child development chapter 10

Language

1. system for expressing or communicating thoughts and feelings through symbols (speech sounds, writing, signs)

Phonology

1.  the sound system of the language. Sounds that are used and how they may be combined

2. Ex) in English we have sp, ba, and ar but the sounds zx and qp do not occur

Phenome

the basic unit of sound

Ex) c in cat and k in ski, the k sound is a single phenome

Morphology

1. the units of meaning involved in word formation. Rules of morphology dictate the way meaningful units—morphemes—can be combined into words. Not all morphemes are words by themselves

2. Ex) help is one morpheme and helper has two morphemes (one who helps)

   1. So not all morphemes are words themselves (-pre, -tion, and -ing

Syntax

 the ways in which words are combined to form acceptable phrases and sentences

1. Ex) Alex paid tomas or alex was paid by tomas, you know who did the paying and who was paid in each case because you have a syntactic understanding of these sentence structures 

2. Syntax varies by language

   1. Ex) in english we put adjectives before nouns but its opposite for spanish 

Semantics

the meaning of words and sentence

1. Every word has a set of semantic features, or required attributes related to meaning

   1. Ex) girl and women share many semantic features but differ semantically in regard to age

   2. Ex) the bicycle talked the child into buying a candy bar

      1. syntactically(grammarly) correct but not semantically because bicycles don’t talk 

Pragmatics

1. : the appropriate use of language in different contexts.

2. Ex) take turns speaking in discussion, adjusting loudness depending on the amount of background noise, speaking formally vs informally

Telegraphic speech

1. the use of short and precise nouns and verbs without grammatical forms such as articles, auxiliary verbs, and other connectives 

fast mapping

• involves children's ability to make an initial connection between a word and its referent after only limited exposure to the word

• Documented as early as 24 months

• Exposure to word multiple times over several days has a greater chance of sticking than being shown once 

• Use working hypotheses

  1. Ex) parent says bus, child assumes the parent is talking about the large vehicles because the child already has a label for the smaller vehicles “cars”

  2. Ex) refers to whole objects than parts, the w

phonics approach

 reading instruction should focus on teaching basic rules for translating written symbols into sounds

Whole language approach

1. teaches children to recognize whole words or sentences and then use context to guess the meaning

   1. reading instruction should parallel children's natural language learning

   2. Children should be given material in its complete form i.e. stories and poems so they learn to understand languages communicative function

Chomsky’s Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

1. Enables detection of certain features and rules of language

2. Theoretical construct, not physical structure

3. Cannot explain entirety of language acquisition

4. Baby’s are born with some language and grammar

   1. We may not have the words but we have the universal understanding of grammar

Child-directed speech

talking slower or at a higher pitch

Recasting

rephrasing something child said in fully grammatical sentence

Expanding

 restating what the child has said in linguistically sophisticated form

Labeling

identifying the names of objects