Language

Question 1

Describe how infants’ reactions to speech change over the 1st year

Answer 1

Few days after birth
- Child prefers recorded speech to instrumental music or rhythmic sound
- Child prefers sound patterns of mother tongue to that of a foreign tongue

Until age of 6 months infants differentiate between phonemse that are NOT important to native language, and then loose this capacity

Question 2

Describe the development of prelinguistic vocalizations

Answer 2

• Cooing (peaks at 3 months)
• Monosyllables (7 months): word consisting of one syllable
• Polysyllables (“babbling”, 9 months)
• Alternating syllables (11 months)
• Protowords - an utternace (13 months)
• Words (14 months)

Question 3

Outline some strategies children use to infer the meaning of words, Tab. 11.2

Answer 3

Constraints (“Default Assumptions”)
1. Object scope: Words refer to whole objects
2. Taxonomic: Words refer to categories rather than single objects
3. Mutual exclusivity: Words refer to non-overlapping categories

4. Syntactical cues: involve word order, rules and patterns of language (grammar), and punctuation

Question 4

Explain what telegraphic speech is, and provide examples of common semantic relations that emerge in this speech

Answer 4

telegraphic speech: Two word sentences (Object + qualifier)

1. Locate or name object (there book)
2. Demand (more milk, give candy)
3. Negate (no wet, no hungry)
4. Indicate possession (my shoe, mama dress)

Question 5

Identify important social environmental contributors to language development

Answer 5

Child directed speech: a little above the level of child’s own speech
- Slow
- High-pitched
- Highly intonated
- Many simple questions and imperatives
- Grammatically simple
- extensions and recast

Question 6

Define “pragmatic competence” in the context of language development

Answer 6

Ability to communicate effectively: achieving goals by using the
appropriate language means

Question 7

Expansions and recast

Answer 7

1. Expansion: Adult interprets child’s utterance and repeats it in grammatically correct and enriched form
2. Recast: Rather than repeating intent of child’s utterance, adult offers a semantically related utterance