Language Acquisition Practice Flashcards

Comprehensive practice flashcards covering introductory language acquisition theories, standardized tests, experimental methods, and typical/atypical development patterns based on lecture notes.

Standardised Tests

Tests designed to be administered, scored, and interpreted in a consistent way provide a broad picture of child language development.

Norm-referenced

A characteristic of a test meaning a child's performance can be compared to a group of same-aged peers.

CELF-P2

Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals – Preschool; a comprehensive assessment of language abilities in young children.

CELF-P2 Screener

A shorter version of the CELF-P2 used to quickly identify if further full assessment is needed.

Sentence structure assessment

Evaluating syntax, often by asking a child to point to a picture matching a sentence like "The boy is sleepy."

Word structure assessment

Evaluating morphology, a component assessed in the CELF-P2 full assessment.

Expressive vocabulary

A language domain assessed by CELF-P2 focusing on the words a child can produce.

Concepts and following directions

A specific subtest in the CELF-P2 evaluating comprehension of instructions.

Recalling sentences

A task in the CELF-P2 where a child must repeat a sentence spoken by the examiner.

Word classes

The categorisation of words into groups, measured in the CELF-P2 assessment.

PPVT

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test; measures receptive vocabulary or the words a child understands.

PPVT Administration Time

Takes approximately $20–30$ minutes to complete.

PPVT Format

The child is shown four pictures and points to the one matching the word spoken by the examiner.

Vocabulary production

The ability to speak or generate words; specifically not assessed by the PPVT.

TEGI

Test of Early Grammatical Impairment; assesses grammatical abilities specifically related to language impairments.

Rice and Wexler

The researchers who developed the Test of Early Grammatical Impairment (TEGI).

Grammatical morphemes

Small units of language like "-ed" or "-s" that are targets for assessment in the TEGI.

Third person singular -s

One of the two specific grammatical forms targeted by the TEGI.

Past tense -ed

A specific form targeted by the TEGI to identify grammatical weaknesses.

TEGI Administration Time

Takes approximately $10–15$ minutes.

Corpus Data

A collection of language samples, such as recordings and transcripts of children's natural speech.

CHILDES

Child Language Data Exchange System; the most widely used database for child language corpora.

Naturalistic language data

Information showing how children use language in real-world contexts, provided by corpus data.

Ungrammaticality detection

A limitation of corpus data because spontaneous speech cannot reveal what children consider to be incorrect.

Experimental Approaches

Methods used when spontaneous speech does not provide enough information to investigate specific language knowledge.

Language input control

A feature of experimental methods where researchers determine what the child hears to observe specific responses.

Comprehension vs. Production

Comprehension examines what children understand, while production examines what they can actively say.

Picture Selection

An experimental method where a child hears a word or sentence and chooses the matching picture.

Act-out Task

A method where a child uses toys or props to demonstrate their interpretation of a sentence.

Temporal relationships

Meanings related to time, such as "before" and "after," often measured using act-out tasks.

Lead-in activities

Tasks used by researchers to make experimental instructions feel meaningful and natural to the child.

TVJT

Truth-Value Judgement Task; used to investigate the meanings children assign to sentences compared to adults.

TVJT Procedure

Researchers act out a story, a puppet makes a statement, and the child decides if the statement is right or wrong.

TVJT Age Range

Commonly used with children aged $3–5$ years.

Eye-Tracking

Measures where children look while hearing language to investigate real-time processing.

Processing Speed

A measure of how quickly a child handles language, which can be assessed via eye-tracking.

Elicited Imitation

A production method where a child repeats a sentence spoken by the experimenter.

Deletion error

An informative error in imitation where a child simplifies a sentence, such as "He rake the leaves" instead of "raked."

Substitution error

A grammatical mistake where one word is replaced by another, such as "I want he to eat" for "I want him to eat."

Word order change

An error such as "Why he can't go?" produced during imitation tasks.

Elicited Production

Encouraging a child to generate a specific sentence structure in a natural context, often using games or puppets.

Logical Problem of Language Acquisition

The observation that children acquire complex grammar despite limited, imperfect input; also known as Plato's problem.

Negative Knowledge

Knowledge of what is ungrammatical in a language, such as recognizing "*The brown big dog" is incorrect.

Generative Approach

A theory associated with Noam Chomsky proposing that humans are born with innate linguistic knowledge.

Universal Grammar (UG)

A built-in mental system of principles and parameters that guides language acquisition.

Usage-Based Approach

A constructivist theory arguing language is learned from input using general cognitive mechanisms rather than innate grammar.

Constructions

Form–meaning pairings learned from experience, ranging from words to fully abstract patterns.

Corrective Feedback

Information provided to a child regarding the accuracy of their language; its effectiveness is a key debate.

Brown & Hanlon (1970)

A classic study finding that parents rarely provide direct grammatical corrections to their children.

Meaning errors

Situations where a message is unclear; these are more likely to be corrected by parents than grammar errors.

