Chapter 8

Question 1

Innate

Answer 1

Determined by factors present from birth.

Question 2

Innateness hypothesis

Answer 2

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

Question 3

Imitation Theory

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Reinforcement Theory

Answer 4

Theory of child language acquisition which 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 5

Active Construction of a Grammar Theory

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Connectionist Theories

Answer 6

Theory of language acquisition which 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 7

Linguistic universals

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 characteristics shared by all natural languages. Also, the name of this set of shared characteristics.

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

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

Question 12

Homesign

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Rules

Answer 13

A formal statement of an observed generalization about patterns in language.

Question 14

Children-directed speech

Answer 14

Speak 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 15

High Amplitude Sucking

Answer 15

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 generates a noise, and infants’ sucking behavior is used to draw conclusions about discrimination abilities.

Question 16

Conditioned Head-Turn Procedure

Answer 16

Experimental technique usually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases: conditioning and testing, During the conditioning phase, the infant learns to associate a change in sound with the activation of visual reinforcers, first presented at the same time and then in succession, 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 in sounds, it suggests that the infant has perceived the change in sound, thereby demonstrating the ability to discriminate between the two sounds involved.

Question 17

Voice onset time

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Articulatory gestures

Answer 18

A movement of a speech organ in the production of speech, for example, the movement of the velum for the production of a nasal consonant.

Question 19

Babble

Answer 19

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 20

Repeated or Canonical babbling

Answer 20

The continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like [mamama] by infants.

Question 21

Variegated babbling

Answer 21

Production of meaningless consonant-vowel sequences by infants.

Question 22

Holophrastic stage

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Telegraphic stage

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Overgeneralization

Answer 24

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

Question 25

Interrogatives

Answer 25

A kind of sentence that expresses a question. In English, interrogative sentences have an auxiliary verb that precedes the subject.

Question 26

Complexive concepts

Answer 26

A term used in the study of child language acquisition. A group of items (abstract or concrete) that a child refers to with a single word for which it is not possible to single out any one unifying property.

Question 27

Overextensions

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Underextensions

Answer 28

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

Question 29

Relational term

Answer 29

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

Question 30

Deictic expressions

Answer 30

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

Question 31

Attention getters

Answer 31

Word or phrase used to initiate an address to children.

Question 32

Attention holders

Answer 32

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

Question 33

Conversational turns

Answer 33

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 on to another speaker.

Question 34

Bilingual

Answer 34

State of commanding two languages; having linguistic competence in two languages.

Question 35

Multilingual

Answer 35

The state of commanding three or more language; having linguistic competence in three or more languages.

Question 36

Simultaneous bilingualism

Answer 36

Bilingualism in which both languages are acquired from infancy.

Question 37

Sequential bilingualism

Answer 37

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

Question 38

Second-language acquisition

Answer 38

Acquisition of a second language as a teenager or adult.

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

Foreign accent

Answer 40

an accent that is marked by the phonology of another language or other languages that are more familiar to the speaker.

Question 41

Fossilization

Answer 41

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