Deck 4: Phonological Development: Learning the Sounds of Language

Question 1

Sounds that are different from one another, but do not change meaning, are called:

A) phones
B) allophones
C) phonemes
D) distinctive features

Answer 1

B

Question 2

In the earliest stage of prespeech development, infants produce primarily:

A) non-reduplicated babbling
B) cooing and laughter
C) reflexive crying and vegetative sounds
D) reduplicated babbling

Answer 2

B

Question 3

Research suggests that children learn to produce:

A) the sound of their language first.
B) the melody of their language first.
C) sound and melody of language similarly across languages.
D) None of these answers are true.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

The sounds that are meaningful, or can create differences in meaning, are called:

A) phones
B) allophones
C) phonemes
D) distinctive features

Question 5

Languages differ:

A) in how the users describe phonological knowledge.
B) both in the sounds that they use and in how the sounds are used.
C) according to acoustic signals.
D) according to distinctive features of phonemes.

Question 6

Research suggests that before one year of age, infant babbling______________.

A) may be influenced by the language the child hears.
B) is not influenced by the language the child hears until s/he is using words.
C) is based on anatomical considerations.
D) How infant babbling is influenced by the language the child hears cannot be studied

Question 7

Phonotactics refers to:

A) how languages use different combinations of voiced and voiceless sounds at the beginning of words.
B) how the sounds of languages are made different in various language systems.
C) an adult language user's knowledge of constraints on the sequencing of sounds.
D) the way speech sounds are used to form new words.

Question 8

Aspiration is:

A) a distinctive feature in English.
B) a distinctive feature in Thai.
C) a feature of English that does not carry meaning.
D) another term for allophone.

Question 9

Prosody or intonation patterns that sound like speech occurs as children move into:

A) non-reduplicated babbling
B) cooing and laughter
C) vocal play
D) reduplicated babbling

Question 10

In writing, the use of an alphabet to represent exactly how words are pronounced, rather than how words are represented, is called:

A) phonetic spelling
B) phonemic transcription
C) phonological rules
D) phonetic features

Question 11

True syllables first occur with the onset of:

A) non-reduplicated babbling
B) cooing and laughter
C) reflexive crying and vegetative sounds
D) reduplicated babbling

Question 12

Consonants are described in terms of:

A) distinctions that include voicing, placement, stopping airflow for a moment.
B) distinctions in how children develop language.
C) how the airflow is obstructed.
D) phonological rules which govern voicing.

Question 13

Aspects of sound that differentiate one sound from another are called:

A) phones
B) allophones
C) phonemes
D) distinctive features

Question 14

The study of phonology includes the sounds of a language and:

A) identifying stages of language development.
B) studying how infants acquire language.
C) the study of how sound segments is sequenced in words, study of stress patterns and prosodic qualities.
D) None of these answers are true.

Question 15

The period of vocal play is:

A) when the infant begins to squeal and make a series of "friction noises."
B) when the infant's use of speech is mostly vowel sounds.
C) also considered the expansion stage, during which the infants increase control of sounds and combine them into long and often complex sequences.
D) is also called marginal babbling.

Question 16

At the end of the babbling stage, children acquiring English are typically using:

A) all of the consonants of their language.
B) no correct consonants.
C) all of the vowels and a few consonants.
D) approximately 11 consonants.

Question 17

There is an increase in the variety and repertoire of vowel sounds as well as connections to social interactions during the period of:

A) non-reduplicated babbling.
B) cooing and laughter.
C) vocal play.
D) reduplicated babbling.

Question 18

Speech sounds can be described as:

A) having physical properties such as place and voicing.
B) the production of consonants and vowels.
C) having frequency and amplitude.
D) a definition of articulatory phonetics.

Question 19

Sounds in the English language that differentiate meaning are called:

A) phones
B) allophones
C) phonemes
D) distinctive features

Question 20

Speech sounds are:

A) the same in all languages.
B) difficult to acquire without accents for nonnative speakers.
C) acoustic signals languages use to express meaning.
D) phonologically the same in all languages.

