CMD 375
Terms
undefined, object
copy deck
- displacement
- language can refer to actions, events, and states removed in time and space. (refering to past events or those that occur in different places.
- arbitrariness
- words mean what i say they mean. nothing more. nothing less
- productivity
- the capacity to create novel utterances no one has ever heard before by recombining forms they already know in novel ways.
- semanticity
- language can represent ideas, events, and objects symbolically.
- multiplicity of rule system
- we acquire multiple systems of rules which operate simultaneously to effect communication.
- definition of language
- language is a code whereby ideas about the world are represented through a conventional system of arbitrary signals of communication.
- content
- semantics. the meaning encoded in language.
- form
- what we talk with. the vehicle for conveying content in manual, vocal or written form.
- subcomponents of language form
- phonology, mophology, syntax
- use
- pragmatics. the functions and contexts of language.
- historical trends in the study of child language before late 1950's- list 2
- diary studies. normative count studies.
- historical trends...late 1950s..who was important and what did he introduce (2 main people..2 main ideas)
-
chomsky...transformational generative grammar.
B.F. Skinner.. operant conditioning.- everything is learned from environment exposure - transformational generative grammar
- as a way of accounting for linguistic creativity. by performing transformations on different types of base sentences, novel sentences could be created.
- historical trends... 1960's (overall)- main idea- what did it say
- derivational theory of complexity. some theorized that passives were acquired later than active sentences because they involved an additional transformation onto the base sentence structure. more transformations= teh longer the grammatical structure takes to develop. later proven to be false
- what did people have in early 1960's that they never had before
- tape recorders
- who and what was imp in early 1960s
- martin braine. pivot grammar
- the major contriution of these researcher was to make clear that early syntax was...
- not just random collection of words. rather it was systematic
- what was special about 1968. who were the pioneers
- meaning is now studied. they developed semantically based grammar as a way of describing children's early utterances. lois bloom. and roger brown.
- in the mid-1970's there was a surge of interest in studying...what were researcher's main interests
- pragmatics...there's an interest in langague addressed to children. in particular an interest in prelinguistic development.
- what was important about the 1980s
- studied language in many different communities. language was seen as a way of becoming a human being within one's community
- what was imp. about 1990s
- interest in genetics, language disorders, dual inheritance theory ( genes and environment)
- humans aquire language because
- they are biologically predisposed to and hte language they develop depends on the culture they are raised in
- why is syntax imp in engl
- it is through word order that things like case marking are identified, allowing us to assign the appropriate meanings to sentences.
- what is constituent structure
- constituents are those compoent parts into which sentences can be grouped. constituents can be grouped into words, phrases, and clauses.
- around the 1st year of life, language learning is taken up with
- learning new words.
- substantive words
- represent actual objects
- relational words
- words which describe relations between objects
- how are substantive and relational words similar
- both par to semantic grammar used by children at early age.
- vertical constructions
- tape...step... down. precursor that children are getting closer to dev.
- by 18mos. childre will have a lexicon of
- approx. 50 words.
- also around 18mos children begin
- to use 2 word utterances
- within learning first 50 words, comprehension...
- seems to precede production.
- what appears to be the largest syntactic class represented in the first 50 words of children
- nouns. which we can call a syntactic category since they appear alone.
- what is the best way to categorize the first single words of children
- substantive and relational words
- what is brown famous for
- for creating one of the best known schemes for describing syntactic development. which grew out of his notion that chronological age was not a good predictor of syntactic dev.
- what did brown dev. as an alternative measure for language dev. and what is it based on
- MLU- based on teh average length of children's utterances as measured by morphemes.
- when is MLU helpful and when does it not work
-
mlu is most sensitive to syntactice development in the beginning stages where it reflects the addition of new grammatical morphemes and clause elements.
however, after mlu of 4.0, mlu ceases to be a good measure of increasing syntactic complexity: shorter utterances may actually be more complex than longer ones - according to brown, growth of noun phrases occurs in what 2 ways
-
1. in thenumber of different modifiers that are used with a head noun.
2. in the use of noun phrases in both subject and object position. - in what postion do children begin to modify nouns
- object position.
- t/f morphemes hear most frequently will be those acquired first
- false
- what does predict order of acquisition
- linguistic complexity, defined in terms of both syntactic and semantic complexity
- what does semantic complexity refer to
- the number of meaning of morpheme
- syntactic complexity refers to
- the number of rules required by teh morpheme.
- the only way to define compolexity in a cumulative way is to
- compare morphemes that share common meanings or common rules
- nominal strategy
- some children begin by using nouns in relation to verbs: baby eat,
- pronominal strategy
- the use of pronouns with other verbs or nouns. i finish. play it.
- how are nominal strategy and pronominal strategy alike
- both early patterns of dev. regarding early use of nouns and pronouns. both are normal
- when are perfective verbs acquired and why
- take longer to master b/c of their irregularities. b/c the perfective participles are part of bigger verb phrase.
