Deck 9: Language Development

Question 1

Children take advantage of ______ in figuring out the particular grammar of their mother tongue.

A)constraints
B)specific domains
C)interpretations
D)bekos

Answer 1

A

Question 2

Modern nativist theorists essentially propose that

A)language acquisition grows out of children's social interaction with others.
B)language is based in large part on children's developing social-cognitive abilities.
C)children possess a language instinct.
D)the first word a child raised in vocal isolation utters will be from the world's oldest language.

Answer 2

C

Question 3

Proponents of _______ essentially argue that children are born with a broad theory of language that they modify in accordance with the speech they hear growing up.

A)the social-interactionist perspective
B)behavioralist theories
C)neo-Piagetian theories
D)nativist theories.

Answer 3

D

Question 4

Most researchers today

A)do not take the empiricist position.
B)believe that grammar is acquired simply by conditioning.
C)believe that imitation plays a role in language development that behaviorists proposed.
D)do not acknowledge that a child's language environment is important for language acquisition.

Question 5

Some experts suggest that the first humans to use rudimentary language lived about

A)20000 years ago.
B)200,000 years ago.
C)2 million years ago.
D)20 million years ago.

Question 6

All of the following are sources of evidence for a sensitive period for language acquisition except that

A)children who experience social isolation in childhood rarely acquire more than a tentative mastery of language.
B)the later someone is exposed to a new language, the more difficult it is for him or her to acquire it.
C)the later someone is exposed to his or her first language, the more difficult it is for him or her to acquire it.
D)young children with significant left-hemisphere damage usually never learn to speak normally.

Question 7

All of the following are true of the part of the brain called the grammar center except

A)it is involved in tasks involving short-term verbal memory.
B)it is involved in processing syntax.
C)it is a domain-specific neural system.
D)it is activated only when making decisions about syntax.

Question 8

Who proposed that children learn not only words, but also grammar, via the mechanisms of operant and classical conditioning?

A)Skinner
B)Vygotsky
C)Piaget
D)Freud

Question 9

Which of the following is not true of the acquisition f language of all children throughout the world?

A)they make the same types of grammatical mistakes
B)they acquire language at about the same rate
C)they all know that the subject of a sentence has to be explicitly stated
D)they acquire many of the same grammatical forms

Question 10

Chomsky proposed that children are born with a specialized "mental organ," the language acquisition device (LAD), which allows them to

A)understand any language that is spoken around them at birth.
B)speak any language fluently once they learn the pragmatics of the language.
C)compare the structure of the language they hear to the innate grammar they were born with and make appropriate modifications.
D)develop expertise in the form of the language that is spoken around them.

Question 11

Lenneberg's position that language is based in biology, not in learning, was based on the ideas that language is all of the following except that

A)it is difficult to prevent.
B)it is species uniform
C)it develops in a regular sequence.
D)it is learned in the way that other abilities are learned.

Question 12

Parameters refer to aspects of a grammar that

A)are universal.
B)vary within a language.
C)vary across all languages.
D)distinguish languages from one another.

Question 13

How people actually use language in a social context is called

A)semantics.
B)grammar.
C)phonology.
D)pragmatics.

Question 14

In which of the following ways does human language not differ from the communication systems of other species?

A)It is systematic and conventional use of sounds and signs.
B)It is symbolic.
C)It is grammatical.
D)Language differs among cultures.

Question 15

Some evidence for universal grammar comes from research demonstrating that children invent real languages when exposed to the not-quite-real languages that adults around them speak, called

A)creoles.
B)pidgins.
C)inversions.
D)motherese.

Question 16

Researchers have shown that the side of the brain that controls babbling

A)is the same as the side that controls later language.
B)is different from the side that controls smiling.
C)is different from the side that controls later language.
D)merges with the side that controls later language.

