constructivist, emergentist, socio pragmatic, functionalist and usage based approach

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3
Q

what does a theoretical approach that is nativist assume?

A

some important aspects of children’s linguistic knowledge are not acquired but innate

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4
Q

what does a theoretical approach that is generativist assume?

A

children’s knowledge of grammar consists of knowledge of formal rules

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5
Q

what is a syntactic operation?

A

the order of words ie verb then a noun

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6
Q

what is a morphological operation?

A

the process by which the past tense ed inflectional morpheme is added to a regular English verb

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7
Q

approaches that are termed nativist or generativist are also termed what?

A

universal grammar approaches (a general grammar that applies to all the world’s languages)

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8
Q

most constructivist approaches are what based approaches?

A

input based approaches

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9
Q

in a constructivist approach what do the categories and procedures for sentence formation emerge from?

A

the generalizations that children form

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10
Q

what does a theoretical proposal that is functional or usage base assume?

A

children’s language is driven by their desire to use language to perform communicative functions and to understand the utterances of others

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11
Q

what evidence is there for a functional or usage based explanation?

A

children produce more sentences beginnning with I and You

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12
Q

what does an emergentist theory refer to?

A

children’s grammar emerges from their use of language in this way

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13
Q

what does a theoretical proposal that is socio-pragmatic assume?

A

that social-pragmatic inferences are crucial to a child language learning (ie pointing to a object whilst saying the name of the object)

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14
Q

what is required to infer children’s knowledge of language?

A

methodologies

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15
Q

what is the defining characteristic of human language?

A

it allows speakers to produce entirely new utterances

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16
Q

what must speakers be in possession of in order to porduce entirely new utterances?

A

grammar

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17
Q

what was the early non generativist view proposed b skinner 1957?

A

early language consists of a set of words and sentences that paired with their meaning

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18
Q

by what process did skinner argue that children learned language?

A

selective reinforcement by parents or care givers

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19
Q

who argued against skinners account?

A

Chomsky 1959

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20
Q

What was Chomsky’s opposing argument to Skinner?

A

if language was learned by selective reinforcement then children would not be able to produce sentences they have never heard before

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21
Q

what theory did Chomsky 1959 propose?

A

generative- speakers must possess a system or set of rules that is generative so new sentences can be formed

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22
Q

what is an abstract rule?

A

when a rule is formulated in terms of categories

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23
Q

what is a concrete rule?

A

a rule that is formulated in terms of individual items

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24
Q

what is a determiner?

