Praxis Chapter 3: Language Development in Children

morphology

the study of word structure. it describes how words are formed one of more basic elements of language called morphemes.

morpheme

the smallest meaningful unit of a language.

base, root, or free morphemes

words that have meaning cannot be broken down into smaller parts and can have other morphemes added to them

bound or grammatical morphemes

cannot convey meaning by themselves must be joined with free morphemes in order to have meaning

examples of bound or grammatical morphemes

-ing, -s, , -'s, -ed

prefix

added at the beginning of a base morpheme

suffix

added at the end of a base morpheme

allomorphs

variations of morphemes they do not alter the original meaning of the morpheme

derivational morphemes

include prefixes and suffixes; they change whole classes of words

syntax

the arrangement of words to form meaningful sentences; the word order and overall structure of a sentence; a collection of rules that specify the ways and order in which words may be combined to form sentences in a particular language

passive sentences

subject receives the action of the verb "the cat was petted by Mark."

active sentences

subject performs the actions of the verb "Mark petted the cat."

Interrogative sentences

they are questions "did you see the gorgeous sunset?"

declarative sentences

they make a statement. "the sunset was gorgeous"

imperative sentences

they state commands "shut the door"

exclamatory sentences

they express strong feelings. "i never said that!"

compound sentence

contains two or more independent clauses joined by a comma and a conjunction or by a semicolon

clause

contains a subject and a predicate

independent or main clause

has a subject and a predicate and can stand alone

complex sentence

contains one independent clause and one or more dependent or subordinate clauses

semantics

meaning of language

semantic categories

used to sort words

recurrence (semantic category)

concept of more

rejection (semantic category)

no

causality (semantic category)

cause and effect

overextension

all round items are balls

underextension

only an Oreo is a cookie

world knowledge

involves a person's autobiographical and experimental memory and understanding of particular events

quick incidental learning/ fast mapping

child's ability to learn a new word on the basis of just a few exposures to it

pragmatics

the study of rules that govern the use of language in social situations

labeling

naming something

protesting

objecting to something

commenting

describing or identifying objects

cohesion

ability to order and organize utterances in a message so that they build logically on one another

discourse

refers to how utterances are related to one another

motherese- child directed speech (CDS)

speech that includes several characteristics that helps babies attend and respond to what they are hearing

perlocutionary behavior

signals have an effect on the listener or observer but lack communicative intent

illocutionary behavior

signaling to carry out some socially organized action such as pointing and laughing; uses intentional communication

locutionary stage

begins to use words

joint reference

ability to focus attention on an event or object as directed by another person

holophrastic phrase

one word represents a complex idea

holophrastic speech

one word is used to communicate a variety of meanings

semantic relations

utterances that reflect meaning based on relationships between different words

presuppositions

between 1 and 2 years of age the child uses expressions that have shared meaning for the listener and speaker

tag questions

"you want to go. dont you?"

embedded forms

rearrange or add elements within sentences "the man who came to dinner stayed a week"

gerund

noun form produced by adding -ing to a verb infinitive (fish-fishing)

derivational morphemes

verbs are changed into nouns (catch-catcher)

emergent literacy or preliteracy skills

foundational to later reading and writing in school

phonological awareness

refers to child's specific ability to detect and manipulate sounds and syllables in words

print knowledge

refers to children's emergent knowledge about functions and forms of written language

morphological awareness

recognition, understanding, and use of words parts that carry significance

verbal behavior

form of social behavior maintained by the actions of verbal community

language acquisition device (LAD)

nativist theory; children are born with this language processor that is a part of the brain

transformational generative theory of grammar

Chomsky believed such creative transformation of sentence forms is the essence of language

government binding theory

attempts to describe the way the mind represents the autonomous system of language

strong cognition hypothesis

believe in cognitive precursors to language

weak cognition hypothesis

states that while cognition accounts for some of a child's language abilities it cannot account for them all

information processing theory

view the human information-processing system as a mechanism that encodes stimuli from the environment, operates on these stimuli, stores the results in memory, and permits retrieval of previously stored info.

temporal auditory processing

deals with the ability to perceive the brief acoustic events that comprise speech sounds and track changes in these events as they happen quickly in the speech of other people

auditory discrimination

skills that enable children to identify differences between sound stimuli

auditory attention

ability to ignore irrelevant acoustic stimuli and focus on important info.

auditory memory

refers to ability to mentally store speech stimuli

auditory rate

refers to ability to process acoustic stimuli that are presented at different rates or speeds

auditory sequencing

ability to identify the temporal order in which auditory stimuli occur