Arbitrary
Sound sequences of words to not directly stand for the concepts the words represent.
Symbolic
Represent something else in the world.
Lexical Entry
Consists of a serires of symbols that compose the word, the sound of the word, the meaning of the word, and its part of pseech.
True Word
1) Must be produced with a clear purpose - child says book when holding book
2) Must have recognizable pronunciation similar to the adult form of the word - "wawa" is close enough to "water"
3) Must be used consistently and extend beyond the original cont
direct imitation
Repetition rather than a true word, being prompted to say "book
Phonetically consistent Forms
the idiosyncratic wordlkie productions that children use consistently and meaningfully but do not approximate adult forms.
*not true words but are important aspects of children's language development because by using them children learn the value of adopt
Referential gestures
a gesture that indicates a precise referent and has stable meaning across different contexts (ex holding fist to ear to indicate telephone)
deictic gesures
pointing, showing, giving
gestures whose meanings change depending on the contest. (ex using the same grabbing motion for bottle as toy)
Gesture-word combinations
demonstrated as children are preparing to transition from the one word stage to the two word stage.
Mirror Neurons
A type of visumotor neurons
Activate when people perform actions and when they observe other people perform actions
May be responsible for the evolution of gestures and language in humans
Transcranial magnetic stimulation studies
studies which involve noninvasive electrical stimulation of the nervous system, showing that when adults read and produce spontaneous speech, the excitability of the hand motor cortex increases in the left hemishpere of the brain.
customary age of production
describes the age by which 50% of children can produce a given sound in multiple positions in words in an adultlike way.
age of mastery
describes the age by which most children produce a sound in an adultlike manner
Assessing toddler's sound production
practitioners ask children to produce speech sounds in various positions and with a variety of neighboring sounds; initial, medial, and final position of words and consonant clusters which is more challenging than producing sounds in isolation
Phonological Processes
The systematic, rule goverened speech patterns that charachterize toddlers speech.; used in effort to simplify a child's inventory of phonetic elements and strings
4 Phonological Process categories
syllable structure changes
assimilation
place of articulation changes
manner of articulation changes.
syllable structure changes
changes to syllables in words
ex water - wa wa, daddy = da, da
stong instead of strong
Assimilation
process by which chidlren change on esound in a syllable so that it takes on the features of another sound in the same syllable
velar assimilation
word takes on the velar sound produced at the velum near the back of the mouth (Dog becomes gog)
Context dependent change
children make changes to certain sounds on the basis of influential neighboring sounds
Place of articulation changes
not context dependent
occur when children replace a sound produced at one locatin in the mouth with a sound produced at a different location in the mouth
Fronting
replacing sound produced farther back in the mouth with sounds produced farther forward in the mouth (cake = take)
patrial phonetic information
toddlers become increasingly adept at recognizing words after hearing only parts of the words
manner of articulation changes
occur when children replace a sound produced in a particular manner wiht a sound produced in a different manner
stopping
replacing an affricate sound with a stop sound (ex jeep becomes deep)
affricate sound
consists of a stop sound followed by a fricative; airflow is temporarily stopped then forced through a constructed space in the mouth
transitional period
developmental timeframe during which language abilities are emerging and changing.
novel non neighbors
new words that are not phonologically similar to known words
novel neighbors
new words that are phonologically similar to known words
more difficult because are similar to known words
ex: difficult to learn "tog" and "gall" when infants know "dog" and "ball
morpheme
meaningful linguistic unit that cannot be divided into smaller meaningful parts
grammatical morphemes - infants
inflections added to words to indicate aspects of grammer (plural s, possessive 's, etc)
not fully mastered until preschool age
tested by having an item in the box. When prompted saying "toys in the box" they measure the amount of time the infant looks fo
two word stage
toddlers begin to combine words to make utterances
*marks the true beginning of syntax
overgeneralized verbs
this happens with irregular verbs that don't follow the normal morphological rules
ex: "I maked it" instead of "I made it
Brown's stages of language development
charachterize children's language achievements according to their ability to produce utterances of varying syntactic complexity
MLU
average length in morphemes of chidlren's utterances
-calculated by counting the total # of morphemes used in a sample of 50 to 100 utterances by a child then dividing that number by the total # of utterances
evaluates language skills against expectations
telegraph
children's language omits key grammatical markers
receptive lexicon
words children comprehend
expressive lexicon
words children produce
vocabulary spurt
explosive period beteen 18 and 24 months for toddlers word learning, they can learn upto 7 to 9 new words each day.
