Module 9 Vocabulary & Terms Flashcards
Innate
Determined by factors present from birth.
Innateness Hypothesis
A hypothesis that humans are genetically predisposed to learn and use language.
Imitation Theory
Theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear.
Sequential Bilingualism
Bilingualism is which the second language is acquired as a young child.
Active Construction of a Grammar Theory
Theory of language acquisition that says that children acquire a language by inventing rules of grammar based on the speech around them.
Connectionist Theories
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.
Multilingual
The state of commanding three or more languages: having linguistic competence in three or more languages.
Linguistic Universals
Property believed to be held in common by all 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 Children
A child who is neglected by caretakers, often resulting in significantly lower exposure to language as a child.
Feral Children
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
Theory of language acquisition that claims that children acquire language by listening to the speech around them and reproducing what they hear.
Reinforcement Theory
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 form and are corrected when they use the wrong ones.
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.
Foreign Accent
An accent that is marked by the phonology of another language or other languages that are more familiar to the speaker.
High Amplitude Sucking
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 infant’s sucking behavior is used to draw conclusions about discrimination abilities.
Conditioned Head -Turn Procedure
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 suggest that the infant has perceived the change in sound, thereby demonstrating the ability to discriminate between the two sounds involved.
Voice Onset Time (VOT)
The length of time between the release of a consonant and the onset of voicing, that is, when the vocal folds start vibrating.
Articulatory Gestures
A movement of a speech organ in the production of speech.
Babble
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
