slp 481a midterm

lang

• A complex and dynamic system of conventional symbols used for thought and expression

• governed by a set of rules and is both arbitrary and conventional

• 4 modalities: speaking, listening, writing, and reading

• 5 domains:morphology, phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics

• It is expressive and receptive and deals with competence vs performance

Ex: expressed through reading and writing and manually (ASL)

Phonology

• The study of how speech sounds are organized and combined in any given language

Ex: The difference between peace and peach. Phonemes are important and can change meaning

morphology

• A system that governs the structure of words and the construction of word forms

Ex: free morpheme is “book” while bound morpheme is “books”

syntax

• System governing word order and combination of words to form sentences and the relationships among the elements within a sentence

Ex: At 24 months, a child asks “Doggie outside?” and by 36 months the child says “Is the dog outside?”

Content/Semantics

• The system that governs the meaning of words and sentences

Ex: At 11 months old, a child calls her father da-da and calls everyone else “man”. The child learns the meaning of the word only for her father

use/pragmatics

• The system that combines the language components described above in functional and socially appropriate communication

Ex: Difference in formality when talking to a friend and talking to a teacher

4 modalities

• The narrowed process in which language is conveyed

• reading, writing, speaking, and listening

lang disorder

• impairment in comprehension, speaking, listening, reading, writing, and understanding causing an affect on one’s daily life and their learning curriculum

Ex: A deficit in expressive and/ or receptive language

lang difference

• variations of a symbol system used by a group of individuals that reflects a shared regional, social, or cultural and ethical factors

Ex: A dialect is seen as a language difference because it is mutually intelligible

Differentiate between language competence and language performance

• Language competence is what is known about language by a language user

• Language performance is how language is used in actual speech production and comprehension-a speaker’s actual use of language in real situations

evid-based practice

• refers to the process that practitioners use to evaluate whether a clinical practice, strategy, program, curriculum, or intervention is backed by rigorous evidence (Clinical Expertise)

• Whether a practice is appropriate for a particular individual (Stakeholder Perspective)

• It combines internal evidence which is the client and the SLPs personal expertise and external evidence which is well designed and controlled experimental data

What are some parallels between the two divergent paths to language acquisition (analytical and gestalt language processors)?

• Both paths aim for the same end goal — effective communication and flexible language use

• Both progress through identifiable developmental stages.

• Both rely on detecting and reproducing linguistic patterns

• Both depend heavily on rich, meaningful language input.

• Both show understanding before flexible use.

• Repetition helps consolidate learning.

• With proper support, both can converge toward similar mature language use

Describe the descriptive developmental approach to language analysis/assessment

• focuses on teaching rules, techniques, and principles to help acquire and use information across and broad range of situations and settings

• To understand how a child’s language is organized

• To guide goal setting for therapy or instruction

• To track progress along a developmental continuum

Why do children acquire language?

• Has both biological and social factors

• For survival → communicating wants and needs while also maintaining social connections with others

• Children acquire language because their brains are built for it, their hearts are motivated by connection, and their worlds require communication to grow, learn, and belong.

how do children acquire lang

• Children develop language through different theories that explain how they learn

• Some say children are born with the ability to learn language (nature)

• Others say they learn language through social interaction and thinking skills (interactionist)

• Another view is that children learn language from their environment by imitating and being reinforced (nurture)

• All these theories work together to explain how children learn to communicate

Why is autism not a language disorder

• A language disorder is when an individual has difficulty processing and/or expressing language in any of the modalities

• An individual can have autism but can have no language disorder

• The same can be said vice versa

• Though those with autism can have a difficult time communicating, it does not necessarily mean that they have a language disorder.

DLD

• A neurodevelopmental communication disorder that interferes with learning, understanding, and using language

• It is receptive and expressive.

Ex: Common medical conditions associated with DLD include ASD, hearing impairment, acquired language impairment

lang diff vs dialect

• A language difference is a variation of a symbol system used by a group of individuals that is determined by shared regional, social, or cultural/ethical factors, does not need to be fixed

• dialect is a form of speaking that has distinct syntactic, semantic, and phonetic features spoken by a particular region/ goup that is usually mutually intelligible.

How is language acquisition different from language learning?

• Language acquisition is an unconscious process by which humans acquire capacity to perceive and comprehend language, and produce words and sentences to communicate (passive process) - one time process

• language learning is the process of gaining conscious knowledge of language through instruction (active process) - life time process

What are the three points on the language acquisition continuum?