Question 17

Damage to Broca's area, located in the frontal lobes, usually results in problems with

A)speech comprehension.
B)speech production.
C)hearing.
D)vision

Question 18

Universal grammar refers to

A)the basic speech abilities that most humans are born with.
B)the basic grammatical rules that typify all languages.
C)the nonverbal ways in which people from all cultures communicate with each another.
D)the basic sentence structures that ate common to all languages.

Question 19

When the language areas of the left hemisphere are damaged early in life,

A)there is little hope that the child's speech will ever develop normally.
B)there is little plasticity.
C)other areas of the brain take over the language function of the damages areas.
D)there is likely cognition damage as well.

Question 20

The actual sounds that speakers produce are called

A)semantics.
B)grammar.
C)phonology.
D)pragmatics.

Question 21

The emergence of language in humans can be seen as an expression of a new mode of thinking,

A)reasoning.
B)symbolic thought.
C)social intuition.
D)creative thought

Question 22

Which of the following implies that infants view their social partners as people whose actions are based on what they know and what they want, and who act deliberately to achieve their goals?

A)fast mapping
B)shared attention
C)taxonomic assumptions
D)mutual exclusivity assumption

Question 23

Which of the following is not true of infant-directed speech?

A)Adults use it intentionally with infants and young children.
B)It is high-pitched.
C)It is repetitious and full of questions.
D)It has exaggerated modulations.

Question 24

Which of the following incorporates the species-typical environment that promotes language development in children, of which child-directed speech is a part?

A)a language acquisition device
B)a language acquisition support system
C)active, or productive, language
D)passive, or receptive, language

Question 25

Which of the following is not true of a pidgin?

A)It includes words from different languages.
B)It includes consistent word order.
C)It is not grammatically correct.
D)It is characteristic of tourists in countries whose language they do not speak

Question 26

Which of the following do social-interactionist theorists not associated with language development?

A)social development
B)social-cognitive skills
C)the increasing tendency to see other people as intentional agents
D)its independence from other domains

Question 27

Children are very likely to

A)acquire speech without gestures than with gestures.
B)make no association with gestures and speech.
C)acquire a new gesture and transfer it to speech.
D)acquire new speech and transfer it a gesture.

Question 28

Which of the following serves as a prelinguistic form of communication and predicts children's subsequent language development?

A)pointing
B)babbling
C)imitation
D)listening

Question 29

Which of the following would likely be a child's first lexicon?

A)a picture book
B)recognition by the child of its own name
C)the child's first spoken word
D)the child's first gesture

Question 30

At about what age do babies experience a transitional period, when changes in the structure of the vocal tract let them produce more complex sounds, such as "buuuuu" and "paaaa"?

A)2-3 months
B)4-6 months
C)7-8 months
D)9-10 months

Question 31

By what age do children usually have a vocabulary of about 500 words?

A)2 years
B)3 years
C)3 years
D)4 years

Question 32

Research suggests that human infants begin life with

A)a love of music.
B)a bias for speech.
C)a predisposition for soft noises.
D)a fully developed vocal tract.

Question 33

The individual sounds that make up words are called

A)phonemes
B)syllables
C)digraphs
D)blends

Question 34

There is evidence that all of the following may be reasons that mothers use infant-directed speech except

A)Infants show a preference for infant-directed speech.
B)Infants can tell the difference between words more easily when they are spoken in infant-directed speech.
C)Mothers try to regulate the emotional responses of their babies with infant-directed speech.
D)Mothers learn that this skill sill helps infants acquire language.

Question 35

Children of pidgin speakers

A)transform the language of their parents into a true language, often in a single generation.
B)acquire that language from their parents.
C)build upon the language of their parents by adding slang, just as children of all languages do.
D)acquire the dominant language the pidgin was first based upon

Question 36

Which of the following would be least typical of children between 3 and 3 ½ years old?

