language acquisition ch 8 review

phonological processes allow a child to simplify his use of speech sounds. consider the following sentence and identify all of the types of processes he is using. The sentence should be:My grandma is coming over for lunch. The child says "my gama is coming ober for yunt."

Consonant cluster reduction, stopping, and gliding.

Describe the changes in consonant cluster development from their initial use to accurate use of clusters in words.

Consonant clusters emerge as speech sounds become more stable. Clusters made up of stops, liquids, and glides emerge first, followed by fricatives and two-phoneme clusters produced earlier than three-phoneme clusters. Clusters that occur at the ends of words also emerge gradually, and the addition of morpheme /s/ on plural and possessive words is one common example.

Explain how consonants and vowels are classified in traditional phonetics, and according to distinctive features.

Consonants and vowels can be described in at least two ways. Traditional phonetics describes each speech sound by production characteristics that include place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing. This allows us to conceptualize where and how each sound is made within the oral cavity. Distinctive features provide more detail about how sounds are made for a more precise description of how sounds are similar to and different from on another.

Manner of articulation

Description of how a consonant sound is produced, such as a stop, fricative, or nasal.

Dialects of English have variations in all the components of language. Which of the following statements is true?

Dialects are rule governed variations of languages and no dialect is inherently superior to any other dialect.

Marginal babbling

Early form of babbling in which an infant strings together single consonants and vowels that are made in a row, such as "a,a,a" and "da, da, da" in the expansion stage. 5-10 months

threefold classification system for vowels.

-height of tongue -location of primary resonance - tension of the tongue

Threefold classification system for consonants.

-place of articulation - manner of articulation -voicing

development of speech sounds in the prelinguistic and one-word stages.

-quasi- resonants nuclei -fully resonants nuclei -vocal play -marginal babbling -jargon -first words

Jargon

5-10 months up to 18 months

Define phonology

A broad term that encompasses the study of the sound system of speech and its role as a component of the language system.

infants are very expressive during their first year, but they are considered prelinguistic. What behaviors are evident during the prelinguistic period?

A child uses non-speech sounds, then adds an array of speech sounds during babbling, jargon, and the use of protowords.

First words

A childs initial words that convey meaning in a purposeful, consistent, and specific way. around 1 year old

Define allophone

A variation of a phoneme that does not change the character of it.

regional dialect

A variety of language used by people living in a restricted geographic area and distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation from other regional variations.

Differentiate between dialect and accent.

All speakers use a dialect of a language and have an accent. A dialect is learned from the cultural and social norms of the speaking community and it influences all aspects of the English language including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. An accent is the specific characteristics of how the language sounds and when it is produced, most notably the consonants, vowels, and the stress on syllables.

Intelligibility is the gal for children learning to speak their language. Recall the percentages of intelligibility that are expected for an American English - speaking children between 1 and 2 years, between 2 and 4 years, and beyond 4 years.

Intelligibility is about 25% to 50% between 1 and 2 years, it increases to about 75% between 2 and 4 years, and it is about 90% beyond 4 years of age.

Define natural and marked sounds, and discuss why this distinction is important for understanding the development of the sound system.

Natural sounds occur first in the speech sound repertoire of children. They are easy to produce and they exist in many languages. Marked sounds occur later because they are more difficult to produce. They are often particular to specific languages. This is important because it allows us to predict the pathway children take in their acquisition of speech sounds and to anticipate problems when children are delayed.

Cross-sectional and longitudinal data about sound acquisition reveal trends about speech development. What is the best description of these trends?

Some sounds occur in the speech of children before others, but their is large variability in the order of mastery of speech sounds. Intelligibility is the most important goal regarding phoneme acquisition.

What accounts for the differences in pronunciation of words between Spanish English and Standard American English.

Spanish contains 18 consonants and 5 vowels, wheras standard american english contains 24 consonants and 12 vowels.

speech sounds within one-word utterances have what characteristics as children near the end of the single-word phase?

Speech sounds represent the different classes of sounds, more consonants occur in the beginning of words as compared to the end of words, and the child uses some word templates of frozen forms to learn words as whole units.

Distinctive features added the concept of natural and marked sounds to the discussion about how children acquire the sound system of any particular language. What do these concepts add to our view of development?

The concept that all languages have natural and marked sounds supports the theory that some linguistic universals apply to our understandings about language acquisition. In addition, these concepts promote, the belief that all speech sounds are not equal in their use across languages, nor are they equal in their level of difficulty to produce them. This helps to explain why speech sounds are learned and mastered gradually, and it explains predictable patterns for normal simplification and when speech is delayed.

Define Phoneme

The smallest unit of speech in which changes result in a different word.

Contrast Standard American English (SAE) with Hispanic English(HE), Asian English(AE), and Native American English(NAE). Discuss the trends that emerge in these varants.

The tables in the chapter provide some highlights of how SAE differs from each of the sociocultural dialects. The trends show that inflected morphemes, such as plurals, possessives, and verb forms, are the most predominant components of language to be influenced by dialect, with speech sound production also being affected.

Discuss what the existence of protowords suggests about the relationship between babbling and true speech.

There is a period during which a child makes consistent reference to particular objects or people in his environment through the production of unique forms of speech sound combinations. These productions do not qualify as true words, but they are thought to be a transition from babbling to the development of true words. These protowords establish the connection between babbling and words.

