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Theories of Language Development - Nativist Approach
attributes language acquisition to biological mechanisms and stresses universal patterns of language development
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Theories of Language Development - Nativist Approach - Chomsky
Proposes that an innate language acquisition device (LAD) makes it possible for a person to acquire language just by being exposes to it.
Support for this comes from studies showing that children master the basics of language between ages 4 and 6 regardless of the complexity of their native language and that children from all cultures pass through the same stages of language development
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Theories of Language Development - Behaviorist Approach
Proposes that language is acquires like any other behavior through imitation and reinforcement
In other words, children acquire language by observing and imitating the language of others and being reinforced to do so
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Theories of Language Development - Interactionist Approach
Regard language development to be attributable to a combination of biological and environmental factors. The social-communications version of this approach stresses the impact of social interactions
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Theories of Language Development - Interactionist Approach - Expansion
When a parent adds to a child's statement but retains the child's word order
When a child says "Mommy bye-bye" and the parent responds "Yes, Mommy is going bye-bye"
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Theories of Language Development - Interactionist Approach - Extension
When a parent adds information to a child's statement
When a child says "Mommy bye-bye" and a parent responds "yes, Mommy is going to work now."
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Bootstrapping - Semantic Bootstrapping
Refers to a child's use of his or her knowledge of the meaning of words to infer their syntactical (grammatical) category.
In other words, through semantic bootstrapping, children learn that words that refer to objects or persons are nouns, words that refer to actions are verbs, etc.
Acquiring knowledge of the syntactical categories of words allows children to eventually understand syntactical rules and construct grammatically correct sentences
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Bootstrapping - Syntactic Bootstrapping
Refers to a child's use of syntactical knowledge to learn the meaning of new words.
A child encountering a new noun in an utterance may begin to infer the noun's meaning by the grammatical context in which it occurs.
If the sentence is "This is a rel," the child will deduce that "rel" is a kind of object; but if the sentence is "This is rel," the child will deduce that "rel" is a particular object.
Does not explain how children learn the precise meanings of words but only how children narrow the possible meanings of words.
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Language Structure - Surface Structure
Refers to the organization of words, phrases, and sentences
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Language Structure - Deep Structure
Refers to the underlying meaning of sentences
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Speech Sounds - Phonemes
The smallest units of sounds that are understood in a language.
The English language has 45 phonemes - for example b, p, f, v, and th
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Speech Sounds - Morphemes
the smallest units of sounds that convey meaning
Made up of one or more phonemes
Examples include words like "do" and "go" and prefixes and suffixes such as "un," "ed," and "ing."
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Stages of Language Acquisition - Crying
Three distinct patterns of crying: a basic (hunger) cry, an angry cry, and a pain cry.
By 1 or 2 months, they also produce a fussy (irregular) cry
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Stages of Language Acquisition - Cooing and Babbling
Cooing begins at 6 to 8 weeks of age and consists mainly of vowels and that are usually emitted when the infant is happy and contented
Babbling begins at about 4 months and involves the repetition of simple consonant and vowel sounds (e.g., "bi-bi-bi"). Early babbling includes sounds from all languages; but, between 9 and 14 months, babies narrow their repertoire of sounds to those of the native language
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Stages of Language Acquisition - Echolalia and Expressive Jargon
Children imitate adult speech sounds and words without an understanding of their meaning (echolalia)
Begins at about 9 months
This is followed by expressive jargon, which involves vocalizations that sound like sentence but have no meaning
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Stages of Language Acquisition - First Words
Most infants speak their first words between 10 and 15 months and, by 18 months speak about 50 words
Most often nominals (words or groups of words that function as nouns in a sentence), or labels for objects, people or events, although action words, modifiers, and personal-social words (e.g., please) also occur
First words are often mama or dada
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Stages of Language Acquisition - Telegraphic Speech
Stringing two words together to make a sentence (e.g., "me go" "more juice")
by 18 to 24 months - nouns, verbs, adjectives
by 27 months - prepositions and pronouns are added
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Stages of Language Acquisition - Vocabulary Growth
By 18 months, children begin to exhibit a rapid increase in vocabulary, with the fastest rate of growth between 30 and 36 months
At 36 months vocabulary includes about 1000 words and sentences are usual 3 to 4 words
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Stages of Language Acquisition - Grammatically Correct Sentences
The period from 2.5 to 5 years of age is marked by increasing sentence complexity, grammatical accuracy, and continued vocabulary growths, with about 50 new words being acquired each month
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Stages of Language Acquisition - Metalinguistic Awareness
The ability to reflect on language as a communication tool and on themselves as language users.
By age 6 or 7, children recognize that words are different from the concepts they represent, and they can use words in humorous and metaphoric ways
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Stages of Language Acquisition - Underextension
Occurs when a child applies a word too narrowly to objects or situations
A young child might use the word "dish" to refer only to a plastic dish that he normally uses
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Stages of Language Acquisition - Overextension
Occurs when a child applies a word to a wider collection of objects or events than is appropriate.