A)multiclause utterances
B)increasing length of word combinations
C)adding grammatical morphemes
D)using negatives and question forms

Question 37

Fernald identified all of the following different purposes for mothers' use of infant-directed speech except

A)it is used to provide comfort to the infant.
B)it is used to seek the infant's attention.
C)it is used to convey disapproval.
D)it is used to express prohibition.

Question 38

The younger people are when they move to the United States from a non-English-speaking country,

A)the greater their preference for reading books in English.
B)the less they speak their native language.
C)the greater their mastery of the English language.
D)the less their mastery of the English language.

Question 39

During the first 2 months of life, babies produce only

A)cooing sounds.
B)babbling sounds.
C)reflexive sounds.
D)crying sounds.

Question 40

Language probably first developed in humans as a result of ____

A)adult men communicating while hunting.
B)family groups expressing their emotions.
C)mothers expressing ideas to their children.
D)children playing purposelessly.

Question 41

Which of the following is not true of babbling?

A)Infants babble only in the presence of others, as a form of communication.
B)English babies babble in English and Japanese babies babble in Japanese.
C)It is typically characterized by repeated sequences of consonants and vowels.
D)It is probably based, at least partly, on infants' reproducing sounds that they hear.

Question 42

Which of the following is a frictive?

A)the l in lay
B)the r in ray
C)the z in zip
D)the w in water

Question 43

The assumption for word learning in which children assume that different words refer to different things is

A)the mutual exclusivity assumption.
B)the whole-object assumption.
C)the taxonomic assumption.
D)the lexicon assumption.

Question 44

At about 18 month of age, most children experience

A)stuttering.
B)constructing their first sentence.
C)a word spurt.
D)mastery of all vowels and most consonants.

Question 45

Constraints on word learning

A)help children learn the meanings of words.
B)cause children to overextend the meanings of words.
C)cause children to underextend the meanings of words.
D)decelerates the rate of children's learning new vocabulary.

Question 46

The words a child can comprehend are part of

A)active language.
B)passive language.
C)productive language.
D)infant-directed speech.

Question 47

Which of the following tend not to be among the first words that children learn?

A)nouns
B)verbs
C)objects that children can hold
D)words used in social interactions

Question 48

Children gaining important clues for guessing what a word means from its grammatical form of speech is called

A)offsetting.
B)tail coating.
C)stone stepping.
D)bootstrapping.

Question 49

All of the following are true of children's misapplication of regular morphological rules except

A)It is an indication that children are learning the rules of morphology.
B)It is often applied to irregular verbs and nouns.
C)It occurs only in the English language.
D)It is called overregulation.

Question 50

By about age 6, most children will have a vocabulary of about how many words?

A)10,000
B)30,000
C)60,000
D)100,000

Question 51

The assumption for word learning in which children initially assume that words refer to other things that are similar is

A)the mutual exclusivity assumption.
B)the whole-object assumption.
C)the taxonomic assumption.
D)the lexicon assumption.

Question 52

Which aspect of cognitive development is most important in children's ability to generate and understand jokes?

A)semantic development
B)syntactical development
C)grammatical development
D)phonological development

Question 53

Fast mapping refers to

A)children's ability to understand communication based on gestures.
B)children's ability to put words together to form sentences.
C)children's ability to repeat words correctly.
D)children's ability to learn new words based on very little input.

Question 54

Which of the following is a morpheme?

A)t
B)ta
C)talk
D)talking

Question 55

Using the word "Fluffy," to refer not only to the family pet but also to all cats that one encounters is an example of

A)holophrastic speech.
B)whole-object assumption.
C)overextension.
D)underextension.

Question 56

Which of the following words would children likely acquire last?

A)singing
B)apples
C)talked
D)I'm

Question 57

Viewing something as being funny depends on one's ability to recognize

A)irony.
B)interpretations.
C)incongruity.
D)subtlety.

Question 58

The earliest jokes that children understand tend to be based on

A)syntactical relationships among words within a sentence.
B)lexical ambiguity.
C)phonological ambiguity.
D)dual meanings of a single word.