1. Nature-oriented (Biological/innate)

2. Interactionist/middle ground

3. Nurture (Learning/environment)

Nature-oriented (Biological/innate)

Nativism = language is biologically hardwired. Children are born with the ability to acquire language

Interactionist/middle ground

• Cognitive theory = language reflects broader cognitive development. Children must understand concepts before expressing them

• Social interactionist theory = language develops through social interaction and scaffolding. Emphasizes zone of proximal development (ZPD)

• Emergentist = language “emerges” from the interaction between biology and environment. Children build grammar from input frequency, salience, and social use

Nurture (Learning/environment)

Behaviorist = language is learned through imitation, reinforcement, and conditioning. Focus on stimulus-response associations and shaping

Define Brown’s morphemes

• a framework which helps provide an understanding and prediction of the path that normal expressive language development in English usually takes, in terms of morphology and syntax

• used extensively by SLPs when they perform structural analysis of a sample of a child’s spoken language

Name three of Brown’s morphemes with examples

Stage I: Semantic combinations; Two word utterances

Stage II MLU ing verbs: "Boy running", Prepositions "on box", Plural S "see two kitties"

Stage III MLU, irregular past tense verbs, "I went home", Possessive's "That Daddy's Car"’

Stage IV: Uncontrollable copula articles (a, the), regular past tense and Regular third person verbs

Stage V: Irregular third person verbs

Define the general concept of “theory of learning”

Theory of learning includes behaviorism, nativism, cognitivism, and social interactionist theories that help provide different frameworks for understanding how speech and language are acquired and are applied to therapy.

Define the general concept of “language acquisition theory”

• Important principles that used to identify children’s language challenges and develop intervention programs

• important to recognize that one theory cannot explain the complex process of communication, but theory makes an understanding how language develops and how intervention helps children that struggle to communicate.

Ex: Debate of nature vs nurture, Behaviorism, Constructivist Theory, Social Interactionist Theory, and Emergentist Theory

What is one language acquisition theory that resonates with you?

How does MLU correlate with age in children?

• MLU can show if a child is in the stage where they are intentionally using morphemes to construct words (MLU morpheme) or are at the stage where their linguistic productivity can be measured (MLU word)

• Up to age 5, MU matches the child’s age. If a child’s MLU does not correlate with their age.

Ex: an 8 year old having an MLU of 4, then it may be indicative of a language deficit.

Why is “unit of meaning” important in calculating MLU?

If we do not identify what counts as a unit of meaning, we may count stuttering or false starts as part of our calculations

Analytical language processor

• A focus on referential use of utterances (labeling objects) and semantic relationships of language

• Basic units of language are single words. Language use is generalized to relevant objects and events quickly

• Language is productive and generative early on in the language acquisition process

• Early language acquisition moves from single words to two and three word utterances. Meaning is linguistic

• More common in girls.

assessment

• Ongoing procedures used by practitioners to identify a client’s personal needs for care, used to form an intervention plan based on the data gatherer

ex: normative assessment (individual compared to peers), criterion-referenced assessment (individual compared to a set standard), and dynamic assessment (continuous assessment for individuals from nonmajority group)

Criterion referenced assessment

• test instruments in which the individual’s performance is compared with an accepted standard (such as developmental norm) or a predetermined skill level (e.g, academic progress monitoring the documents student’s reading development)

• answers clinical question: How does this child perform a particular communicative or academic task?

Ex: progress monitoring can be used to document a child’s early print abilities, including the ability to recognize print in the environment and enjoy shared reading.

dialect

• A form of speaking that has distinct syn- tactic, semantic, and phonetic features

• Dialects within a language are usually comprehensible by those who speak other dialects.

Ex: "I got yall's tests right here"

Emergentism Language Acquisition Theory

• Language learning is an interconnected system that is more than one’s genetic makeup, the environment, or the neural connections that develops as a child is exposed to language

• Underscores the need for children to be actively engaged in their environment

Example: A child learns to extract specific language features because they detect certain consistent patterns in spoken language.

evid-based practice

The process of using current, high quality research evidence, combined with clinical expertise and stakeholder (client/family) perspectives, to guide clinical decisions about assessment, intervention, or other practices

Gestalt language processor: (Intonation babies)

• Focuses on intonation and social interaction structure of language

• Basic units of language may be words, phrases, or complete sentences. Multiword phrases function as single words but are used meaningfully/intentionally

• Language use remains specific to situational contexts for longer periods of time

• More common in boys and neurodivergent children.

Grammatical structures (noun, verb, article, preposition, adjective, adverb, conjunction)

Noun: used to identify any of a class of people, places and things

Verb: describe an action, state, or occurrence

Article: a word- like “a”, “an”, and “the”- that modifies a noun and indicates whether that noun is a specific or unspecific

Preposition: a word that connects a noun, pronoun, or a phrase to other words in a sentence, showing a relationship of time, place, direction, or manner

Adjective: a word that modifies or describes a noun or pronoun, providing more information about its characteristics

Adverb: a word that modifies a verb, adjective, or another adverb, providing more information about how, when, where, and to what extent something is done

Conjunction: a word that connects words, phrases, and clauses.

intervention

• personalized plan or goal based on the student's specific results, strategies to enhance a child's language skills

ex: Enhanced Milieu Teaching, Enhanced Conversational Recast Training

lang acquisition

• unconscious process by which humans acquire capacity to perceive and comprehend language, and produce words and sentences to communicate

• A passive process in contrast to language learning which is an active process.

lang acq bloom & lahey 

A model that outlines the components of language and their interactions focusing on form, content, and use

• form: phonology, morphology, syntax

• content: semantics

• use: pragmatics

lang acq textbook

• Important principles that used to identify children’s language challenges and develop intervention programs

• It is important to recognize that one theory cannot explain the complex process of communication, but theory makes an understanding how language develops and how intervention helps children that struggle to communicate.

lang learning

process of gaining conscious knowledge of language through instruction

lang sample

an observational evaluation that includes observing the speech and language characteristics of a child actively communicating.

