development of language and signal use

Question 1

purpose of language

Answer 1

communication! – semantics and pragmatics

Question 2

what is language?

Answer 2

symbols + rules

Question 3

symbols

Answer 3

systems for representing our thoughts, feelings, and knowledge, and for communicating them to othersa

Question 4

when do children master the basic structure of their language?

Answer 4

around age 5

Question 5

comprehension

Answer 5

understanding of what others say/sign/write

Question 6

production

Answer 6

process of speaking/signing/writing

Question 7

generative

Answer 7

using a finite set of words to generate an infinite number of sentences

Question 8

phonemes

Answer 8

smallest units of a meaningful word (sounds)
English uses 45/200 worldwide

Question 9

morphemes

Answer 9

the smallest units of meaning in language
ex. dogs - 2

Question 10

syntax

Answer 10

rules specifying how words from different categories can be combined

Question 11

pragmatics

Answer 11

knowledge about how a language us used (context)

Question 12

what is required to learn language?

Answer 12

• a human brain (other animals cannot acquire language like humans)
• a human environment - exposure to others using language (those deprived of this environment do not learn language to the same degree)

Question 13

brain-language lateralization

Answer 13

90% of right handers language represented in the left hemisphere

Question 14

language acquisition sensitive period

Answer 14

ends somewhere between 5-puberty

Question 15

bilingualism

Answer 15

fluency in two languages
- does not cause language/developmental delay
- can begin in the womb

Question 16

language mixing

Answer 16

when children learning two or more languages mix certain vocab, grammar, etc.

Question 17

infant-directed speech

Answer 17

distinctive mode of speech used when speaking to infants/toddlers, pitch variability, slower speech, more word repetition and questions

Question 18

receptive language

Answer 18

comprehension

Question 19

expressive language

Answer 19

production

Question 20

vocabulary burst

Answer 20

latter half of second year, burst from knowing 100s of words to 1000s

Question 21

nominal insight

Answer 21

realization that objects have names

Question 22

when do children lose the ability to discriminate between all language sounds?

Answer 22

10-12 months

Question 23

what are the language learning stages?

Answer 23

pre-stage: producing sounds (3 months)
1. babbling (6-8 months)
2. first words (10-15 months) – holophrastic (12-15 months)
3. vocabulary burst (18-19 months)
4. telegraphic (24 months)
5. word sentences (30 months)
additional grammatical morphemes (about 3 years)

Question 24

what are the mechanisms of learning language?

Answer 24

• perceptual narrowing/phoneme discrimination
• statistical learning/word segmentation/distributional properties
• biases - whole object, mutual exclusivity, syntactic bootstrapping, pragmatic cues
• external help - environment/caregivers

Question 25

prosody

Answer 25

characteristic rhythm and intonational patterns with which language is spoken

Question 26

categorical perception

Answer 26

perception of phonemes belonging to specific categories

Question 27

voice onset time (VOT)

Answer 27

length of time between air passing though the lips and when vocal chords start vibrating (ba and pa)

Question 28

how many sounds can infants distinguish?

Answer 28

600 consonants and 20 vowels lose this ability around 12 months experience-independent process

Question 29

word segmentation

Answer 29

discovering where words begin and end in speech, develops in second half of first year

Question 30

distributional properties

Answer 30

certain sounds are more likely to occur together than others (appears days after birth) can recognize their name at about 4.5 months

Question 31

babbling

Answer 31

repetitive consonant-vowel sequences or hand movements, emerges between 6-10 months, signals that baby is ready to learn!

Question 32

when do babies typically produce their first word?

Answer 32

10-15 months, culturally dependent

Question 33

overextension

Answer 33

using a word in a broader context than is appropriate (ex. a dog is all four-legged animals)

Question 34

underextension

Answer 34

using a word in a more limited context than appropriate (ex. only their dog is a doggie)

Question 35

mutual exclusivity

Answer 35

assumption that an entity will have only one name (not applicable to multi-lingual infants)

Question 36

whole object assumption

Answer 36

except a novel word to refer to a whole object rather than a part

Question 37

pragmatic cues

Answer 37

aspects of the social context used for word learning (emotion, position, etc.)

Question 38

cross situational word learning

Answer 38

determining meaning by tracking correlations over multiple scenes/contexts

Question 39

syntactic bootstrapping

Answer 39

using grammatical structure to infer the meaning of a new word

Question 40

when does simple sentence usage begin?

Answer 40

the end of the second year

Question 41

telegraphic speech

Answer 41

short utterances, leave out non-essential words ex. milk please!

Question 42

overregularization

Answer 42

speech errors in which children treat irregular forms as if they were regular (ex. I goed to the park)

Question 43

collective monologues

Answer 43

conversational between children that involves a series of non-sequiturs

Question 44

narratives

Answer 44

descriptions of the past that have the form of a story, emerges at about 5 years old, often aided by parents scaffolding

Question 45

how many words does an average fifth grader know?

Answer 45

40,000

Question 46

B.F Skinner theory

Answer 46

language is the result of experience and operant conditioning, reinforcement/punishment

Question 47

Chomsky theory

Answer 47

nativism, language is an innate developmental process, supported by creole languages, overregularization, critical developmental periods

Question 48

Universal Grammar

Answer 48

proposed set of highly abstract structures common to all languages (ex. complete invention of NSL)

Question 49

conncetionism

Answer 49

computational modeling approach that emphasizes simultaneous activity of numerous interconnected processing units

Question 50

dual representation

Answer 50

treating a symbolic artifact as both a real object and as a symbol for something other than itself, develops through social/cultural experiences

Question 51

broca's area

Answer 51

named after French neurologist Paul Broca left interior frontal region Broca's aphasia: production aphasia, severely impaired language production, poor articulation

Question 52

wernicke's area

Answer 52

German neurologist Carl Wernicke left superior temporal area Wernicke's aphasia: word deafness, word blindness, difficulty finding words (anomia), fluent speech that makes no sense

Question 53

hemispherectomy

Answer 53

the removal of one brain hemisphere