Question 21

The fact that infants can distinguish between syllables that differ by only one phoneme, contrast equally well as those that differ by two or more contrasts. This suggests that infants:

A) have categorical perception.
B) perceive syllables in the same way as adults.
C) process the speech stream in terms of syllables.
D) cannot discriminate among individual phonemes.

Question 22

More recent research on infants' categorical perception indicates that

A) infants are born with the innate ability to learn language and sounds of language.
B) human beings have the unique capacity to learn language sounds.
C) some mammals have similar categorical perception skills to human beings.
D) infants are not born with the innate ability to learn language and sounds of language.

Question 23

Researchers studying speech perception in infants learned that:

A) infants have few skills or ability to discriminate between vowels and consonants.
B) infants have few skills or ability to discriminate between different kinds of vowels.
C) infants can discriminate almost all sound contrasts before 4 months of age.
D) infants can discriminate only consonants before 4 months of age.

Question 24

An argument that human beings are uniquely and biologically prepared to learn language has been made on the basis of:

A) the presence of categorical perception of speech sounds in adults.
B) infants having the skill to perceive VOT categorically.
C) the VOT difference required for perception of voicing.
D) the high amplitude-sucking hypothesis.

Question 25

Results of research on infant sound perception and language development:

A) bring up questions regarding which languages are interesting to babies.
B) indicate that babies perceive and remember certain kinds of sounds and not others.
C) suggest that babies are programmed for language-specific memory skills while in utero.
D) are used in studies on what babies perceive and remember after birth.

Question 26

Studies of infant speech perception utilize a variety of creative means to observe behavior, including:

A) habituation
B) high-amplitude sucking technique
C) VOT measurement
D) All of these named techniques.

Question 27

A phonological process is:

A) the manner in which children develop the phonological system.
B) the order in which children develop the phonological system.
C) systematic sound changes that children make to fit the developmental limitations on their sound system.
D) a group of phonemes.

Question 28

Using infant-directed speech is significant to the language acquisition process because:

A) infants show a preference for rhythmic and stress in listening to speech.
B) emphasizing stress or prosodic patterns provide cues for infants to isolate words and grammatical patterns.
C) infants' hearing and auditory skills are in early stages of development.
D) infant's learning process is in an early stage of development.

Question 29

Children approximately 12 months old use consistent sound sequences that do not sound like adult words, but represent broad meanings. These are called:

A) canonical forms
B) proto words
C) real words
D) jargon

Question 30

Motherese is:

A) speech that adults use with infants that is different from the way adults talk to adults.
B) speech that infants use when talking to their mothers.
C) baby talk used by adults.
D) a special language that is formed between infants and their mothers.

Question 31

Research using the high amplitude sucking, and head turning techniques have suggested that:

A) infants can discriminate between two sounds.
B) infants can discriminate sound contrasts that are common to their own language, but not those that are used only in other languages.
C) infants are not able to discriminate between speech sounds until approximately six months.
D) speech sound discrimination is fully developed before children learn to talk.

Question 32

Research on infants' speech sound processing indicates that:

A) it necessary for infants to discriminate between speech sounds important to the language and those that are not important to the language
B) infants perceive sound and discriminate between utterances in terms of syllables.
C) infants can perceive patterns of language according to phonemes alone.
D) All of these answers are correct.

Question 33

The relation between perception and production on how children mispronounce words:

A) indicates that they do not have motor skills to pronounce the sounds correctly.
B) continues to be a question in researcher's minds.
C) indicates that they do not have skills to perceive the sounds that they mispronounce.
D) None of these answers are true.

Question 34

Studies on infants' hearing indicate that infants:

A) are deaf and blind in the first days after birth.
B) are sensitive to ability to hear is as sensitive to sound, as is adults' hearing.
C) can hear enough to discriminate speech at birth.
D) cannot distinguish utterances in their native language.

Question 35

Children duplicate adult-like phonology holistically:

A) from the beginning as infants.
B) rather than in segmentally-based representations
C) and how their development represents qualitative changes is a subject of research.
D) and with discontinuity from birth.

