Chapter 6: Development of Language and Symbol Use

comprehension

understanding what others say

production

process of speaking

generative

system in which a finite set of words can be combined to generate an infinite number of sentences

phonemes

smallest units of meaningful sound

morphemes

smallest units of meaning in a language

syntax

rules specifying how words from different categories can be combined

pragmatics

understanding how language is typically used in a specific cultural context

dialects

particular form of a language, often based in a specific region on social group

infant-directed speech (IDS)

distinctive mode of speech used when speaking to infants and toddlers

prosody

characteristic rhythm and intonational patterns with which a language is spoken

categorical perceptipon

perception of phonemes as belonging to discrete categories

voice onset time (VOT)

the length of time between when air passes through the lipids and when the vocal cords start vibrating

word segmentation

discovering where the words begin and end in fluent speech

distributional properties

in any language, certain sounds are more likely to occur together than others are

babbling

repetitive consonant-vowel sequences or hand movements

overextension

overly broad interpretation of the meaning of a word

underextension

overly narrow interpretation of the meaning of a word

pragmatic cues

aspects of the social context used for word learning

cross-situational word learning

determining word meanings by tracking the correlations between labels and meanings across scenes and contexts

syntactic bootstrapping

the strategy of using grammatical structure to infer the meaning of a new word

telegraphic speech

short utterances that leave nonessential words

overregularization

speech errors in which kids treat irregular forms of words as if they were regular

narratives

storylike structured descriptions of past events

universal grammar

proposed set of highly abstract structures that are common to all languages

connectionism

computational modeling approach that emphasizes the simultaneous activity of numerous interconnected processing units

dual representation

treating a symbolic artifact both as a real object and as a symbol for something other than itself