1 Review Questions for EDHD 425 Test 1 Introduction overview 1 What is language and reading Are they same or different What is the relationship between the two Language a system of symbols rules used for the purpose of communication specifically refers to spoken form of language oral auditory communication has sounds phonology has meanings semantics has structures morphology syntax has social rules pragmatics Reading the process of mapping spoken form to written form visual form of the language oral to printed words They are different because reading is printed words in the visual form language has sounds is auditory Language is acquired before reading They share many properties sounds meanings structures 2 What are the three major criteria used to distinguish between human language and other animal communication such as primate language productivity speakers can make many new utterances can recombine or expand the forms they already know to say things they have never heard before recombination recursion or generativity semanticity represents ideas events objects symbolically a word is a symbol that stands for something else symbolism displacement messages need not be tied to the immediate context 3 Give two examples of language and reading research methods Psycholinguistics linguists psychologists combined to study language or reading whether the linguistic systems described by the linguist has psychological reality in the mind of speakers or readers Observations observe children s language reading activities in a natural setting Experiments design your own language reading tasks for children then record language reading performance for analyses CLAN Children Language Analysis computer software to code the data Phonological development 1 What are two major categories of our speech sounds and their features Give two examples of each What is a phoneme and what is a phone vowels sounds made with an unobstructed vocal tract about 16 ex in cat ex in bid ex p t in put consonants sounds made with a constricted vocal tract 24 2 phoneme the contrasting sounds in language the smallest sound unit most have no meaning by themselves changing a phoneme will turn one meaning into another minimal pair ex lot rot l r are two distinct phonemes phone an individual speech sound the realization of a phoneme in a particular context variants of a phoneme 2 What is a syllable and its components Describe two examples syllable a phonetic unit larger more stable than a phoneme Consists of an onset a rime a rime consists of a vowel final consonant s ex cat is a 1 syllable word c is the onset at is the rime ex grasp is a 1 syllable word gr is the onset and asp is the rime 3 Describe the relationship between letters and sounds phonemes in English using two examples Words are made up of speech sounds or segments rather than letters English has over 26 letters over 40 sounds there can be no one to one correspondence between letters sounds Linguists refer to words as being made up of speech sounds or segments rather than letters ex a about fat fate farm fall says 4 What is phonotactics Can you think of two words that violate the English phonotactics phonotactics the rules that govern permissible sound combinations ex true rtue plot lpot 5 What is a suprasegmental feature Give one example and explain its importance in a child s language acquisition suprasegmental superimposed on the sequence of vowels consonants two major features are pitch tone stress Have an affect on the early development of language because children tend to leave out the initial unstressed syllables in a multisyllabic word omit medial unstressed syllable ex tomato mato or dessert zert 6 Describe infants ability to perceive speech sounds what can they do What do we learn from their ability in speech perception very early in life 1 4 months infants can discriminate sound pairs b p in bah pah 3 days infants can identify prefer listening to own mothers voices before 6 8 months infants also can discriminate sound pairs not used in their native languages suggests they re born with this sound distinction ability by 10 12 months infants gradually lose their ability to detect sound pairs not used in their native languages suggests language experience is important 7 What are the characteristics when young children ages 1 2 learn to produce sound sequences By imitation repetition practice children learn to approximate their pronunciation of sound sequences to that of adults 3 Their first recognizable words greetings farewells Children simplify complex syllable structures by dropping certain sounds simplification cluster reductions Children also substitute sounds an easy consonant for a difficult one avoidance Children may mispronounce sounds that they can correctly perceive Semantic development 1 Can we call sun another name like moon why 2 How do young children link words and their referents i e the lexical principles children link words their referents because they believe that words refer to whole objects objects can have only one name therefore new words refer to objects previously unnamed they form the relationship by using characteristic words gardener plant man principle of mutual exclusivity a cognitive bias shown by young children who typically avoid labeling anything at more than one level of generality hence they may refer to their pet as a dog but not also as an animal principle of contrast children s assumption that no two words have the same meaning hence they assume that a new word will not refer to something for which they already have a name to improve semantic network make links stronger making activation of network more automatic this is the outcome of the practice 3 What is the receptive and productive vocabulary How can we measure a child s receptive and productive vocabulary receptive vocabulary words that children can understand productive vocabulary words that children can pronounce children can understand more words than they can produce Receptive vocabulary can be studied by using show me technique 4 What does a word family mean Give an example base word inflections derived forms ex drive drives driving driver 5 How can we improve children s vocabulary depth vocabulary depth encompasses the degree of various kinds of word knowledge 1 the sound spelling of a word 2 its morphological structure 3 the types of sentences in which it can occur 4 its multiple meanings word associations 5 the situations in which its use is