Deck 9: Language Development

Question 1

Explain the concept of speech registers which are the different styles of speech that are used in different situations.

Answer 1

Children use one style of speech when at home or with their friends and another, more formal style when in school. When the speech registers, or codes, children use at home and the ones they are expected to use in school defer considerable, there is the potential for educational difficulties. Usually, children from middle-class families speak a "standard" version of the language that is similar to the more formal style used in school. In contrast, children from less affluent homes often speak a nonstandard version of the language that is often appreciably differs from the one use in school. In the United States, this distinction between social (or home) language and school language among native speakers if often more obvious for children whose home language is described as Black English (or sometimes Ebonics, or African American Vernacular English).

Question 2

Language refers to the systematic and conventional use of sounds, signs, or written symbols for the intention of communication or self-expression.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

Syntax is the knowledge of sentence structure, or grammatical rules-rules for how words are combined into sentences and how sentences are transformed into other sentences.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Language is a special form of communication, qualitatively different from the ways in which other animals send messages back and forth to one another. Language is also multilayered. Which of the following is not one of the layers of language?

A) the actual speech sounds
B) rules for how words can be combined into sentences
C) the understanding of how to use all of the layers of language in social interaction
D) sounds are combined in similar ways to form similar words with similar meanings

Question 5

By 6 years of age, most children have a vocabulary of over 10,000 words and about 100,000 words by adulthood.

Question 6

Explain language development in young children.

Question 7

Pragmatics refers to knowledge about how language can be used and adjusted to fit different circumstances, such as using different tones as when speaking to a teacher versus a peer.

Question 8

What are the five aspects of language which develop over time?

A) heuristics, syntax, grammatics, pleurisy, and morphology
B) phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics
C) phonetics, mechanics, syntactics, and morphotics
D) phonology, graphology, mechanics, and syllablatics

Question 9

During the developmental stages of infants' babbling, Stage 3 voice play occurs between 8 and 20 weeks.

Question 10

Explain the seven functions of language according to Halliday which motivate children to use language to attain a variety of goals.

Question 11

There is some evidence to suggest that deaf children do not engage in true babbling, although they pass successfully through the earlier stages of speech production.

Question 12

Language is strongly influenced both by humans' general biological inheritance and by the uniqueness of the environments in which they grow up.

Question 13

By 6-9 years of age, children can pronounce all the sounds of their language correctly about 75% of the time.

Question 14

Communication problems are very common among adults and sometimes require therapeutic assistance. Which of the following is not one avenue of therapeutic assistance?

A) dealing with a lisp that impedes language
B) learning how to be more assertive in one's speech
C) claiming one's right in an appropriate manner
D) speaking up appropriately when one disagrees with another person

Question 15

Explain in detail and provide examples of the developmental stages of infant's babbling.

Question 16

Which of the following is not identified as a lexical constraint on word learning?

A) the whole-object assumption
B) the verb-noun development assumption
C) the taxonomic assumption
D) the mutual exclusivity assumption

Question 17

What are the three important ways in which humans differ from other animals with regard to communication systems?

A) Human language is symbolic, grammatical, and varies with culture.
B) Human language is symbolic, representational, and very similar within various cultures.
C) Human language is quasi-symbolic, graphical, and varies within contextual cues.
D) Human language is inherently acquired, graphical and symbolic.

Question 18

Briefly explain the concept of morphemes and provide examples.

Question 19

Which of the following are examples of telegraphic speech?

A) "Daddy give me the milk", "May Amy and I go to Grandma's"
B) "Go now", "Walk now"
C) "Can I go now", "Can I walk now"
D) "Daddy give milk me", "Amy me go Grandma's"

Question 20

The variety of sounds children can make increases from about 18 months to 8 or 9 years of age and include all of the following except:

A) 2-year-olds can produce between 40 and 60 consonants.
B) preschool and early school-age children often drop the unstressed syllables of words.
C) they repeat consonants.
D) they oversimplify complex consonants.