week 4 - language acquisition and development

Question 1

Learning language requires what four competencies?

Answer 1

Phonological Development, Semantic Development, Syntactic Development, and Pragmatic Development.

Question 2

What is Phonological Development?

Answer 2

the acquisition of the sound system of the language the child is exposed to.

Question 3

What are Phononems?

Answer 3

The individual elements of sound that make up words.

Question 4

What is prosody?

Answer 4

the particular rhythm, tempo, cadence, melody and intonation pattern used when speaking a language.

Question 5

What is semantic development?

Answer 5

the acquisition of meaning in a language, including lexical development (word learning).

Question 6

What morpheme?

Answer 6

which is the smaller part of a word with meaning.

Question 7

What are morphological rules?

Answer 7

a set of rules that specifies how morphemes combine to form words.

Question 8

What is syntactic development?

Answer 8

the acquisition of the grammar of a language, which includes word order; subject-verb agreement; case marking, etc.

Question 9

What is syntax?

Answer 9

a set of rules that specifies how words can be combined to form sentences.

Question 10

What is pragmatic development?

Answer 10

the acquisition of how a language is used in a particular society. Includes sarcasm, irony, etc.

Question 11

What does language look like in infants?

Answer 11

crying from 0 months, 1-5 months early perception can discriminate between sounds.

Question 12

What is language like from 5 to 8 months?

Answer 12

early sounds and babbling.

Question 13

How many words can babies understand at 10 months old?

Answer 13

about 30.

Question 14

What is language like at 14-16 months?

Answer 14

one word stage, child begins to produce words, has a spoken vocabulary of about 50 words.

Question 15

What is language like at 18-24 months?

Answer 15

Child begins to form 2 word sentences.

Question 16

What is language like at 24 months?

Answer 16

Child has a spoken vocabulary of about 320 words.

Question 17

What is language like at 30 months?

Answer 17

Child has a spoken vocabulary of about 600 words.

Question 18

What is language like from 36 months onward?

Answer 18

Child begins to use grammar, words like “to” “in” etc. sentences.

Question 19

What does language look like at age 5-6?

Answer 19

Child has a vocabulary of about 15,000 words.

Question 20

What size vocabulary do educated adults have?

Answer 20

40-50 thousand words.

Question 21

What is motherese’?

Answer 21

The term used by previous literature to refer to Infant directed talk/speech (IDT/IDS).

Question 22

What are the characteristics of Infant directed talk/speech (IDT/IDS)?

Answer 22

not used in all cultures. Usually an emotional term, warm, higher, slow speech with longer pauses, exaggerated facial expression.

Question 23

What are the advantages of infant directed talk/speech (IDT/IDS)?

Answer 23

it helps to emphasize word and phrase boundaries making it easier for the baby to segment words from the continuous speech.

Question 24

What have the results been for research on IDT/IDS?

Answer 24

infants prefer it, infants are better able to replicate speech when presented this way.

Question 25

What is “marginal babbling”?

Answer 25

squalls, growls and whispers created by 4-6-month-olds.

Question 26

What is silent babbling?

Answer 26

Seen in deaf infants, child’s attempt to imitate adult’s signs.

Question 27

What is fast mapping?

Answer 27

the process of rapidly learning a new word simply from the contrastive use of a familiar and unfamiliar word.

Question 28

What is overextension?

Answer 28

In early language, most children go through a phase of using a single label for many referents, e.g. “dog” for lions, horses, cats. Research suggests this error is only with the word, not the concept the word refers to, (child calls horse dog, but understands a horse is not a dog).

Question 29

Explain the Nativist approach: Chomsky/Pinker.

Answer 29

language is too complex to learn just through experience, therefore must be prewired in baby’s brain. Infants are born with a special “language acquisition device” (LAD) – special neural architecture.

Question 30

Language is a ______________ behaviour and therefore only humans acquire language.

Answer 30

species-specific.

Question 31

To acquire language children need to develop

Answer 31

Phonology, semantics, syntax and pragmatics.

Question 32

At 3 years of age, children rapidly add inflections to many words. This stage of language development is called:

Answer 32

grammatical explosion.

Question 33

Kuhl, Tsao and Liu (2003) research showed that children can learn a language only if they are exposed to language through

Answer 33

interaction with a speaker

Question 34

Chomsky (1957, 1959, 1988) claims that infants are born with a

Answer 34

language acquisition device.