Unit 7B: Language

The first stage of language development, in which children spontaneously utter different sounds, is the ___ stage. This stage typically begins at about ___ months of age. The sounds children make during this stage (do/don't) include only the sounds of the language they hear.

babbling; 4; don't

Phonemes are grouped into units of meaning called ___.

morphemes

During the second stage, called the ___-___ stage, children convey complete thoughts using single words. This stage begins at about ___ year(s) of age.

one-word; 1

The basic sound units of language are its ___. English has approximately ___ of these units. The basic units of sign language are defined by ___ ___ and ___.

phonemes; 40; hand shapes; movements

During the ___-___ stage, children speak in sentences containing mostly nouns and verbs. This type of speech is called ___ speech. It (does/doesn't) follow the rules of syntax.

two-word; telegraph; does

Childhood seems to represent a ___ ___ for mastering certain aspects of language. Those who learn a second language as adults usually speak it with the ___ of their first language. Moreover, they typically show (poorer/better) mastery of the ___ of the second language.

critical period; accent; poorer; grammar

Deaf infants (do/don't) babble. Many natural babbling sounds are ___-___ pairs formed by _____________.

do; consonant-vowel; bunching the tongue or closing and opening the lips

Considering the two theories together, we can say that although we are born with a readiness to learn language, ___ is also important, as shown in linguistically stunted children who have been isolated from language during the ___ ___ for its acquisition.

experience; critical period

The system of rules that enables us to use our language to speak to and understand others is called ___.

grammar

Research studies of infants' knack for soaking up language suggest that babies come with a built-in readiness to learn ___ ___.

grammatical rules

By ___ months of age, babies can read lips and discriminate speech sounds. This marks the beginning of their ___ ___, their ability to comprehend speech. This ability begins to mature before their ___ ___, or ability to produce words.

4; receptive language; productive language

The window for learning language gradually begins to close after age ___. When a young brain doesn't learn any language, its language-learning capacity (never/may still) fully develop(s).

7; never

B.F Skinner believed that language development follows the general principles of learning, including ___, ___, ___, and ___.

association; imitation; reinforcement

By about ___ months of age, infant babbling begins to resemble the household language. At about the same time, the ablility to perceive speech sounds outside their native language is (lost/acquired).

10; lost

Research by Jenny Saffran has demonstrated even before ___ year(s) of age, infants are able to discern ___ ___ and ___ analyze which syllables most often go together.

1; word breaks; statistically

Other theorists believe that humans are biologically predisposed to learn language. One such theorist is ___, who believes that we are all born with a ___ ___ ___ in which ___ switches are thrown as children experience their language. This theorist contends that all human languages have the same grammatical building blocks, which suggests that there is a ____ ____.

Chomsky; language acquisition device; language; universal grammar

The system by which meaning is derived from morphemes, words, and sentences is the ___ of a language.

semantics

The system of rules we use to combine words into grammatically sensible sentences is called ___.

syntax