A

The or a

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25
what does the determiner come before?
a noun phrase
26
what are DETERMINER and NOUN both examples of?
syntactic (or grammatical) categories
27
what is phrase structure grammar?
the rules for combining words to form utterances make reference not only to the syntactic categories but also to phrases ie determiner and then a noun phrase rather than determiner then just a noun
28
what are other example of syntactic categories?
verb, adjective and preposition
29
what is the lexicon
the mental dictionary
30
what are categories such as noun phrase, verb phrase and determiner phrase termed?
the head
31
what is a transitive verb?
a verb which accepts one or more objects
32
what do transitive verbs require
an object (eg kicked requires the knowledge of what they kicked)
33
what is an intransitive verb?
verbs that do not require an object such as dance
34
what phrases cannot only include one head?
those which contain transitive verbs
35
what is a complement?
when a phrase contains a transitive verb the complement is the one receiving the action
36
what do the head and it's complement combine to form?
V' (pronounced v-bar)
37
what is recursion?
recursion allows speakers to generate infinitely long utterances ie when one v bar is combined with another v bar
38
what is the theory about heads and coplements?
all language will place heads either before or after their complements
39
what do all sentences start out as?
VP's or verb phrases
40
verb phrases contains not only a v bar but also a what?
a specifier position- that houses the sentence subject
41
what is the assumption that every two bar phrase consists of?
a specifier position and a single bar phrase
42
what are examples of lexical categories?
noun, verb, adjective ect
43
what are words that belong to lexical categories known as?
content words
44
what are function words?
words that perform some grammatical function e.g determiners
45
what are examples of quantifiers?
most, many, every
46
what are negation markers?
not ect
47
what is an example of a comlimentizer?
that
48
what are examples of inflection?
is was has had
49
what are examples of inflectional morphemes?
past tense - ed and - s
50
what do sentences 'start out' as
VP's
51
what are rules for combining words into phrases and sentences called
synatax
52
What is morpholoy
rules for grammar
53
what is the term for the process by which words are marked using morphology
inflection
54
what is -ed an example of
inflectional morpheme
55
what is an auxillary
is was has will do
56
what do some modern generativist theories split inflection into
two categories- TENSE and AGREEMENT
57
when is a complemntizer phrase used?
when there are two clauses each expressing one idea or proposition- e.g BILL SAID that JOHN KISSED SUE
58
what aspect of a speakers knowledge do we capture by assuming every sentence has a CP?
the ability to perform movement operations
59
under a generativist analysis how are yes/no questions formed from the corresponding statement and what is the process known as?
by movement of the auxillary ie bill is kissing sue goes to is bill kissing sue? known as subject-auxillary inversion
60
what is the first step of sentence formation in a generativist approach?
selection of appropriate verb from the lexicon (mental dictionary)
61
why do generativist theories suggest child language acqusition is innate?
because there are an infinite possible number of rules and no way of knowing which is the correct one- there can never be enough input data to rule out any other rules no matter how much language the child hears
62
what does the extended projection principle state?
every sentence must have a subject
63
what is theta criterion?
for every semantic role there must be a syntactic role
64
what did Skinner say language was?
a set of words and phrases we have stored ie when you want a biscuit you use the set phrase 'can I have a biscuit please?'
65
what did Chomsky say language was?
being able to generate novel sentences/ judge novel sentences or utterance
66
what evidence did Chomsky give to say that language is not just a set of stored phrases?
said that you can tell if a new sentence that you have never heard before is gramatically correct
67
what account did Skinner agree with?
Constructivist- children must learn all language and rules from scratch
68
what account did Chomsky agree with?
Generativist
69
what did Chomsky say rules of adult knowledge of language were based on? language
phrases
70
what is the structure of a tree made up of?
the item we are looking at with the branches to show what it is made up of. e.g sentence (S) branches off to NP (noun phrase) and Verb Phrase (VP)
71
what are the two rules for a basic sentence?
sentence contains a noun phrase and then a verb phrase and then within this verb phrase contains a verb and a noun phrase
72
what is the order of sentence formation?
start with a verb than a subject is added and then and an object
73
what does the verb select?
the Arguments it needs to make a sentence
74
what are the rules of transitive and non transitive verbs?
transitive verbs require an object whereas non transitive don't ie kicked must have an object but not laugh (ie laughing doesn't have to be DONE to anyone)
75
what are transitive verbs?
a verb with two arguments eg kick
76
what are non transitive verbs?
a verb with one argument eg laugh
77
what are passives and questions generated by?
by movement e.g the boy is kicking the girl- a question is formed by the movement of the auxillary 'is' to the beginning of the sentence to make 'is the boy kicking the girl?'
78
how can we show on paper what has been moved when a question sentence is formed?
by adding footnote 'j' after the word moved and adding tj in place of the moved word e.g Isj the boy tj kicking the girl
79
what is inflection?
addition of morphemes onto words to mark ie adding s to play to make plays
80
what can marks on a word show
who is doing the action
81
what is innate in generativism categories?
lexical categories e/g verb/nouns, knowledge of how lexical categories combine into phrases, movement rules for forming passives/ questions, movement rules for inflection
82
what is the parameter setting in generativist accounts?
it states that there is an order of element in phrases dpending on which language is being used. ie V is head first of the VP in English but head- final in Turkish
83
why cant the parameter setting apply to universal grammar?
because the order is different for different languages- UG says the mental lexicon contains the rules and then switches depending on the language
84
what is the poverty of the stimulus argument?
child cannot learn rules simply from hearing sentences generated by them because there are too many possible different rules
85
what is a construction?
a pairing of a form and a function
86
could a child know how to say plays but not playing under the generativist account?
no because they have either learned the rule for inflection morphemes or they havent' cannot know one or the other
87
in the constructivist account what is a frame?
some elements are concrete- not all elements of a construction are abstract 'slots'
88
what is the concept of a slot and frame pattern?
they have a frame and then the child can put anything in there e.g im loving it can be used to say im kicking it
89
under a constructivist account the abstract what based rather than the adult like syntactic slots?
sematically based- under a generativist account they would be able to say im kicking it but also sue is kicking it but not in construvtivist because this would mean they werent using the slot and frame process
90
under a constructivist approach children's earliest utterances may be what?
frozen phrases or rote learned chunks such as i dunno
91
what are examples of naturalistic data studies?
recording spontaneous speech,diary, caregiver checklist
92
what are examples of experimental production studies?
elicited production, repetition, syntactic priming, weird word order
93
what are examples of comprehension studies?
act out, preferential looking, pointing, conditioned head turn preference, habituation, high amplitude sucking
94
what are examples or judgement studies
yes/ no or truth value judgements, gramatically judgements
95
what are the pros of using audio recordings?
reaonsably naturalistic, data can be used to address many different questions
96
what are the cons of using audio recordings?
time consuming to transcribe so data often too thin and can under/over estimate productivity
97
what are the pros of using caregiver checklists?
quick easy cheap and quite reliable
98
what are the cons of caregiver checklists?
not enough detail for specific technical predictions, noun bias in reporting
99
what are the pros of using elicited production?
can be used to look at children's knowledge of structures that they may not often produce spontaneously. novel verb studies also good for investigating abstract knowledge
100
what are the cons of elicited production?
somewhat artificial and difficult- may underestimate knowledge. some complex structures will be avoided whatever the experimenter does
101
what are the pros of repetition/ elicited imitation?
can look at complex structures that its very hard to get children to produce and can control exactly hwat they are trying to say
102
what are the cons of repetition/ elicited imitation?
at some age, children will be able to parrot even ifthey dont understand the sentence- so doesnt necessarily provide evidence of grammatical knowledge
103
what happens during the act method?
experimenter teaches child a novel action with a novel verb then asks them to perform the action- if child enacts the correct scene this is evidence for abstract knowledge of SVO order
104
what are the pros of the act out method?
easier than production studies and so can be used with younger children
105
what are the cons of act out method?
still surprisingly difficult for young children
106
what are the pros of the preferential looking method?
easy for child
107
what are the cons of the preferential looking method?
may not look longer to matching screen
108
what are the pros of the conditioned head turn procedure?
can be used with very young children
109
what are the cons of conditioned head turn preference procedure?
can only really be used to investigate phonological knowledge (not words or syntax) too boring for older adults or children

PSYCH337 (5 decks)

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