Week 5

Question 1

understanding what others say (or sign or
write)

Answer 1

Language comprehension (receptive):

Question 2

actually speaking (or signing or writing) to others

Answer 2

Language production (productive)

Question 3

Language _______ must come before Language _________

Answer 3

Comprehension, Production

Question 4

The Components of Language

Answer 4

1. Phonological Development (phonemes)
2. Semantic Development (morphemes)
3. Syntactic Development (syntax)
4. Pragmatic Development (how to use)

Question 5

Phonological Development: Speech Sounds

Answer 5

Mastering of a language’s
sound system
-Every language has a distinct
set of phonemes (i.e.,
smallest distinguishable
sound units of a language)
- Newborns’ preference for
the sounds of their native
language

Question 6

smallest distinguishable
sound units of a language

Answer 6

phonemes

Question 7

Newborns’ preference for
the sounds of ___ ______
language

Answer 7

their native

Question 8

Phonological Development: Perceiving the Phonemes

Answer 8

Perceiving speech sounds as
belonging to discrete phonemic
categories (e.g., /p/ and /b/).
* The ability diminishes over the
first year of life:
Infants (most languages) >
adults (only native language).
* Perceptual narrowing

Question 9

Identifying the Phonemes. Statistical learning:

Answer 9

Infants’ ability to
perceive and learn regularities in language,
such as which speech sounds make up
words.

 8-month-old: 2 minutes
 Test:
tokibu (old)
latipo (new)
Novelty preference: awareness of statistical
likelihoods of syllable co-occurrence

Question 10

Phonological Development: Producing Sounds

Answer 10

Crying (newborns): “all cries are not equal”

 Cooing (~2‐3 months): vowel‐like sounds
“oooohs”; “aaaaahs”.

 Babbling/canonical syllables (~6‐7 months):
syllables: consonant‐vowel combinations
(“mamama”; “papapa”)

 Conventional “words” / vocables (~12 months):
unique pattern of sounds for objects/events.

 2‐3‐year‐olds: trouble pronouncing specific
words (e.g., “pasghetti”)

Question 11

Semantic Development: Receptive Language

Answer 11

Receptive Language: the
ability to understand
language and the meaning of
words and phrases
 Intermodal preferential
looking paradigm

Question 12

the ability to understand
language and the meaning of
words and phrases

Answer 12

Receptive Language

Intermodal preferential
looking paradigm:
* 6-month: understand first noun (common objects, people)
* 10-13-month: understand non-nouns (e.g., verbs)

Question 13

using a single word to express a complete thought:_____

Answer 13

Holophrastic language

12‐month: First word, largely nouns/names
(Mandler, 2006; Bornstein et al., 2004)
* 18‐24‐month: Vocabulary spurt / Naming
explosion:
* Common Errors:
– Overextension
– Underextension

Question 14

Different Language Backgrounds

Answer 14

First Words:
– Children who speak
different languages,
first words tend to
be simple nouns
referring to objects

Children from different language backgrounds show
similar rates of growth in early vocabularies

Question 15

Semantic Development: Fast Mapping

Answer 15

Rapidly learning a new word simply from the
contrastive use of a familiar and unfamiliar word
(incidental exposures).
– Even 2‐year‐olds can learn new words
through fast mapping (Heibeck & Markman, 1987;
Markson, 1999

Question 16

Syntactic
Bootstrapping

Answer 16

The duck is gorping the bunny (even when a word is complete giberish, we and infants can tell object words from action words?)

Question 17

simple 2‐word sentences (e.g., “Daddy cook” “Mommy shoe”)

Answer 17

Telegraphic speech

18‐24 month: multi‐word utterances

Question 18

Caregiver‐infant give‐and‐take
dialogue, including words, sounds,
and gestures well‐timed and
responsive to each other (a music
duet： co‐creating a melody)

Answer 18

Proto‐conversations

Question 19

Infants use ________ that
signal the speaker’s
attention and intention to
learn new words
– Gestures (e.g., pointing)
– Eye gaze

Answer 19

social cues

Question 20

use of the adult as a means to a desired object through gestures

Answer 20

Protoimperatives

Question 21

“use of an object as the means to obtaining adult attention

Answer 21

Protodeclaratives

Question 22

a child acquiring language is facing the prob- lem of the INDETERMINENCY of translation when trying to. understand the meaning of a novel word.

Answer 22

Gavagai problem ( Willard V.O. Quine, 1960)

Question 23

Human brains are ________ to acquire
language (modularity hypothesis

Answer 23

“prewired”

Noam Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
* Dan Slobin’s Language-Making Capacity (LMC)

Question 24

Cognitive Bias (fundamental assumptions)

Answer 24

Whole-object assumption: a novel word will refer to a
whole object, not a part.
* Mutual exclusivity assumption: a given entity only has one
name. (e.g., “where is the blicket”?, Markman, 1992)

Question 25

Deaf children with
limited exposure to
sign language acquire
language milestones
at roughly the __________ as hearing
children

Answer 25

Same-time

Question 26

What Is Required for
Language Acquisition?

Answer 26

A Human Brain
 Species-specific and species-universal
 Brain-language
 Critical period
 A Human Environment
◦ Infant-directed talk

Question 27

Brain-language relation

Answer 27

Left hemisphere specialization

Broca’s area (speech production)

◦ Wernicke’s area (speech comprehension)

Question 28

The critical-
period hypothesis

Answer 28

Early deprivation (e.g., Genie)
 Brain damage at different ages
 Bilingual with different
exposure onset ages

Question 29

the distinctive mode of speech that
adults adopt when talking to babies and very young children.

Answer 29

Infant-directed talk (IDT):

Characteristics:
* Emotional tone (warm and affectionate)
* Exaggeration: high pitch, extreme intonation, and
slower speech; accompanied by exaggerated facial
expressions
Infants prefer IDT to speech directed to adults