Question 36

The phonological bootstrapping hypothesis suggests that infants use:

A) prosodic clues in speech to process language.
B) phonological clues as a major part of their language learning.
C) prosody and phonological clues to process speech signals.
D) None of these answers are true.

Question 37

The proposal that suggests that infants can get clues to language structure from the prosody of the speech signal is called:

A) the theory of prosody
B) motherese
C) the prosodic bootstrapping hypothesis
D) the child-directed hypothesis

Question 38

Infants' development of speech sounds is:

A) determined by the maturation rate of their limbic system.
B) based on their social interaction with caregivers.
C) determined in large part by such environmental factors as the child's family and socioeconomic conditions.
D) influenced by the growth of their muscles, sensory receptors in the vocal tract and changes in how their tongue fills their mouth.

Question 39

Studies of infant's memory:

A) indicate that infants process speech patterns in all languages similarly.
B) suggest that newborns process their mother's language more readily than other languages.
C) suggest that it is the basis of sound patterns or prosody.
D) suggest that infants are able to distinguish their language from another on the basis of sound patterns only.

Question 40

Researchers studying the effects of infants' early experiences in language learning have found that infants:

A) generally hear sounds at the endpoints more frequently than in the middle of the sound.
B) generally hear sounds at the middle more frequently than at the endpoints.
C) do not process the acoustic properties of sound until they understand the meaning of the utterances.
D) do process the acoustic properties of sound until they understand the meaning of the utterances.

Question 41

Research on differences in phonological development across cultures indicates that the:

A) target language has little influence on the order in which the child learns sounds.
B) difficulty of acquiring sounds is directly related to developmental milestones.
C) frequency with which children hear sounds determines the order in which the child learns the sound.
D) frequency with which the sound is used in a language determines the order in which the child learns the sound.

Question 42

Discuss how adults acquire phonological knowledge about language. Identify features of the underlying phonological structure as well as how phonotactics and phonological rules contribute to their understanding.

Question 43

Choose two models of phonological development and compare and contrast their relative success in accounting for the important aspects of development in children.

Question 44

Describe research on rule- and constraint-based approaches to studying phonological development.

Question 45

Describe how infants develop mental representation of speech sounds and indicate the various issues brought up in this research. Discuss the implications of this research on child language acquisition processes in general.

Question 46

The major difference between the cognitive-problem solving view and biological-based accounts of language learning is that

A) cognitive-solving views take into account the fact that infants and children have different rates and patterns of development.
B) biological-based accounts consider factors that cause infants and children to have different rates and patterns of development.
C) cognitive-solving views take into account the fact that infants and children develop similarly across individual differences.
D) None of these answers are true.

Question 47

Discuss the limitations of studies on the prelinguistic speech sound development of children.

Question 48

Describe the literature and findings regarding the influence of the target language on infants' babbling. Include a discussion of implications for language development.

Question 49

Describe the features of the four models of phonological development. Compare and contrast each model.

Question 50

Research on phonological development:

A) substantiates the behaviorist view that parents form the child's language and speech by reinforcing their attempts to communicate.
B) suggests that behaviorism accounts for the role of maturational processes in child development.
C) supports aspects of the behaviorist approach to explaining the adult's role in child phonemic skill development.
D) adopts the behaviorist approach to describing language knowledge and language development.

Question 51

The influence of biological factors on speech development may explain:

A) how languages developed across cultures.
B) how languages are similar across cultures.
C) why some sounds are commonly learned at the same age across cultures.
D) the rate of child speech development.

Question 52

Summarize the research on human language and human perception, and describe how infants' behavior is observed in the data collection process for this research.

Question 53

Define "connectionist" and describe two research articles that are based on the connectionist model.

Question 54

Discuss the influence of the child's speech community and development of the sound system.

Question 55

Children learning language within the same linguistic community:

A) show little individual difference in the sounds that they learn.
B) reflect individual preference to produce particular kinds of intonation, phonemes, or reduplication in their babbling.
C) demonstrate similarities in how they select target words to learn.
D) learn language at similar rates and patterns at same ages.