Flashcards
Chapter 9 - Development of Language and Communication Skills
Cards in this deck (49)
- 1phonologythe sound system of a language and the rules for the combining phonemes to produce meaningful units of speech
- 2phonemesthe basic units of sound that are used in a spoken language
- 3morphologyrules governing the formation of meaningful words from sounds
- 4semanticsthe expressed meaning of words and sentences
- 5morphemessmallest meaningful language units
- 6free morphemesmorphemes that can stand alone (e.g. cat, go, yellow)
- 7bound morphemesmorphemes that cannot stand alone but that modify the meaning of free morphemes (e.g., the -ed attached to English verbs to indicate past tense)
- 8syntaxthe structure of language; the rules specifying how words and grammatical markers are to be combined to produce meaningful sentences
- 9pragmaticsprinciples that underlie the effective and appropriate use of language in social contexts
- 10sociolinguistic knowledgeculturally specific rules specifying how language should be structured and used in particular social contexts
- 11linguistic universalan aspect of language development that all children share
- 12language acquisition device (LAD)Chomsky's term for the innate knowledge of grammar that humans are said to possess-- knowledge that might enable young children to infer the rules governing others' speech and to use these rules to produce language
- 13universal grammarin nativist theories of language of acquisition, the basic rules of grammar that characterize all languages
- 14language-making capacitya hypothesized set of specialized linguistic processing skills that enable children to analyze speech and to detect phonological, semantic, and syntactical relationships
- 15aphasiaa loss of one or more language functions
- 16Broca's areastructure located in the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex that controls language production
- 17Wernicke's areastructure located in the temporal lobe of the left hemisphere of the cerebral cortex that is responsible for interpreting speech
- 18sensitive-period hypothesis (of language acquisition)the notion that human beings are more proficient at language before they reach puberty
- 19pidgina structurally simple communication system that arises when people who share no common language come into constant contact
- 20creolea language that develops when a pidgin is transformed into a grammatically complex, "true" language
- 21interactionist viewpointthe notion that biological factors and environmental influences interact to determine the course of language development
- 22motheresethe short, simple, high-pitched (and often repetitive) sentences that adults use when talking with young children (also called child-directed speech)
- 23expansionsresponses to a child's ungrammatical utterance that are grammatically improved forms of that statement
- 24recastsresponses to a child's ungrammatical utterance that are non-repetitive statements that are grammatically correct
- 25coosvowel-sounds that young infants repeat over and over during periods of contentment
- 26babblesvowel/consonant combinations that infants begin to produce at about 4 to 6 months of age
- 27receptive languagethat which the individual comprehends when listening to others' speech
- 28productive languagethat which the individual is capable of expressing (producing) in his or her own speech
- 29holophrase periodthe period when the child's speech consists of one-word utterances, some of which are though to be holophrases
- 30holophrasea single-word that represents an entire sentence's worth of meaning
- 31naming explosionthe term used to describe the dramatic increase in the pace in which infants acquire new words in the latter half of the 2nd year, so named because many of the new words acquired are the names of objects
- 32multimodal mothereseolder companion's use of information that is exaggerated and synchronized across two or more senses to call an infant's attention to the referent of a spoken word
- 33referential stylean early linguistic style in which toddlers use language mainly to label objects
- 34expressive stylean early linguistic style in which toddlers use language mainly to call attention to their own and others' feelings and to regulate social interactions
- 35fast mappingthe process of acquiring a word after hearing it applied to its referent on a small number of occasions
- 36overextensionthe young child's tendency to use relatively specific words to refer to a broader set of objects, actions, or events than adults do (e.g., using the word "car" to refer to all motor vehicles)
- 37underextensionsthe young child's tendency to use general words to refer to a smaller set of objects, actions or events than adults do (e.g., using candy only to refer to mints)
- 38processing constraintscognitive biases that lead infants and toddlers to favor certain interpretations of the meaning of new words over other interpretations
- 39object scope constraintthe notion that young children will assume that a new word applied to an object refers to the whole object rather than to parts of the object or to object attributes (e.g., its color)
- 40mutual exclusivity constraintnotion that young children will assume that each object has but one label and that different words refer to separate and nonoverlapping categories
- 41lexical contrast constraintthe notion that young children make inferences about word meanings by contrasting new words with words they already know
- 42syntactical bootstrappingthe notion that young children make inferences about the meaning of words by analyzing the way words are used in sentences and inferring whether they refer to objects (nouns), actions (verbs), or attributes (adjectives)
- 43telegraphic speechearly sentences that consist content words and omit the less meaningful parts of speech, such as articles, prepositions, pronouns, and auxiliary verbs
- 44grammatical morphemesprefixes, suffixes, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs that modify the meaning of words and sentences
- 45overregulationthe overgeneralization of grammatical rules to irregular cases where the rules do not apply (for example, saying mouses rather than mice)
- 46transformational grammarrules of syntax that allow one to transform declarative statements into questions, negatives, imperatives, and other kinds of sentences
- 47referential communication skillsabilities to generate clear verbal messages, to recognize when others' messages are unclear, and to clarufy any unclear messages one trasmits or receives
- 48morphological knowledgeone's knowledge of the meaning of morphemes that make up words
- 49metalinguistic awarenessa knowledge of language and its properties, an understanding that language can be used for purposes other than communicating