LING exam 2: child lang aquisition

children are born:

with a biological capacity for language and ability to learn grammar

universal grammar

set of constraints of what a possible human language could be

poverty of stimulus

when kids know language ideas they could not have learned

end of critical period

brain loses plasticity after puberty so it’s difficult to learn language

perceptual attunement/narrowing

kids become attuned during 1st year

sound acquisition order

1. vowels (before consonants)

2. stops

3. labials

4. liquids, the th sounds, and s & z

stressed vs unstressed syllable retention in kids

• stressed mored salent = more likely to be retained

• unstressed less likely except for in final position

language preference

show preference by 2 days old

when does babbling start

at 6 months

what is the purpose of babbling

lets child experiment with and gain control over articulators

• independent of particular language

world-wide sounds vs time of acquisition

early sounds tend to be found across more languages

systemic deletion of certain sounds

simplify, generally:

1. reduction of consonant clusters

2. deletion of final consonants

4 common kid substitutions

1. stopping

2. fronting

3. fliding

4. denasalizatiot

what is stopping

replacing fricative w/ corresponding stop

what is fronting

moving articulation place forward

what is gliding

replacement of a liquid by a glide

what is denasalization

replacement of nasal stop by a non nasal counterpart

when does the one word stage happen

12-18 months

what is the one word stage

using one word to express meaning associated with/ entire sentences

what are holophrases

the most informative word of a sentence

• the word used in one word stage

how is comprehension in the one word stage

comprehension is greater than production

• can understand multiword sentences

what age is the two word stage

18-24 months

what is the two word stage

positional differences associated with/ category distinctions are not manifested, but proper word order of two words

what age is telegraphic stage

24 - 30 months

what is the telegraphic stage

emergence of elaborate phrase structure but absence of bound morphemes and non lexical categories

yes - no question

early on kids just use rising intonation to indicate questions

• delayed inversion of auxiliary verbs even after acquiring

wh questions

emerge 2-4 years

passive sentences

undergoes before agent

• kids struggle to interpret (not found in everyday speech)

canonical sentence strategy

kids expect 1st NP in sentence to refer to agent

• why struggle with passive

antecedent

a structurally higher NP

C-commands

what a structurally higher NP does to a structurally lower item

word order and kids

kids good at using it to interpret sentences

kids have stages in

1. utterance length

2. development of complexity in syntax operations

at 5 years olds

kids produce complex sentences

at 7-9 years old

kids acquire passive voice