Pronunciation errors

Speech mistakes like saying "evelator" for "elevator" that often receive parental correction.

Expansions

Indirect feedback where a parent repeats a child's utterance in a more complete or grammatical form.

Clarification questions

Requests for the child to rephrase when an utterance is difficult to understand.

Noisy feedback

Term by Marcus (1993) describing feedback that is inconsistent and not a reliable indicator of an error.

Positive evidence

The grammatical language input children hear, consisting of well-formed utterances.

Negative evidence

Information given to a learner indicating that a particular form or sentence is ungrammatical.

Direct Negative Evidence

Explicit corrections such as "Don't say 'goed'; say 'went'."

Indirect Negative Evidence

Subtle cues like repetitions or expansions that may signal an error to the child.

Language Faculty

The inborn mental capacity that shapes grammar development according to UG theory.

Principles

Innate, universal constraints on language structure that apply to all human languages.

Hierarchical structure

A language principle stating that sentences are structured in phrases rather than simple word strings.

Parameters

Language-specific "switches" or points of variation (like word order) set during acquisition.

Primary Linguistic Data

The language input or "what children hear" that feeds into the Universal Grammar system.

Pro-drop parameter

A setting that determines whether a language allows subject dropping (like Italian) or requires full subjects (like English).

Poverty of the Stimulus

The argument that linguistic input is too impoverished to explain the complex grammar children acquire.

Domain-general mechanisms

Learning abilities used for language and other cognitive tasks, such as analogy and categorisation.

Analogy

Mapping new utterances onto known patterns to identify "slots" in expressions.

Distributional Analysis

Tracking where words appear and co-occur to identify syntactic roles and categories.

Statistical learning

Frequency tracking of linguistic items to detect regularities in the input.

Item-based learning

The earliest stage of language in constructivist theory where children learn specific, memorised patterns.

Pivot schemas

An early stage involving limited word combinations like "more + X" or "no + X."

Token frequency

How often a specific linguistic item appears in the input.

Type frequency

The variety of different items that can occur within a specific construction pattern.

Entrenchment

Reinforcing frequent patterns in the mind, making incorrect alternatives less likely.

Preemption

When a correct form found in input blocks a child from using a competing incorrect overgeneralised form.

Vocabulary spurt

A sudden "naming explosion" said to occur around $18$ months after a child learns about $50$ words.

Ganger & Brent (2004)

A study showing that most children's vocabulary growth is gradual rather than sudden.

Logistic growth

Representing a true vocabulary spurt; found in only $4$ out of $10$ children in the Ganger & Brent study.

Context-bound words

Early words used only in specific situations, like saying "duck" only when knocking a toy off a bathtub.

Noun advantage

The finding that nouns dominate early vocabularies because concrete objects are easier to identify than actions.

Nelson (1973)

Research finding that children with $20–50$ words have approximately $45\%$ nouns and $3\%$ verbs.

Lexical Acquisition

The process of learning both the sound pattern (form) and the concept (meaning) of a word.

Gavagai Problem

The philosophical problem representing the infinite possible meanings of a new word when pointed at (e.g., a rabbit).

Induction

The traditional view that children test hypotheses against experience to learn words.

Cross-situational word learning

Tracking word-object pairings across multiple situations to identify correct meanings statistically.

Smith & Yu (2008)

A study demonstrating that infant as young as $12$ months can use statistical info to learn word-object pairings.

Propose-But-Verify

The theory by Trueswell et al. (2013) that children test one meaning hypothesis at a time rather than tracking many.

Syntactic Bootstrapping

Using the grammatical structure of a sentence to infer the meaning of a word, particularly verbs.

Gillette et al. (1999)

Found that identifying unknown verbs improves dramatically when syntactic information is provided.

Markman

The researcher associated with identifying lexical biases that reduce ambiguity in word learning.

Whole Object Assumption

The bias where children assume a new word refers to an entire object rather than parts like an ear or tail.

Taxonomic Assumption

The bias where children assume a word refers to category members (beetle) rather than thematic relations (spider web).

Mutual Exclusivity

The assumption that each object has only one label, helping children learn parts and properties.

Continuous account

The Generative view that children and adults share the same underlying grammar system.

Discontinuous account

The Usage-based view that child grammar is qualitatively different from and builds into adult grammar.

Finiteness

Whether a verb is marked for tense and agreement and can stand as a full independent clause.

Finite verbs

Verbs marked for tense/agreement that can form complete sentences, e.g., "She went home."

Non-finite verbs

Verbs lacking tense/agreement that cannot stand alone, e.g., "to eat" or "eating."

Radford’s Small Clause Hypothesis

Proposes early child sentences only contain a Verb Phrase (VP) and lack higher functional structures like IP or TP.

Optional Infinitive (OI) Stage

A developmental period (ages $2–3$) where children optionally use finite and non-finite verbs in main clauses.