Language Acquisition

Question 1

innate

Answer 1

humans are genetically predisposed to acquire and use language; babies are born with the knowledge that languages have patterns and with the ability to seek out and identify those patterns.

Question 2

innateness hypothesis

Answer 2

hypothesis underlying many theories of language acquisition that asserts language ability is INNATE in humans.

Question 3

imitation theory

Answer 3

claims that children learn language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear.

Question 4

Reinforcement theory

Answer 4

asserts 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 forms.

Question 5

Active construction of a Grammar Theory

Answer 5

most influential theory of language acquisition, holds that children actually invent the rules of grammar themselves. Theory assumes that the ability to develop rules is innate, but that the actual rules are based on the speech children hear around them; this is their input or data for analysis.

Question 6

Connectionist Theories

Answer 6

(of language acquisition) assumes that children learn language by creating neural connections in the brain through exposure to language and by using language.

Question 7

Social Interaction Theory

Answer 7

assumes that children acquire language through social interaction, with older children and adults in particular. Holds that children prompt their parents to supply them with the appropriate language experience they need.

Question 8

linguistic universals

Answer 8

property believed to be held in common by all natural languages

Question 9

universal grammar

Answer 9

the theory that posits a set of grammatical characteristics shared by all natural languages. Also, the name of this set of shared characteristics.

Question 10

Physiological Prerequisites of sound perception and Production

Answer 10

1. identifying sounds
2. producing sounds
   babbling, phonological acquisition,

Question 11

babble

Answer 11

producing sequences of vowels and consonants if they are acquiring spoken language, or producing hand movements if they are acquiring signed language

Question 12

critical period

Answer 12

age span, usually described as lasting 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 language.

Question 13

Homesign gestures

Answer 13

rudimentary visual-gestural communication system (not a language) that is developed and used by deaf children and their families when a signed language is not made available for communication

Question 14

holophrastic stage

Answer 14

holophrase: one word stage usually name people objects, pets and other familiar and important parts of his or her environment.

Question 15

OVERGENERALIZATION

Answer 15

when the child discovers the morpheme -s and suddenly applies it uniformly to all nouns.

Question 16

complexive concepts

Answer 16

when a child associates different characteristics with the meaning of a word on successive uses, thereby creating a set of objects that do not have any particular clarifying characteristic ie.

Question 17

conditioned head turn procedure

Answer 17

experimental technique usually used with infants between 5 and 18 mos. with tow phases: conditions and testing. During the conditioning phase, the infant learns to associate a change in sound with the activation of visual reinforcers, first presented at the same time and then in succession, such that the infant begins to anticipate the appearance of the visual reinforcers and look at them before they are activated. During the testing phase, when the infant looks to the visual reinforcers immediately after a change in sound, it suggests that the infant has perceived the change in sound, thereby demonstrating the ability to discriminate between the two sounds involved.

Question 18

Voice onset time

Answer 18

the length of time between the release of a consonant and the on-set of voicing, that is , when the vocal folds start vibrating.

Question 19

articulatory gestures

Answer 19

a movement of a speech organ in the production of speech, for example, the movement of the velum for the production of a nasal consonant.

Question 20

second-language acquisition

Answer 20

learning a second language not as a young child, but rather later in life.

Question 21

sequential bilingualism

Answer 21

begin learning a second language as a young child

Question 22

simultaneous bilingualism

Answer 22

learning more than one language from birth

Question 23

fossilization

Answer 23

when non-narrative forms, as part of either the morpho-syntax or pronunciation, can become fixed and not change, even after years of instruction.

Question 24

telegraphic stage

Answer 24

a phase during child language acquisition in which children use utterances composed primarily of content words

Question 25

language mixing or code switching

Answer 25

using more than one language in a conversation or even within a phrase.

Question 26

attention getters

Answer 26

used to tell children which utterances are addressed to them rather than to someone else: names and exclamations, and modulations

Question 27

attention holders

Answer 27

used whenever they have more than one thing to say

Question 28

underextensions

Answer 28

application of a word to a smaller set of objects that is appropriate for mature adult speech or the usual definition of the word.

Question 29

relational term

Answer 29

relative intersection: type of relationship between adjective and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to nouns reference.

Question 30

deictic expression

Answer 30

word or expression that takes its meaning relative to the time, place, and speaker of the utterance