Language Acquisition in Development

Flashcards covering key vocabulary related to language acquisition and development.

Language

A system of thinking and communicating that combines arbitrary symbols in a rule-based way to generate meaning.

Phonemes

The basic building blocks out of which words are constructed.

Syntax

The grammatical rules that we follow to construct meaning from words.

Semantics

The meaning that we derive from complete sentences.

Pragmatics

The extra-linguistic inferences we make from the manner in which we say sentences.

Fast Mapping

A process where children map a word to a meaning after only a single exposure.

Overgeneralization

A phenomenon where children apply syntactic rules to words that they shouldn’t, like saying 'eated' or 'goed'.

Bilingualism

Being proficient in speaking and comprehending two (or more) languages.

Mutual Exclusivity

The assumption that every object has only a single name, aiding vocabulary acquisition.

Statistical Learning

A learning mechanism that identifies which things tend to co-occur together very often.