Question 59

Which of the following increases most significantly as children begin the school years?

A)semantics
B)syntax
C)grammar
D)phonology

Question 60

The use of a with a broad meaning to refer to only a restricted group of items is called

A)holophrastic speech.
B)whole-object assumption.
C)overextension.
D)underextension.

Question 61

Which of the following is not true of verbal repairs?

A)They reflect children's inability to be sensitive to their listeners.
B)They are the adjustment of speech when children make errors in communication.
C)They tend to increase over the preschool and into the early school years.
D)They decrease from middle childhood into adolescence.

Question 62

As children learn to form questions, which of the following do they tend to use first?

A)constructions with external question markers
B)constructions with auxiliaries
C)constructions with subject-auxiliary inversion in wh- questions
D)constructions with compounds

Question 63

Parents promote children's conversational skills, often while

A)having conversations with other adults.
B)reading children stories.
C)disciplining children.
D)teaching children good manners.

Question 64

One of the main features of Textspeak is

A)contractions.
B)rebus abbreviations.
C)active language.
D)pidgins.

Question 65

The inability to produce some phonemes clearly is called

A)dysplasia.
B)dyslexia.
C)dyslalia
D)dysphagia.

Question 66

A 2008 survey found that typical American teenagers received or made about how many text messages per day?

A)5
B)10
C)30
D)80

Question 67

Which of the following do children tend to use last as they learn to form sentences?

A)object complementation
B)Wh- embedded clauses
C)Coordination f sentences
D)subordinating conjunctions

Question 68

All of the following are features of Back English except ____

A)consonant deletions.
B)lack of stress on the first syllable of two-syllable words.
C)hypercorrection.
D)double subjects.

Question 69

Holophrases are

A)individual sounds that make up words.
B)the minimal meaningful language units.
C)one-word sentences.
D)syllables

Question 70

What does the "wug" test measure?

A)semantic development
B)morphological development
C)syntactic development
D)phonological development

Question 71

Which of the following is not true of Black English?

A)Most Americans are familiar with it.
B)It is syntactically sophisticated.
C)Many non-African Americans use it.
D)All African Americans use it.

Question 72

Distinctive styles of speaking that are used only in specific contexts are called

A)speech patterns.
B)speech registers.
C)telegraphic speech.
D)active speech

Question 73

At about what age can children recognize that a sentence is not worded properly when the verb used in the sentence is a familiar one?

A)between 1 and 2 years
B)between 2 and 3.5 years
C)between 3.5 and 5 years
D)between 5.5 and 6 years

Question 74

Full pragmatic competence requires that the speaker do all of the following except

A)remember previous exchanges with the person.
B)decide how the person should be approached in a conversation.
C)express one's thoughts to the person.
D)make inferences about the person's thoughts, feelings, knowledge, and beliefs.

Question 75

Children tend to leave out all of the following when they begin to form sentences except

A)auxiliary verbs
B)adjectives
C)prepositions
D)determinants

Question 76

In Black English, which of the following describes a person who does not usually play poker but is playing poker at this moment?

A)"He play poker."
B)"He playing poker."
C)"He be playing poker."
D)"Him, he be playing poker."

Question 77

Which of the following is not an educational difficulty associated with children who speak Black English?

A)They are less bright than children who speak standard English.
B)They might have difficulty following a teacher's directions and understanding text.
C)Teachers sometimes might not understand children who speak Black English, and vice versa.
D)Black English is not the language of the schools.

Question 78

When children begin to form sentences, which of the following do they tend to form first?

A)declarative sentences
B)interrogative sentences
C)exclamatory sentences
D)negative sentences

Question 79

As they become adolescents, many African Americans ________ Black English.

A)increase their use of
B)decrease their use of
C)drop their use of
D)forget

Question 80

Linguistic turn-taking in conversations may have its origins in

A)children monitoring their speech.
B)monologues
C)mutual imitation.
D)egocentrism.