overextension
process by which children use words in an overly general manner
3 types of overextensions
categorical
analogical
relational
categorical overextensions
extend a word they know to other words in the same category (calling all 4-legged animals "dogs")
analogical overextensions
extending a word they know to other words that are perceptually similar (calling the moon or an orange a ball)
relational overextensions
extend a word they know to other words that are semantically or thematically related (ex flower for watering can)
underextensions
process whereby toddlers use words to refer only to a subset of possible referents (bottle when referring to their bottle but not a water bottle)
Overlap
When toddlers overextend a word in certain circumstances and under extend the smae word in other circumstances (ex candy for jelly beans and pills but not for choclate bars
category membership errors
ex thinking a horse and a cow are the same kind of animal and using the word horse to label a cow becuase they know the word horse
pragmatic errors
two objects are conceptually different but the child does not have a name for one of the objects and intentionally substitutes a semantically related word (ex horse/dog)
Retrieval error
know a certain word but for some reason cannot retrieve the word so they unintentionally select a different word
Quinean Conundrum
the uncertainty surrounding the mapping of word to its referent in the face of seemingly endless interpretations
3 Steps of New Word Acquisition
1) Segment the word from continuous speech
2) Find objects, events, actions, and concepts in the world
3) Map the world in question to its corresponding object, event, action or concept
key part
***possible mapping problems may occur such as the Quinean c
lexical principles framework
consists of two tiers
first tier includes the principles of reference, extendibility and object scope
second tier consists of the principles of concentionality, categorical scope, and novel name-nameless category
First-Tier Principles of lexical framework
rely on cognitive perceptual abilities
Principle of reference
[1st-Tier principle of lexical framework] states that words symbolize objects, actions, events and concepts (ex daddy stands for father)
Principle of extendibility
[1st-Tier principle of lexical framework] refers to the notion that words label categories of objects and not just the original exemplar (ex ball can be used to describe multiple objects that fall under the basic level category ball .....ex soccer ball, t
Principle of object scope
[1st-Tier principle of lexical framework] states that words map to whole objects. The assumption is that novel words label objects rather than action
children prefer to attach a label to an object instead of an action
whole object assumption
[1st-Tier principle of lexical framework] words label whole objects and not object parts (ex bird = whole bird, not flying or wing)
Second-Tier principles of lexical framework
more sophisticated and become available as soon as the child refines hypothesis about the nature of words
Principle of conventionality
[2nd-Tier principle of lexical framework] states that for children to communicate successfully they must adopt the terms that people in their language communicty understand (recognize some baby words arent conventional among other speakers in their cultur
principle of Categorical Scope
[2nd-Tier principle of lexical framework] builds on the tier 1 principle of extendibility by limiting the basis for extension to words that are in the same category.
principle of novel name nameless category
[2nd-Tier principle of lexical framework] supporst the tier 1 principle of object scope by helping children select a nameless object as the recipient of a novel label
mutual exclusivity
objects have only one label
if you give a toddler a book, ball and thermometer and ask for the thermometer, they will give you the right one because they know book and ball
Social pragmatic theory
as adults interact with children, they offer many social cues to the meanings of words which makes lexical principles unnecessary
Line of regard
the direction of a person's gaze, which indicates what the person is looking at
fast mapping
toddlers ability to pick up words after only a few incidental exposures or even a single exposure
thematic role
the part a word plays in an event,roles include: agent - entity performing action
theme - entity undergoing an action
source - the starting point for movement
goal - ending point for movement
location - place where action occurs
7 Discourse Functions
Instrumental - satisfy needs, requests
Regulatory - commands
Interactional - interact socially
personal - express feelings
heuristic - request info to learn about world
imaginative - telling stories, pretend
informative functions - give info or warn
intraindividual differences - toddler
gender
birth order
socioeconomic status
toddler conversational skills
iRequires initiating topic, sustaining topic for several turns, then appropriately take leave. - toddlers can't usually sustain conversation for more than 2 turns and don't keep audience needs in mind or discuss topics without ensuring that the listener h
birth order
firstborn children exhibit more advanced lexical and grammatical development than later born counterparts, where as the later born children exhibited more advanced conversational skills
production tasks
allow toddlers to demonstrate their competence in various areas of language development [ toddler language research]
naturalistic observation
observations of children's spontaneous productions [toddler language research]
elicited imitation tasks
the experimenter produces a target phrase then requests that the child repeat it exactly as he or she heard it
anaphora
linguistic units that refer to a previous linguistic unit
elicited production tasks
designed to reveal aspects of chidren's language abilities (syntax, morphology, pragmatics) by having them produce specific sentence structures. [ toddler language research]
Wug Test
elicited production task
designed to investigate children's acquisition of english morphoemes including the plural marker
Comprehension tasks
reveal toddlers language competencies by having children either match or point to picture of target words and phrases or act out phrases they hear an experimenter say [ toddler language research]
Picture Selection Task
Experimenter presents a language target and asks the child to chooose the pictures that corresponds to the target [ toddler language research]
Act out Task
experimenter presents a child with a series of props and instructs the chidl to "act out" the sentences he or she hears. [ toddler language research]
judgement tasks
children are asked to decide whether certain language constructions are appropriate [ toddler language research]
truth value judgement tasks
children are asked to judge certain languae constructions to be correct or incorrect
these take two forms, yes no tasks and reward punishment tasks. [ toddler language research]
grammaticality judgement tasks
generally suited for preschoolers, older children, and adults (ch 7) [ toddler language research]
screening
determines whether a child is experiencing difficulty with particular aspects of language and whether the child might need more comprehensive language evaluation
generally use an informal approach in checklist format
use common early languae milestones ag
Communicative development inventories
parent report checklist [clinicians - toddlers]
comprehensive evaluation
determines whether a child has a language disorder and if so, to learn more about the nature of the disorder
structured, standardized, norm referenced and limited in duration rather than ongoing (not repeatedly administered to the same child) [clinicians
Ecological validity
extent to which the data resulting from these tools can be extended to multiple contexts, including the child's home and day care settings
Clinical evaluation of language fundamentals (CELF)
[clinicians - toddlers] use to identify whether a child has a language disorder, to determine his or her eligibility for language services or to identify the childs strengths and weaknesses in language
has 3 subtests: sentence structure, word structure, a
Sentence structure subtest
measures the child's ability to understand spoken sentences of increasing length and complexity
word structure subtest
measures the child's ability to apply morpholgy to words and use pronouns appropriately
expressive vocabulary subtest
measures the child's ability to label drawings of people, objects and actions.
progress monitoring
used to measure and monitor a child's progress in a certain area of langaue development
can be administered multiple times and is quick and easy
[clinicians - toddlers]
individual growth and development indicators
progress monitoring instrument
ex: child is asked to name pictured items and see how many are labeled in 1 minute