Definitions

Question 1

What are innate factors present in an organism by virtue of its genetic makeup called?

Answer 1

biological capacity

Biological capacity refers to the inherent abilities and traits that an individual is born with.

Question 2

What is one of the names for the speech register used with young children?

Answer 2

child-directed speech (CDS)

CDS is characterized by a higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated intonation.

Question 3

What term describes the purposes for which language is used?

Answer 3

communicative functions

Communicative functions include expressing rejection, making requests, and sharing comments.

Question 4

What are the vowel-like sounds made by infants starting at about 8 weeks of age called?

Answer 4

cooing

Cooing is an important early stage in language development.

Question 5

In Vygotskyian theory, what do adults provide that helps children develop at a faster rate?

Answer 5

format/scaffold

This interaction is crucial for intellectual development.

Question 6

What is the early communicative behavior exhibited by infants and their caregivers, involving eye contact?

Answer 6

gaze-coupling

Gaze-coupling is a foundational aspect of social communication.

Question 7

What is defined as any communicative act that an individual engages in purposefully?

Answer 7

intentional communication

This marks a significant milestone in language development.

Question 8

What is the situation called when two individuals are paying attention to the same thing at the same time?

Answer 8

joint attention

Joint attention is important for social and cognitive development.

Question 9

What concept refers to the notion of causality that appears around the same time as intentional communication?

Answer 9

means-ends concept

This concept suggests that certain cognitive developments are prerequisites for language acquisition.

Question 10

What term describes knowledge about language, including an understanding of words and sounds?

Answer 10

metalinguistic awareness

This awareness is essential for language learning and literacy.

Question 11

What is the term for a newborn?

Answer 11

neonate

Neonates undergo rapid development in the early stages of life.

Question 12

What understanding do infants gain about objects during the later part of the first year?

Answer 12

object permanence

Object permanence is crucial for cognitive development.

Question 13

What are the aspects of the speech stream that convey differences in meaning, such as stress and intonation, called?

Answer 13

prosodic features

Prosodic features play a key role in communication.

Question 14

What is the first stage of Piagetian theory that occurs during the first eighteen months of a child’s life?

Answer 14

sensorimotor stage

In this stage, cognition is primarily through sensory experiences and motor actions.

Question 15

What is assimilation?

Answer 15

The process by which a sound in a word is changed to make it resemble an adjacent or nearby sound

Example: ‘greenbeans’ pronounced as ‘greembeans’.

Question 16

Define auditory discrimination.

Answer 16

The process of hearing accurately the individual sounds of language

For instance, the ability to hear the difference between ‘sat’ and ‘fat’.

Question 17

What is babbling?

Answer 17

Prespeech consisting of relatively long strings of syllables that may be used communicatively or as solo sound-play.

Question 18

What does canonical form refer to?

Answer 18

A sequence of phonological features expressing the properties that a group of highly similar words have in common

Example: CVCV.

Question 19

Explain categorical perception.

Answer 19

Two sounds with the same magnitude of acoustic difference are heard as different sounds if they fall into different phonemic categories.

Question 20

What is high amplitude or non-nutritive sucking (HAS or NNS)?

Answer 20

A technique used to study infant perceptual abilities by recording an infant’s sucking rate as a measure of its attention to various stimuli.

Question 21

Define modulated babble.

Answer 21

Babble with intonation contours resembling those of adult speech

Can be used for communicative purposes despite meaningless sound sequences.

Question 22

What is a progressive phonological idiom?

Answer 22

A word in a child’s vocabulary that is pronounced more accurately than most other words of the same general adult target form.

Question 23

Define protoword.

Answer 23

A sequence of sounds used by a child that has a relatively consistent meaning but is not necessarily based on any adult word.

Question 24

What is reduplicated babbling?

Answer 24

Babbling in which consonant-vowel combinations are repeated, such as ‘bababa’.

Also called repetitive babbling.

Question 25

Explain regression in language development.

Answer 25

A change backward from behavior that is more adult-like to behavior that is a poorer approximation of the adult model.

Question 26

What is variegated babble?

Answer 26

Babbling that includes a variety of sounds, such as 'babideeboo.'

Question 27

What does VOT stand for?

Answer 27

Voice onset time.

Question 28

What does VOT measure?

Answer 28

Describes the point during the production of a speech sound at which vocal cord vibration, or voicing begins.

Question 29

What is semantic development?

Answer 29

The acquisition of words and their many meanings and the development of that knowledge into a complex hierarchical network of associated meanings. ## Footnote This involves understanding how different meanings relate to each other.

Question 30

Define core group in the context of child vocabulary.

Answer 30

A small subset of the vocabulary of a child, used very frequently. ## Footnote This group represents the most commonly used words by the child.

Question 31

What is meant by functional core?

Answer 31

A concept that underlies children's early words, implying that early meanings are based on how objects are used. ## Footnote Labels are later extended to similar objects.

Question 32

What does holophrastic refer to?

Answer 32

Infants' one-word speech that embodies a complete intention. ## Footnote This speech form indicates the child's understanding and intent.

Question 33

What is metalinguistic awareness?

Answer 33

Knowledge about language, including understanding what a word is and consciousness of the sounds of language. ## Footnote It is the ability to think about language.

