Ch 6 Vocabulary

mean length of utterance (MLU)

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.

semantically based grammar

A grammar in which rules operate over meaning-based categories such as agent, action, locations, and so on.

dual process model

A model of language development and use in which two different cognitive systems underlie language functioning: (1) a rule-based, abstract system and (2) a rote memory based system.

bound morpheme

A morpheme that cannot stand alone, but rather is attached to a word stem (such as -ed to indicate past tense; -s to indicate plural). See also Free morpheme.

free morphemes

A morpheme that stands alone as a word. See also Bound morpheme.

complex sentences

A sentence that contains more than one clause.

syntax

A system of rules for building phrases out of words (which belong to particular grammatical categories, such as Noun and Verb) and for building sentences out of these constituent phrases.

morphology

A system of rules for combining the smallest units of language into words.

usage-based

A theory of language accord to which grammar arises from experience and reflects aspects of that experience, such as the frequency of particular constructions- in contrast to a generative approach in which grammar is an abstract system that is not fully determined by experience.

overgeneralizations

A type of error children produce in which verbs are used with arguments that are not allowed in the target language, yielding utterances such as "I said her no" and "Shall I whisper you something?" (Bowerman, 1988)

close-class words

A word from categories such as determiners (e.g., a, the), auxiliaries (e.g., can, would), and prepositions (e.g., on, over. These categories share the characteristics that they serve grammatical functions (e.g., determiners mark the beginnings of noun phrases) and that speakers cannot readily invent new words to add to these categories- in contrast to categories such as noun and verb that readily admit newly coined words. See also Functional categories; Open-class word.

open-class words

A word from the categories of noun, verb, adjective, adverb; labeled open class because new nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs can readily be coined and added to the language. See also Closed-class word.

holistic

An approach to language acquisition that is more characteristic of some children than of others. It consists of memorizing large, unanalyzed chances of speech. See also Analytical approach.

analytical

An approach to language acquisition that is more characteristic of some children than of others. It involves breaking down the speech stream into its component parts (words and-within words-phonemes) and figuring out the system for productively combing these component parts See also Holistic approach

overregularizations

An over application of rules to irregular parts of the language (such as pluralizing foot as foots).

response strategies

Children's method of falling back on ways of responding that do not depend on understand; used when they do not fully understand what is said to them. For example, 1-year old children appear to have a strategy of responding to whatever is said to them by doing something. This has been termed an action strategy.

linking rules

Hypothesized innate knowledge that children are said to draw upon in learning the word order of their language. The linking rules specify that subjects are likely to be agents (the doer of the action denoted by the verb) and objects are likely to be patients (the recipient of the action). See Semantic bootstrapping.

wh- questions

Questions that begin with who, what, where, why, when, or how.

yes/no questions

Questions that can be answered with yes or no.

prescriptive rules

Rules of grammar that define how language should be used, as taught in writing classes and specified in style manuals. For example, the rules that prohibit splitting infinities and ending sentences with prepositions are prescriptive rules. See also Descriptive rules.

descriptive rules

Rules that describe speakers' linguistic knowledge (in contrast to prescriptive rules).

combinatorial speech

Speech in which words are combined in utterances (in contrast to single-word utterances)

telegraphic speech

Speech, typical of 2-year-old children, that includes primarily content words and omits such grammatical morphemes as determiners and ending on nouns and verbs. So named because the result sounds like sentences adults use in writing telegraphs.

productivity or generativity of language

The characteristic of all human language such that they make use of finite repertoire of sounds to produce a potentially infinite number of sentences.

tadpole-frog problem

The problem of accounting for the change from a semantically based system to a syntactically based system if one describes children's grammars as semantically based. This change is compared to the metamorphosis that tadpoles undergo to become frogs. See also Semantically based grammar.

relational meaning

The relation between the referents of the words in a word combination (e.g., possession is indicated by "Daddy's shirt").

verb argument structure

The sentence structure required by a verb. Different verbs allow different other constituents (e.g., subject, direct object, indirect object), and thus verbs have been described as congaing the blueprints for sentence building. For example, intransitive verbs such as laugh require only a subject as in The tree fell, whereas transitive verbs require a subject and an object The tree hit the ground. Learning the argument structure of verbs is an important part of grammatical development.

morphemes

The smallest element in a language that carries meaning. Free morphemes are words; bound morphemes are prefixes, suffixes, and, in some language, infixes. See also Word.

lexical categories

The term in Chomsky's Government and Binding Theory for categories of words (such as Noun and Verb) that carry thematic content. See also Functional categories; Open-class word.

functional categories

The term used in Chomsky's Government and Binding Theory to refer to words such as auxiliaries, prepositions, and determiners (articles) that do not carry thematic content but rather serve primarily grammatical functions. See also Closed-class word; Lexical categories.

generativist

The theory that language acquisition and use are supported by an innate Universal Grammar. Language experience triggers innate knowledge and sets language-specific parameters. The language-learning mechanism is specific to language.

principles and parameters theory

The theory that the child has innate knowledge of Universal Grammar, consisting of principles that hold true for every language, and a set of options, or parameters, that have to be set by experience.

semantic bootstrapping

The theory that the correspondence between semantic and syntactic categories provides the language-learning child entry into the grammatical system.

transitional forms

Utterances such as vertical constructions that children produce between producing single-word and clear two-word utterances.

grammatical morphemes

Words and word endings that mark grammatical relations, such as articles, pre-positions, auxiliary verbs, and noun and verb endings.