File 8 Flashcards
Innate
Determined by factors present from birth
Innateness Hypothesis
A hypothesis that humans are generally predisposed to learn and use language.
Imitation Theory
Child language acquisition Child language acquisition theory that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear.
Reinforcement Theory
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.
Active construction of a grammar theory
Theory of child language which says that children acquire language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them.
Connectionist Theory
Theory of language acquisition which claims that children learn language through neural connections in the brain. A child develops such connections by through exposure to language and by using language.
Social Interaction Theory
Theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language through social interaction- in particular with older children and adults- and prompt their caregivers to supply them with the appropriate language experience they need.
Linguistic Universal
Property believed to be held in common by al natural languages.
Universal Grammar
The theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristics shared by all natural languages.
Critical Period
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.
Neglected Child
A child who is neglected by caretakers, often resulting in significantly lower exposure to a language as a child.
Feral Child
Child who grew up in the wild without care by human adults, often with animals.
Homesign
A rudimentary visual-gestural communication system that is developed and used by deaf children and their families when a signed language is not made available for their communication.
Imitation Theory
Child language acquisition theory that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear.
Rules
A formal statement of an observed generalization about patterns in language.
Child directed speech
Speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants.
High Amplitude Sucking
Experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months.
Conditioned Head Turn Procedure
Experimental technique usually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases: conditioning and testing.
Babbling
A phase in child language acquisition during which the child produces meaningless sequences of consonants and vowels.
Canonical Babbling
The continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like [mamama] by infants.
Variegated Babbling
Production of meaningless consonant- vowel sequences by infants.
Holophrastic Stage
Stage in first-language acquisition during which children can produce only one word at a time.
Holphrase
A one-word sentence.
Telegraphic stage
A phase during which child language acquisition in which children use utterances composed primarily of content words.