Question 34

What are operating principles in language learning?

Answer 34

Cognitive strategies that a child might employ in learning language, such as 'pay attention to the ends of words.' ## Footnote These principles guide children's understanding of language.

Question 35

What is overextension in language use?

Answer 35

A child's use of a word in a broader context than is permissible in adult language. ## Footnote For example, an infant may call all men 'daddy'.

Question 36

Define probabilistic concept.

Answer 36

A concept characterized by a variable set of criteria, unlike a classical concept. ## Footnote For instance, 'bird' is a probabilistic concept as no single criterion defines it exclusively.

Question 37

What is a prototype?

Answer 37

An instance of a category that best exemplifies it. ## Footnote For example, a robin is a prototypical member of the category bird.

Question 38

What are semantic features?

Answer 38

Criteria by which a concept is defined and distinguished from other concepts. ## Footnote For instance, + male and + relative are features of the concept brother.

Question 39

Define semantic network.

Answer 39

A word and all of the words that are related to it through various hierarchies of meaning. ## Footnote This network illustrates the connections between different meanings.

Question 40

What does semantic transparency mean?

Answer 40

Obvious meaning, such as in the creation of new words like 'plant man' for 'gardener.' ## Footnote It reflects how children create and understand new terms.

Question 41

What is shape bias?

Answer 41

A constraint on early word learning that leads a child to assume a new word refers to the shape of an object rather than its color, texture, or other properties. ## Footnote This bias influences how children categorize objects.

Question 42

Define underextension.

Answer 42

Use or understanding of a word that does not include its full range, such as assuming 'dog' refers only to collies. ## Footnote This indicates a limited understanding of the term.

Question 43

What is the whole object assumption?

Answer 43

The assumption that a new word refers to a whole object. ## Footnote This is a common assumption made by children when learning new vocabulary.

Question 44

What does the type assumption state?

Answer 44

A new word refers to a type of thing, not just to a particular individual. ## Footnote This helps children generalize their vocabulary.

Question 45

What is the basic level assumption?

Answer 45

A new word refers to types of objects that are alike in basic ways. ## Footnote For example, 'sheep' have elements in common that other animals don’t share.

Question 46

What does the mutual exclusivity assumption entail?

Answer 46

The belief that things should have only one label. ## Footnote This assumption simplifies the learning process for children.

Question 47

What is bootstrapping in language learning?

Answer 47

Process of learning language in which the child uses what he or she knows to decode more mature language. ## Footnote For example, the child may use semantic knowledge to aid in decoding and learning syntax.

Question 48

What does mean length of utterance (MLU) measure?

Answer 48

A measure applied to children's language to evaluate syntactic development; the average length of the child's utterances is calculated in morphemes.

Question 49

What are overregularization errors?

Answer 49

A common tendency among children and second language learners, applying regular grammatical rules to exceptions. ## Footnote Examples include 'hurted' and 'mouses'.

Question 50

What do semantic relations refer to in children's language?

Answer 50

Characterizing the limited set of meanings conveyed by children's early utterances.

Question 51

What is telegraphic speech?

Answer 51

Speech that consists of content words, without function words, much like a telegram.

Question 52

What is universal grammar?

Answer 52

Hypothetical set of restrictions governing the possible forms all human languages may take.

Question 53

classical conditioning.

Answer 53

--A form of learning of receptive skills in which previously neutral stimuli (i.e., words) through repeated pairings with other stimuli come to elicit similar responses

Question 54

Competence

Answer 54

competence--Linguistic term for the knowledge one has of language and all of its linguistic rules and structures.

Question 55

Constructivism

Answer 55

constructivism--In Piaget’s theory, the idea that behaviours or knowledge are neither totally inherited nor learned, but derived from continual, active interaction of innate structures acting upon environmental data, and vice versa.

Question 56

Empiricism

Answer 56

empiricism--A theoretical approach emphasizing observable, environmental explanations of behavior.

Question 57

Functionalism

Answer 57

functionalism--A theoretical approach emphasizing the functions or uses of any behavior (e.g., the function of requesting) rather than the structure of the behavior itself.

Question 58

Logical problem of language acquisition

Answer 58

logical problem of language acquisition—In the linguistic view, without an endowment such as proposed by Universal Grammar, language learning would be impossible because the input data are insufficiently rich to allow acquisition ever to occur, much less to occur so uniformly and so quickly.

Question 59

Nativism

Answer 59

nativism--A theoretical approach emphasizing the innate, possibly genetic contributions to any behavior.

Question 60

Operant conditioning

Answer 60

operant conditioning--Behavioral training of expressive-production skills as a result of reinforcement and punishment.

Question 61

Performance

Answer 61

performance--Linguistic term for the actual use of language.

Question 62

Scaffolding

Answer 62

scaffolding—in the sociocultural view, refers to the role of teachers and others in supporting the learner’s development and providing support structures to get to that next stage or level.

Question 63

Structuralism

Answer 63

structuralism--A theoretical approach emphasizing the organization or structure of a behavior as opposed to its use or function.

Question 64

Zone of proximal development

Answer 64

zone of proximal development—refers to Vygotskian concept of the distance between what a learner can do without help and what he or she can do with help