- holophrase
- children's single words are comparable to ideas adults would express in a while sentence.
- what does mcneill think holds the child back from making a complete sentence
- output is constrained by limitations in memory and attention.
- what did bloom think about holophrases
- argued against holophrases, saying there is little evidenec to suggest that children at this stage have the necessary grammatical awareness for sentences.
- what is rich interpretation
- look at context.
- what is suggested to use instead o f noun + verb
- agent-action. possesor-object` semanitc grammar.
- what are the four changes that signal the child's movment toward word combinations
-
1. the child uses the same word with different intonation patterns, or different accompanying gestures to express different intentions.
2. vertical construtions
3. phonological regression
4. the first 50 words - telegraphic speech
- children's early word combos contain content carrying (open-class) words but often omit closed-class (or function) words like prepositions.
- who created pivot grammar
- braine
- mommy sock
- bloom
- bootstrap
- pinker
- the preferential looking paradigm-what is it? what did it conclude?
- baby sitting on lap. verbal message given while looking at videos. concluded that children can comprehend word order before they begin using two-word sentences.
- comprehension strategies
- taking best guess.not sure
- who, what, when, where, why, how? which are developed first and which are developed later
-
who what where- first
when why how-later - what "complexity" plays a role in this order of aquisition
- semantic complexity
- in other words, semantic complexity can influence
- syntactic development
- comprehension and production of questions is influenced by
- semantic, syntactic and pragmatic factors
- negatives: below a mlu of 1.5 children produce a
- nonsyntactic no which is used to deny someone else's statement or action
- what happens in period I for negatives
- no or not appears outside the sentence and usually precedes it
- period II
- no placed inside the sentence and moved next to the main verb, but no productive use of the auxiliary system.
- period III
- different auxilaries appear and the child's negative sentences aproximate the adult form.
- who created 3 periods of neg. acquisition
- bellugi
- around when do the first complex uttereances appear
- after 4 word simple sentences are common
- what is an example of parallel clause
- you go here; i'll go there. complex form
- what is an object clause
- one of hte most frequently occurring complex forms to appear first. watch me DRAW CIRCLES. I don't want YOU READ THAT BOOK.
- embedded clauses
- introduced by wh- words may appear around 2.5 years. do it HOW I DO IT. can i do it WHEN I GO HOME? i'll show you HOW TO DO IT.
- relative clauses
- modifying nouns of place and manner. relative pronouns are omitted. i who you the place I WENT. this ithe way I DID IT.
- what is an example of phrasal coordination
- tom and jim went home
- what is an example of sentential coordination
- tom went shopping and mary worked out at the gym.
- regarding order of acquisition what do researchers say about phrasal and sentential coordination
- sentential coordinations should appear before phrasal coordinations because phrasal coordination invovles the acquisition of deletion rules HOWEVER phrasal coordination never appears after sententail coordination and chidlren do not find it more diffeicult to imitate or understand phrasal coordinations. THEREFORE researchers suggest that neither form of coordination is derived from other. INSTEAD they develop INDEPENDENTLY by joining phrases, NOT by deleting redundant elements
- how do semantic factors influence the acquisition of coordination
-
4 children used "and" to express different meanings which developed in teh same order: 1. additive (you do this AND i do that). 2. temporal (i'll go to the store AND buy some popcorn) 3. causal (i ate the clams AND got sick.
syntax and semantics are developing simulataneously - relative clauses develop later or before coordinations and are used to...
- later...to provide additiona, specific info about a person or object.
- pragmatically speaking, relative clauses are useful when
- you can't physically point to things in the immediate, concrete context
- initially, clauses provide info about which part of the sentence
- object.
- what are passives
- the agent and the object are reversed from how they appear in active sentences.
- how are passives studied and why in that way
- through experiments...passives aren't used often in spontaneous speech
- what is a truncated passive
- something has been deleted or left out. with truncated passives, the agent of hte sentence (the one doing the action) is left out: "the window was broken" vs. the window was broken by the dog.
- which type of passives do children produce more
- truncated
- what did bever do
- studied children's comprehension of passives by having thema ct out on toys the sentences produced by an experimenter. he compared chidlren 2, 3, 4 years of age on the comprehension of reversible (mary was kissed by tom) and the irreversible ( the food was eaten by mary)`
- at what age can children correctly act out sentences containing reversible passives
- 4-5
- what are the two critical transitions in the acquisition of syntax
-
1. the transition from single words to multiple words combinations
2. the transition to complex sentences - what is the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb
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transitive can tak a D.O. (i ate the cake)
intransitive cannot
i slept the cake - what is an example of semi-auxilary and what does it mean for lang. comprehension
- gonna, wanna, hafta. semi- understanding of auxilary verbs