constructivist: multi world speech

Question 1

at what age do most infants acquire the majority of their grammar by?

Answer 1

age 5

Question 2

what does syntax allow?

Answer 2

productivity and understanding between speakers

Question 3

what are multi word combinations?

Answer 3

mainly content words referring to here and now, observes adult word order

Question 4

what are lexical rules?

Answer 4

item specific, based on individua words or schemas

Question 5

what are schemas?

Answer 5

combinations of words

Question 6

how do lexical rules limit word utterances?

Answer 6

limited variety of utterances until infant able to generalise between schemas

Question 7

what are syntactic rules?

Answer 7

abstract, based on grammatical categories

Question 8

what are grammatical categories?

Answer 8

verb + object, subject + verb

Question 9

how do syntactic rules limit word utterances?

Answer 9

rules are not restricted so all utterances are available

Question 10

what is the constructivist approach?

Answer 10

infants start out with a limited set of rules, most language acquisition is context-dependent

Question 11

what is grammar used for?

Answer 11

communication

Question 12

how is language learned according to the constructivist approach?

Answer 12

language is learned using cognitive mechanisms

Question 13

what are the 3 cognitive mechanisms used for language learning?

Answer 13

• communicative intention reading
• drawing analogies
• distributional learning

Question 14

how do routines help infants learn language?

Answer 14

they predict what happens next so can map what language is being used refers to

Question 15

what representations does the constructivist approach say children start of with?

Answer 15

lexically based linguistic representations

Question 16

what happens after children learn lexically based linguistic representations?

Answer 16

gradual generalisation to create more syntactic categories and rules

Question 17

what is tomasello’s (1992) verb island hypothesis?

Answer 17

verbs are acquired in a social context

Question 18

what did tomasello (1992) discover about verbs and subjects?

Answer 18

infants dont always generalise the verb to the subject

Question 19

what did akhtar & tomasello (1997) discover about novel verbs?

Answer 19

infants struggle to explain who does what with novel verbs

Question 20

what are infants’ limited lexical constructions?

Answer 20

early utterances are based around individual words. using slot and frame patterns

Question 21

what is structure combining?

Answer 21

constructions infants learn reflect the frequenct of patterns in input

Question 22

what did lieven et al (2003) discover about structure combining?

Answer 22

infants’ complex utterances are based around repetitions or small changes

Question 23

what ‘operations’ do infants use to change sources into targets?

Answer 23

substitution, addition and dropping

Question 24

how many exact/reduced self-repetitions did children produce in lieven et al’s (2003) study?

Answer 24

63%

Question 25

how many single operation novel utterances did infants produce in lieven et al's (2003) study?

Answer 25

74%

Question 26

how does structure combining explain how children operate language?

Answer 26

infants operate with an extensive inventory of utterances

Question 27

what is semantic analogy?

Answer 27

infants need to learn a large number of verbs before they can recognise the similarities between them

Question 28

what do infants do after they learn a large number of verbs?

Answer 28

they build more general schemas, learn agent-action-patient pattern

Question 29

what did matthews & bannard (2010) discover in their repeated sequences study?

Answer 29

infants make fewer errors when items at the end of the 3 word frame are more similar

Question 30

what do matthews & bannard (2010) say about the importance of overlaps in meaning?

Answer 30

they help children build flexible constructions

Question 31

what is distributed learning?

Answer 31

learning the patterns in language itself

Question 32

what did childers & tomasello (1998) discover about pronouns?

Answer 32

pronouns help infants understand the subject-verb-object pattern for novel verbs

Question 33

what does distributed learning say about early language organisation?

Answer 33

early language is organised around the same categories and rules as adult speakers

Question 34

what does distributed learning say about gradual generalisations?

Answer 34

gradual generalisations are based on similarities in form and meaning