A child referring to all four-legged creatures as "doggie"
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Stages of Language Acquisition - Overregularization
Occurs when a child applies usual rules to exceptional cases
tooths instead of teeth and holded instead of held
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Bilingualism - Second-Language Acquisition
More difficult for adolescents and adults than for children
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Bilingualism - Bilingual Education
Bilingual children do as well as, or even better than, monolingual children on tests measuring language and cognitive skills
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Bilingualism - Code Switching
Alternating between languages during a conversation
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The nativist approach attributes language acquisition to _________ mechanisms. For example, Chomsky proposes that existence of innate __________. In contrast, the ________ approach views language development as being due to a combination of biological and environmental factors.
biological
Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
Interactionist
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________ bootstrapping refers to a child's use of his/her knowledge of the meaning of words to infer their grammatical structure.
Semantic
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Linguists distinguish between two types of speech sounds: _______ are the smallest units of sound understood in a language, while ______ are the smallest units of sound that convey meaning
phonemes
morphemes
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Infants initially produce three distinct patterns of crying: a hunger cry, an angry cry, and a ______ cry.
pain
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By four months of age, infants begin babbling, which involves the repetition of single _______ sounds. At about _______ months of age, children narrow these sounds to those of their native language
consonant-vowel
9 -14
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From 1 to 2 years of age, children use one word to express while phrases or sentences. This ________ speech is followed by telegraphic speech, which emerges at about _________ months of age and involves stringing two or more words together to make a ___________.
holophrastic
18 - 24
sentence
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Children usually exhibit a number of errors during the course of language development. For example, ______ occurs when a child applies a word to a wider collection of objects or events than is appropriate
overextension
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Research has identified several consistent gender differences in language use: In conversations, males talk for longer interval and are more likely to __________, while females are more likle to _________.
interrupt
ask questions (and add tag questions to statements)
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There is evidence that learning a second-language is best when it begins in __________.
childhood
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Overall, studies on bilingual education suggest that language-minority children who participate in high-quality programs do ______ those who participate in English-only programs in terms of English skills and knowledge of subject matter.
as well as or better than
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Researchers have found that newborns exhibit three types of cries -- the hungry (basic) cry, the angry cry, and the pain cry. They have also found that, by _____ months of age, most infants begin to emit a "fussy" or irregular cry.
A.3
B.4
C.2
D.5
C
Researchers have found that, by 1 to 2 months of age, most infants begin to emit a "fussy" or irregular cry.
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For most children, babbling narrows to the sounds of the child's native language between _____ months of age.
A.7-8
B.3-6
C.6-10
D.9-14
D
Early babbling includes sounds from all languages; but, between 9 and 14 months of age, babies narrow their repertoire of sounds to those of their native language.
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Which of the following is an example of a morpheme:
A.walking
B.th
C.un
D.iest
B
A morpheme is a meaningful unit of language that cannot be further divided.
Answer A: This word can be divided and is not a morpheme. However, the word 'walk' is a morpheme.
Answer B: This is an example of a phoneme.
Answer D: This word can be divided and is therefore not a morpheme.
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Research on bilingualism suggests that:
A.it does not have negative effects on overall language ability.
B.it slows children down in the initial school years.
C.bilingual children score lower on measures of cognitive ability.
D.bilingual and monolingual children diverge in ability as they approach adolescence.
A
Although some specific differences between bilingual and monolingual children have been found, they appear to be generally equivalent in terms of total vocabulary and fluency of language skills.
Answer B: Research on bilingualism indicates it is not likely to have negative effects on language ability.
Answer C: This is the opposite of the reported findings, which show bilingual children tend to score higher than monolinguals on measures of cognitive flexibility, cognitive complexity, analytical reasoning, working memory capacity, attentional control, and metalinguistic awareness.
Answer D: Some research has shown that differences found earlier in childhood disappear by adolescence.
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A young child’s ability to narrow the possible meaning of new words is known as which of the following?
a.generalization
b.syntactic bootstrapping
c.scaffolding
d.semantic bootstrapping
B
According to Gletman (1990), syntactic bootstrapping refers to a child’s use of grammatical contextual knowledge to learn the meaning of new words. This process is what helps children narrow the possible meaning of words.
Answer A: Generalization refers to the process by which knowledge, learning, or behavior is applied to broader and different contexts.
Answer C: Scaffolding is a term from Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory. It refers to a situation in which a child needs further instruction, support, or assistance in order to complete a developmental task. Answer D: Semantic bootstrapping refers to a child’s use of the meaning of words to infer their grammatical category (e.g. if a word is an object, person, action, etc.). This process is what helps children learn the precise meanings of words.
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