Term
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Definition
| The system for combining words into sentences |
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Term
Phonologically less stressed
Semantically less important to Cognitive limitations (concepts conveyed are more abstract)
Harder to define ostensively (e.g., can’t “point to” an ING or THE) |
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Definition
| Why do children preferentially leave out grammatical morphemes? |
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Term
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Definition
| Allows for new members (can make new ones)nouns, verbs, and adjectives |
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Term
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Definition
| Does not allow for new members articles, auxiliary verbs, prepositions |
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Term
| Brown’s 14 Grammatical Morphemes |
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Definition
Present Progressive (-ing)
In
On
Plural (-s)
Past Irregular (e.g., came, went)
Possessive (-‘s)
Uncontractible Copula (am, is, are, was, were)
Articles (a, the)
Past Regular (-d)
Third-Person Regular (-s; e.g., she talks)
Third-Person Irregular (e.g., does, has)
Uncontractible Auxiliary (am, is, are, has, have)
Contractible Copula (‘m, ‘s, ‘re)
Contractible Auxiliary (‘m, ‘s, ‘re when combined with –ing; ‘ve, ‘s when combined with a past participle such as has been) |
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Term
| Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) |
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Definition
| A common measure of grammatical development. It is the average length of the utterances in a sample of spontaneous speech, usually counted in terms of the number of morphemes |
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Term
Stage 1 (MLU = 1 to 2). Children combine words, but essentially no grammatical morphemes
Stage 2 (MLU = 2 to 2.5). Grammatical morphemes start coming in
Stage 3 (MLU = 2.5 – 3). Children begin forming non-declarative sentences (questions, negatives)
Stage 4 (MLU = 3-4) More complex sentence types added
Stage 5 (MLU = 4 to 4.5). Embedded sentences |
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Definition
| Correspondence between MLU & children’s utterances, 5 stages |
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Term
| Acquisition of syntactic categories |
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Definition
a. Semantic categories = (agent, object, action)
b. Syntactic categories = (N, V, etc) |
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Term
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Definition
| Children begin to figure out grammar by assigning grammatical structure to sentences based on their meaning. ii. Words for people, places, and things as Nouns |
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Term
| Prosodic bootstrapping (phonological bootstrapping) |
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Definition
i. Children use phonological & prosodic cues to break into grammatical structure
ii. Nouns tend to have first-syllable stress, while verbs have second-syllable stress
1. record (say it as a noun and a verb..note the difference) |
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Term
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Definition
| a. Noun, Verb, Adjective, Preposition, Determiner(article), Sentence (aka complementizer phrased) |
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Term
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Definition
| a. A series of actions in which the D-structure is transformed into the s-structure |
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Term
| syntactically based grammar |
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Definition
| A grammar in which rules operate over formal categories, such as Noun and Verb. These formal categories are not defined in terms of their meaning or their communicative function. |
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Term
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Definition
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Term
| SAI (Subject-auxiliary inversion) |
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Definition
i. Move the first aux element to the sentence initial position
1. John will see Bill tomorrow.
2. Will John see Bill tomorrow? |
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Term
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Definition
| Children have syntactic categories from the beginning, they just tend to produce nouns that are agents and object etc. What children say (their performance) is only a tiny fraction of what they know (competence). |
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Term
| Continuity acquisitional theories (Iceberg) |
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Definition
| Children's grammars are fundamentally the same as adults |
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Term
| 21. Discontinuity acquisitional theories (tadpole) |
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Definition
a. Children's grammar mature or unfold over time based on a genetically pre-specified, linguistically-specific biological program
i. How tadpoles become frogs! |
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Term
| Maturational theories of language acquisition |
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Definition
Syntactic categories appear later as the result of biological maturation
i. Early speech displays a semantic to syntactic system as a result of maturational processes. |
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Term
| Optimality Theory & Syntax Acquisition |
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Definition
o Languages share the same constraints
Languages differ in the ranking of the constraints |
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