Language Acquisition

Question 1

Fossilization

Answer 1

process through which forms from a speaker’s non native language usage become fixed in a way that would be considered ungrammatical by a native speaker and do not change

Question 2

foreign accent

Answer 2

an accent that is marked by the phonology of another language or other languages that are familiar to the speaker

Question 3

second-language acquisition

Answer 3

acquisition of a second language as a teenager or adult

Question 4

transfer

Answer 4

the influence of one’s native language on the learning of subsequent languages

Question 5

code switching

Answer 5

using words or structural elements from more than one language within the same conversation

Question 6

simultaneous bilingualism

Answer 6

bilingualism in which both languages are acquired from infancy

Question 7

sequential bilingualism

Answer 7

bilingualism in which a second language is acquired as a young child

Question 8

multilingual

Answer 8

the state of commanding three or more languages

Question 9

conversational turns

Answer 9

the contribution to a conversation made by one speaker from the time that she takes the floor from another speaker to the time that she passes the floor on to another speaker

Question 10

attention getters

Answer 10

words or phrases used to initiate an address to children

Question 11

attention holders

Answer 11

a tactic used to maintain children’s attention for extended amounts of time

Question 12

telegraphic utterances

Answer 12

utterances containing primarily content words

Question 13

child-directed speech

Answer 13

speech used by parents or caregivers when communicating with young children or infants

Question 14

deictic expressions

Answer 14

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

Question 15

relative intersection

Answer 15

type of relationship between adjective and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to the noun reference

Question 16

under-extension

Answer 16

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

Question 17

complexive concept

Answer 17

a term used in the study of child language acquisition. a group of items that a child refers to with a single word for which it is not possible to single out any one unifying property

Question 18

overextension

Answer 18

in the study of child language acquisition, a relationship between child and adult perception of word meaning: the child’s application of a given word has a wider range than the application of the same word in adult language

Question 19

overgeneralization

Answer 19

a relationship between a child and adult application of rules relative to certain contexts: a process in which children extend the application of linguistic rules to contexts beyond those in the adult language

Question 20

telegraphic

Answer 20

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

Question 21

one word stage

Answer 21

stage in first language acquisition during which children can produce only one word at a time

Question 22

variegated babbling

Answer 22

production of meaningless consonant vowel sequences by infants

Question 23

canonical babbling

Answer 23

continuous repetition of sequences of vowels and consonants like (mamama) by infants; repeated babbling

Question 24

articulatory gestures

Answer 24

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 25

voice onset time (VOT)

Answer 25

the length of time between the release of a consonant and the onset of voicing, that is, when the vocal folds start vibrating

Question 26

Conditioned head turn procedure (HT)

Answer 26

experimental technique usually used with infants between five and eighteen months with two phases: conditioning 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 27

High amplitude sucking (HAS)

Answer 27

experimental technique used to study sound discrimination in infants from birth to about six months. infants are given a special pacifier that is connected to a sound generating system. Each suck on the pacifier generates a noise, and infants' sucking behavior is used to draw conclusions and discriminating abilities

Question 28

Social interaction theory

Answer 28

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

Question 29

Connectionist theories

Answer 29

theory of language acquisition that claims that children learn language through neural connections in the brain. a child develops such connections through exposure to language and by using language

Question 30

Reinforcement theory

Answer 30

theory of language acquisition that 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

Question 31

active construction of grammar theory

Answer 31

theory of language acquisition that says that children acquire a language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them

Question 32

imitation theory

Answer 32

theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear

Question 33

homesign

Answer 33

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

Question 34

neglected children

Answer 34

a child who is neglected by caretakers, often resulting in significantly lower exposure to language as a child

Question 35

feral children

Answer 35

child who grew up in the wild without care by human adults, often with animals

Question 36

innate

Answer 36

determined by factors present from birth

Question 37

innateness hypothesis

Answer 37

a hypothesis that humans are genetically predisposed to learn and use language

Question 38

linguistic universals

Answer 38

property believed to be held common by all natural languages

Question 39

holophrase

Answer 39

a one word sentence

Question 40

bilingual

Answer 40

state of commanding two languages