Language sample analysis

• A criterion referenced assessment where the child’s output is compared to developmental data

• It provides information needed to develop intervention goals and has been proposed as the best means to identify children with language impairment

• MLU is the most used LSA procedure, data drawn.

Lexical diversity

the richness of one’s vocabulary, the number of unique words in one’s vocabulary

Linguistic competence

what is known about language by a language user

lang performance 

how language is used in actual speech production and comprehension-a speaker’s actual use of language in real situations

morpheme

• smallest unit of meaning

Ex: plural s

Nativist Language Acquisition Theory

A theory connected to writings of Noam Chomsky that proposes that children have an innate ability to learn language and language capacity is present at birth

Qualitative features of a language sample (two)

• prosody (inflection tone of the way you say things)

• cohesion/coherence (organization)

• pragmatics (social use of language), quality of vocab.

Quantitative features of a language sample (two)

• lexical diversity (richness of internal vocabulary/ total vs different words)

• MLU (morpheme vs word, 50 word expressive vocabulary (once kids reach 50 they can make 2 word combinations) verbs per sentence

Semantic relations

early word combinations, meaning is derived from the word and context together

simple sent

• A sentence consisting of one clause, with a single subject and predicate

Ex: I like cats

Social Interactionism Language Acquisition Theory:

• Language development is both biological and social and is influenced by the desire to communicate with others

• Language emerges from and is dependent upon social interaction and favors the role of nurture in nature vs nurture

• Parents provide support for their child's learning by shaping their language and thought.

Example: Child says “you drinking juice?” Adults may respond saying “Mommy is drinking coffee, it is hot!”

Utterance

a spoken word, statement, or vocal sound

Morphemes per utterance

average number of morphemes within a language sample, need all 14, can see if they have all 14

words per utterance

average number of words within a language sample: unit of meaning is word, 50 utterances

Explain why a language difference is different from a language disorder:

• language difference is mutually intelligible, does not need to be fixed, and has nothing wrong with it

• A language disorder needs intervention and many assessments to determine if it is a disorder

• Disproportionally is something that many kids face, being underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed for special education

• Language disorder impaired comprehension and expression of all 4 modalities

• language difference is a dialectal difference, need to check for L1 dialect patterns

• Disorders should be fixed while differences can be helped.

Explain why understanding the features of a dialect is important in analyzing language samples

• Know features of dialect to know if errors in language sample is an error or language difference instead of a disorder

• Ex: use of copula. Disproportionality persists in special education, kids are being over and under identified for special education due to dialect or language differences

• Rough to handle, interruptive behavior can be overidentified. Quiet kids can be unidentified

• Disproportionality because SLP are not making evidence based decisions.

Explain why number of total words and number of different words are important features of a language sample

• Number of different words allows the assessor to determine whether the individual demonstrates appropriate levels of vocabulary diversity in a language sample

• The number of total words assess the word production by the child in the language sample, even if the word is produced multiple times

• Shows the relationship between lexical diversity and MLU.

Define the five stages of language development as discussed in the textbook

Early pragmatics: early communicative behavior (eye contact, nonverbal turn-taking)

Vocabulary: single-word utterance (agents, actions-drive, modifiers)

Early word combinations: semantic relations (actions+object=throw ball)

Morphosyntax: building more meaning with word and word pieces (are you going to the party?)

Discourse: advanced pragmatics (sarcasm)

Syntax & Semantics interact

syntax governs word order and semantics govern meaning of words and because we know meaning of words, we put it in the correct grammatical order

Ex: is this mine vs this is mine

Phonology & Morphology interact

• phonemes' smallest meaning of sound builds the morphemes that we use in conversation.

Ex: /i/ n /g/ with run making running

Morphology & Semantics interact 

• semantics governs meaning of words and sentences if you add a morphological marker it will change the meaning of the sentence

Ex: dog runs fast vs dog runs faster

Semantics & Pragmatics interact

• The meaning of the sent can depend on the intonation

ex: I love that I spilled coffee on myself, we don’t know they actually love it because of pragmatics.

Phonology & Syntax interact

• order of phonemes brings meaning, each phoneme by itself has no meaning, order of words brings meaning

• Each word by itself has no meaning. What matters is order for both