Why is vocabulary the most distinguishing characteristic of regional dialects?

Vocabulary is the most distinguishing characteristic of regional dialects because the words people use in any particular community reflect their geographical setting, the occupations, of the residents, and the customs of the region, including food, clothes, and holidays.

Summarize the emergence of speech sounds during the prelinguistic and one-word stages.

Vocalizations occur during early infancy and have some resemblance to speech sounds, but true speech sounds begin to emerge during the babbling period begining around 5 months until at least 10 months. The child adds jargon to his babbling repertoire with the addition of intonation and more lengthy syllable productions that delight those who listen to the chatter. it isn't until around 12 months that the child will produce his first words.

Discuss the development of speech sounds in two-word utterances and beyond.

When a child has achieved the two-word utterance stage, he is typically around 2 years old. The child has speech sounds from each class (stops, fricatives, affricates, nasals, glides, liquids, and vowels) and begins to include consonant clusters in words. The child is also able to use consonants at the beginnings and endings of words.

Define phonological processes and give examples of the major types used during earlier childhood.

Young children who are learning speech sounds do so gradually, so they are not able to say words using all of the required sounds. They use simplification strategies to say the words through deletion of sounds or syllables, substitutions of easier sounds for difficult ones, and using one or more sounds throughout a word. An example of sounds deletion is to leave off that final consonant of a word. A substitution may be to use a stop consonant for a fricative. An assimilation may be to use a nasal sound from within the word at the beginning(bunny - nunny)

standard dialect

a variety of a language spoken by people of relatively high status who have economic, political, social, and educational power

dialect

any given variety of language shared by a group of speakers.

syllable structure

arrangement of vowels and consonants that make up a single syllable.

customary production

average age of a group of children at which a particular phoneme is produced with more than 50% accuracy in at least two word positions.

intelligibility

degree to which speech can be understood

coarticulation

during rapid speech, a speech sound is influenced by, and becomes more like, a preceding or following speech sound.

anticipatory coarticulation

feature or characteristic of a speech sound is anticipated during the production of a preceding speech sound.

substitution processes

form of language simplification in which children use phonemes within their developmental level as substitutes for sounds they are not able to use consistently.

Assimilation processes

form of simplification during in which one sound takes on the identity (or some of the characteristics) of another sound.

consonant clusters

group of two or more consonant sounds that come before, after, or between vowels.

whole-word templates

idea that the organizing principle in early phonological development is whole words, not features or segments.

creole

language that develops as a result of contact between two groups that do not know each other's language.

pidgin

language that usually develops for the purpose of allowing groups with different languages to trade or communicate, and includes a combination of both languages, beginning as an informal language consisting mostly of nouns and many gestures and eventually becoming more formal.

vernacular dialect

native, nonstandard variety of language from a specific population

dialects of English in the United States reflect social, cultural, ethnic, educational, regional, and occupational influences on language. Which components of language are affected by dialect?

phonology, morphology, syntax, semantic, and pragmatics.

decreolization

process by which a creole language become increasingly similar to the language of the dominant culture.

vocal play

process by which infants "play" and experiment with their voices by changing the loud-ness, pitch, rate, and quality. 4-6 months

aspiration

release of air on the production of phonemes during speech

vowel processes

simplification of vowel sounds due to a child's tendency to produce vowels in the center of the oral cavity, making it neither high/low nor front/back, which results in vowels that are either too high or low or made too far in front or back of the intended target; a process more common for children with hearing loss.

natural sounds

sounds common to all language and that emerge first in developing children.

mastered

sounds that a child can consistently produce accurately.

quasi-resonant nuclei

sounds that have a low pitch and a muffled resonance quality. first 2 months ie reflexive crying

marked sounds

sounds that occur less frequently in languages of the worlds and develop later because they are more difficult to produce.

phonological theory as it relates to a child's acquisition of speech sounds is important because it asserts which of the following?

speech sound development does not occur as single units, but rather occurs within a system of rules that govern how speech sounds are arranged and how phonemes influence each other.

place of articulation

the point of contact where an obstruction occurs in the vocal tract when producing a consonant, helping to give a consonant its distinctive sound.

give two examples of speech sounds that have the same place of articulation and two speech sounds that have different manners of articulation.

two sounds that are made with the tongue and the alveolar ridge are the /t/ and the /n/. These two sounds have different manners of production.

voicing

use of vocal fold vibration to produce all vowel sounds and certain consonant sounds.

distinctive feature approach

view that speech sounds comprise characteristics of place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing.

distinctive features

views speech sounds as being comprised of several constituents that make them different.

fully resonant nuclei

vowel and consonant sounds with a full range of frequencies and resonant characteristics. 2-4 months

retentive coarticulation

when a preceding sound affects a sound that follows.

cultural hearths

Five places along the eastern and southern coasts of the United states from which most regional dialects have evolved: Boston, Philadelphia, Tidewater Virginia, Charleston, and New Orleans.

the two-word utterance stage begins from around 18 months to the child's 2nd birthday. Which sound class makes its appearance during this period?

Fricative

Discuss the components of language that undergo the most change when speakers use regional dialects of English.

Regional dialects in the U.S. reflect the geographical and cultural differences of communities. The most prominent characteristic of regional dialects is the pronunciation of words, but regional vocabulary differences also exist.