Chapter 11: Language

Question 1

psycholinguists

Answer 1

those who study the structure and development of children’s language.

Question 1

vocables

Answer 1

unique patterns of sound that a prelinguistic infant uses to represent objects, actions, or events.

Question 2

phonology

Answer 2

the sound system of a language and the rules for combining these sounds to produce meaningful units of speech.

Question 3

phonemes

Answer 3

the basic units of sound that are used in a spoken language

Question 4

morphology

Answer 4

the rules governing the formation of meaningful words from sounds.

Question 5

semantics

Answer 5

the expressed meaning of words and sentences.

Question 6

morphemes

Answer 6

smallest meaningful language units.

Question 7

free morphemes

Answer 7

morphemes that can stand alone as a word (e.g., cat, go, yellow).

Question 8

bound morphemes

Answer 8

morphemes that cannot stand alone but that modify the meaning of free morphemes (e.g., the -ed attached to English verbs to indicate past tense).

Question 9

syntax

Answer 9

the structure of a language; the rules specifying how words and grammatical markers are to be combined to produce meaningful sentences.

Question 10

pragmatics

Answer 10

principles that underlie the effective and appropriate use of language in social contexts.

Question 11

sociolinguistic knowledge

Answer 11

culturally specific rules specifying how language should be structured and used in particular social contexts.

Question 12

linguistic universal

Answer 12

an aspect of language development that all children share.

Question 13

language acquisition device (LAD)

Answer 13

Chomsky’s term for the innate knowledge of grammar that humans were said to possess, which might enable young children to infer the rules governing others’ speech and to use these rules to produce language.

Question 14

language-making capacity (LMC)

Answer 14

hypothesized set of specialized linguistic processing skills that enable children to analyze speech and to detect phonological, semantic, and syntactical relationships.

Question 15

Broca’s and Wernicke’s area

Answer 15

Broca’s area:
structure located in the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex that controls language production.

Wernicke’s area:
structure located in the temporal lobe of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex that is responsible for interpreting speech.

Question 16

sensitive-period hypothesis (of language acquisition)

Answer 16

the notion that human beings are most proficient at language learning before they reach puberty.

Question 17

interactionist theory

Answer 17

the notion that biological factors and environmental influences interact to determine the course of language development.

Question 18

child-directed speech, or motherese

Answer 18

the short, simple, high-pitched (and often repetitive) sentences that adults use when talking with young children.

Question 19

expansions

Answer 19

responding to a child’s ungrammatical utterance with a grammatically improved form of that statement.

Question 20

recasts

Answer 20

responding to a child’s ungrammatical utterance with a nonrepetitive statement that is grammatically correct.

Question 21

prelinguistic phase

Answer 21

the period before children utter their first meaningful words.

Question 22

canonical babbles

Answer 22

vowel–consonant combinations that infants begin to produce at about 6 to 9 months of age.

Question 23

receptive language

Answer 23

that which the individual comprehends when listening to others’ speech.

Question 24

productive language

Answer 24

that which the individual is capable of expressing (producing) in his or her own speech.

Question 25

holophrastic period

Answer 25

the period when the child’s speech consists of one-word utterances, some of which are thought to be holophrases.

Question 26

holophrase

Answer 26

a single-word utterance that represents an entire sentence’s worth of meaning.

Question 27

multimodal motherese

Answer 27

an older companion’s use of information that is exaggerated and synchronized across two or more senses to call an infant’s attention to the referent of a spoken word.

Question 28

referential style

Answer 28

an early linguistic style in which toddlers use language mainly to label objects.

Question 29

expressive style

Answer 29

an early linguistic style in which toddlers use language mainly to call attention to their own and others’ feelings and to regulate social interactions.

Question 30

fast-mapping

Answer 30

process of linking a word with its referent after hearing the word once or twice.

Question 31

overextension

Answer 31

the young child’s tendency to use relatively specific words to refer to a broader set of objects, actions, or events than adults do (e.g., using car to refer to all motor vehicles).

Question 32

underextension

Answer 32

the young child’s tendency to use general words to refer to a smaller set of objects, actions, or events than adults do (e.g., using candy to refer only to mints).

Question 33

processing constraints

Answer 33

cognitive biases or tendencies that lead infants and toddlers to favour certain interpretations of the meaning of new words over other interpretations.

Question 34

object scope constraint

Answer 34

the notion that young children assume that a new word applied to an object refers to the whole object rather than to parts of the object or to object attributes (e.g., its colour).

Question 35

mutual exclusivity constraint

Answer 35

the notion that young children assume that each object has only one label and that different words refer to separate and not overlapping categories.

Question 36

lexical contrast constraint

Answer 36

the notion that young children make inferences about word meanings by contrasting new words with words they already know.

Question 37

synthetical bootstrapping

Answer 37

the notion that young children make inferences about the meaning of words by analyzing the way words are used in sentences and inferring whether they refer to objects (nouns), actions (verbs), or attributes (adjectives).

Question 38

telegraphic speech

Answer 38

early sentences that consist of content words and omit the less meaningful parts of speech, such as articles, prepositions, pronouns, and auxiliary verbs.

Question 39

grammatical morphemes

Answer 39

prefixes, suffixes, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs that modify the meaning of words and sentences.

Question 40

overregularization

Answer 40

the overgeneralization of grammatical rules to irregular cases where the rules do not apply (e.g., saying mouses rather than mice).

Question 41

transformational grammar

Answer 41

rules of syntax that allow us to transform declarative statements into questions, negatives, imperatives, and other kinds of sentences.

Question 42

referential communication skills

Answer 42

abilities to generate clear verbal messages, recognize when others’ messages are unclear, and clarify any unclear messages one transmits or receives.

Question 43

morphological knowledge

Answer 43

knowledge of the meaning of morphemes that make up words.

Question 44

metalinguistic awareness

Answer 44

a knowledge of language and its properties; an understanding that language can be used for purposes other than communication.