Language Acquisition Fundamentals
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Language Acquisition Fundamentals

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Questions and Answers

Which aspect of language involves the sounds and patterns of stress in speech?

  • Phonemes
  • Semantics
  • Prosody (correct)
  • Syntax

    • What is the term for the minimal units of sound in a language that differentiate meanings?

  • Prosody
  • Grammatical rules
  • Morphemes
  • Phonemes (correct)

    • In which stage of language development do infants show a preference for their mother's voice?

  • Fetal stage (correct)
  • Imitative stage
  • Cognitive stage
  • Babbling stage

    • What are the rules about how words are arranged in sentences called?

    <p>Syntax</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What does the process of speech segmentation involve?

    <p>Identifying word boundaries in spoken language</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which type of study measures infant preferences without prior training?

    <p>Preference studies</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Infants are able to discriminate languages with different prosody. Which pair of languages exemplifies this?

    <p>German and Spanish</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What phenomenon describes how infants can cry with an 'accent' reflecting their native language environment?

    <p>Prosodic modulation</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which ability is NOT essential for infants to learn language?

    <p>Recognizing grammatical structures immediately</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What aspect of language learning do controlled experiments primarily reveal?

    <p>Infants' capabilities in a structured environment</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What might be a limitation of relying solely on controlled experiments to study language acquisition?

    <p>They may overlook the complexity of natural environments</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which of the following skills aids infants in understanding the structure of their language?

    <p>Implicit learning of syntactic rules</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which study might help further understand infants' ability to segment speech?

    <p>Investigations into infant-directed speech</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What does the concept of 'bootstrapping' refer to in language acquisition?

    <p>Using known words to infer new words and structures</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What role does phonetic perception play in infant language development?

    <p>It enables infants to differentiate between speech sounds</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Which of the following challenges contributes to language acquisition difficulties in infants?

    <p>The unpredictability of natural speech patterns</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is a phoneme?

    <p>The smallest unit of sound that distinguishes words.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    At what age do infants begin to show an increased ability to distinguish sounds from their target language?

    <p>7-11 months</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What role does prosody play in infant language acquisition?

    <p>It assists infants in segmenting words from speech.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What is a key finding from the experiment with 8-month-olds and made-up language?

    <p>Infants listened longer to part-words, indicating word finding.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What age do infants typically begin to segment words from their language?

    <p>7.5 months</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What can be concluded about adults and phoneme discrimination compared to infants?

    <p>Adults can only discriminate between sounds in their own language.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What factor does NOT contribute to infants finding words in their language?

    <p>Emotional tone of adult speech.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    What principle governs how infants track the co-occurrence of syllables in language acquisition?

    <p>Syllables that co-occur often are likely part of the same word.</p> Signup and view all the answers

    Study Notes

    Language Acquisition Fundamentals

    • Infants learn language by identifying language sounds, segmenting speech into words, and understanding how words are organized to convey meaning.
    • Language comprises phonemes (units of sound), semantics (meaning conveyed by language), and syntax (rules of word combination).

    Early Phonological Development: Prosody

    • Prosody refers to the pattern of stress and intonation in a language, which varies across languages.
    • Newborns show a preference for their mother's voice, discriminate between languages with different prosody (German/Spanish) but not languages with similar prosody (English/Dutch), prefer their native language over foreign languages, and cry with an "accent."
    • The foetal auditory system is fully functional during the final trimester of pregnancy.

    Early Phonological Development: Phonemes

    • Phonemes are distinct sounds that differentiate words (pat/bat). Languages have different phoneme sets, with a global average of 40 per language.
    • Infants initially babble with a wide range of sounds, later transitioning to produce sounds specific to their target language.
    • Between 1-2 months, infants can distinguish all sounds, including those from foreign languages.
    • Adults only discriminate between sounds within their language.
    • The ability to differentiate sounds declines from non-target languages and increases for target languages between 7-11 months.

    Finding the Words: Prosody

    • Infant-directed speech (IDS) is characterized by higher pitch and slower speaking rate.

    Finding the Words: Statistics

    • Infants are adept at tracking syllable co-occurrence patterns.
    • They show a preference for Part-Words containing syllables that co-occur frequently, suggesting they can segment words from a continuous speech stream.
    • This ability has been demonstrated with made-up languages and infant-directed speech.

    Finding the Words: Experiment

    • An experiment with 8-month-olds involved listening to a continuous stream of syllables.
    • Infants displayed a greater interest in Part-Words, suggesting they were able to extract words from the speech stream.

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    PSYC 21021 Lecture 1: Prelinguistic Speech Processing PDF

    Description

    Explore the key concepts of language acquisition, focusing on how infants discern sounds, segment words, and understand meaning. Additionally, delve into early phonological development including prosody and phonemes, highlighting the importance of auditory experiences in newborns.

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