Deck 12: Processes of Language Acquisition

Question 1

Early exposure is _________ condition for normal language development.

A) a necessary and sufficient
B) neither necessary nor sufficient
C) a sufficient
D) a necessary but not a sufficient

Answer 1

a necessary but not a sufficient

Question 2

According to Lane (1976), Victor's delay in language acquisition was due to:

A) his isolation in the wild
B) his being mentally retarded or autistic
C) both (a) and (b)
D) neither (a) nor (b)

Answer 2

his isolation in the wild

Question 3

Children with Williams syndrome display:

A) normal cognitive development but delayed syntactic skills
B) delayed cognitive development but normal syntactic skills
C) delayed cognitive development and delayed syntactic skills
D) normal cognitive development and poor semantic skills

Answer 3

delayed cognitive development but normal syntactic skills

Question 4

Slobin's list of operating principles explains:

A) universal patterns in child development
B) the steps by which children learn exceptions to regular verb forms
C) how child-directed speech facilitates acquisition
D) how children acquire a second language more easily than adults do

Question 5

In general, speech directed at young children is _____ than adult-directed speech.

A) longer, higher in pitch, and more intonationally exaggerated
B) shorter, lower in pitch, and spoken in a monotone
C) shorter, higher in pitch, and more intonationally exaggerated
D) longer, lower in pitch, and spoken in a monotone

Question 6

Children who have mastered object permanence begin to use words that refer to:

A) objects that don't move
B) objects that they can move or manipulate themselves
C) any object in the immediate environment
D) objects that are not immediately present

Question 7

Experimental studies of the effect of adult speech input on language acquisition suggest that children benefit from:

A) practice in imitation of adult speech
B) adult sentences that recast the child's sentences into more complete grammatical form
C) adult sentences that are short and grammatical
D) adult sentences that are similar to their own

Question 8

The existence of patients with intact syntactic skills who have deficits in semantic knowledge refutes the notion that:

A) universal grammar exists
B) there is a distinction between linguistic competence and performance
C) normal cognitive development is necessary for language development
D) there is a critical age for language learning

Question 9

The strong form of the motherese hypothesis states that:

A) motherese is necessary but not sufficient for language to develop properly
B) motherese is necessary and sufficient for language to develop properly
C) motherese is not necessary for language development if other forms of child-directed behavior are used
D) motherese is neigher necessary or sufficient for language to develop properly

Question 10

The effects of motherese on children's syntactic development seems most clear in the child's acquisition of:

A) negation
B) verb auxiliaries
C) pronouns
D) definite articles

Question 11

Hakuta and Bialystok (2001) argued against the concept of a critical period for second-language (L2) acquisition. They argued that:

A) even though earlier immigrants show greater L2 proficiency, there was a sharp break at 15 years of age
B) younger and older learners differ in cognitive development, and perhaps in the cognitive strategies they use in L2 learning
C) the sheer amount of practice that adults receive in L2 is far greater than that received by children
D) adults' fears and attitudes about second language learning strongly affects their L2 acquisition

Question 12

In Johnston and Slobin's (1979) waiting room metaphor, the entry door represents the:

A) child's cognitive development
B) transition from infancy to toddlerhood
C) the lag between conceptualizing and expressing a concept
D) acquisition of the appropriate linguistic form

Question 13

Children reputed to have been raised in the wild or by animals are known as:

A) hominid
B) feral
C) critical
D) biprogrammed

Question 14

Children's first use of negative sentences reflects which operating principle?

A) pay attention to the ends of words
B) avoid exceptions
C) avoid interruptions or rearrangement of linguistic units
D) pay attention to the order of words and morphemes

Question 15

When children encounter a new word, they usually assume that it refers to the entire object rather than to part of the object. This is called the:

A) mutual exclusivity bias
B) sensorimotor bias
C) whole object bias
D) taxonomic bias

Question 16

Genie's language acquisition was particularly weak in the area of:

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

Question 17

Children's overregularizations of grammatical morphemes corresponds to which operating principle?

A) pay attention to the ends of words
B) avoid interruption or rearrangement of linguistic units
C) pay attention to the order of words and morphemes
D) avoid exceptions

Question 18

When children reject a second name for an object whose name they already know, they are using the:

A) mutual exclusivity bias
B) sensorimotor bias
C) whole object bias
D) taxonomic bias

Question 19

Research on the relationship between object permanence and the acquisition of the words more and allgone was based on the hypothesis that object permanence should occur _____ the acquisition of these words.

A) before
B) the same time as
C) after
D) independently of

Question 20

Johnson and Newport (1989) studied native Korean and Chinese speakers who had immigrated to the United States between 3 and 39 years of age. The subjects judged whether strings of English words were sentences or not. The study showed that those who arrived in the US between _____ years old had the highest grammatical scores.

A) 3 and 7
B) 8 and 10
C) 11 and 15
D) 16 and 39

Question 21

____________ constitutes evidence to a child that a particular utterance is ungrammatical.

A) Deduction
B) Induction
C) Positive evidence
D) Negative evidence

Question 22

Bickerton's language bioprogram hypothesis:

A) suggests that children are born with a backup linguistic system
B) cannot explain reports of congenitally deaf children who formed their own gestural system of communication
C) does not apply when the child's adult linguistic input is limited
D) says that we need to look beyond cognitive factors to explain language development

Question 23

Children sometimes use sentences such as See window and Shake hands early in language development. According to the parameter setting view, they do so because:

A) they initially assume that sentences without subjects are grammatical
B) they do not have the processing capacity to produce all of the grammatical elements of the utterance
C) they prefer to begin utterances with an action word
D) they have heard similar utterances from older siblings

Question 24

An auxiliary language that arises when speakers of several mutually unintelligible languages are in close contact defines a:

A) creole
B) bioprogram
C) pidgin
D) subdialect

Question 25

Homesign, studied by Goldin-Meadow and others, is an example of:

A) a fully developed signed language
B) a pidgin
C) a creole
D) a dialect

Question 26

Which of the following does NOT support the notion of an innate mechanism for language?

A) genetically based impairments that supposedly are specific to language actually influence other functions as well
B) adults can learn and master a second language
C) the criteria for modularity need to involve more than automaticity, which may be acquired through experience
D) children who acquire language in the absence of a language model have a robust drive to acquire language, rather than an innate language mechanisms

Question 27

If one language has strict word order and a second language has flexible word order, the first can be considered to be a _________ of the second.

A) preemption
B) dialect
C) subset
D) biprogram

Question 28

Nativists argue that negative evidence about ungrammatical sentences:

A) helps children attain the grammar of their native language
B) is, in general, not available
C) is provided by parents to aid their children's language acquisition
D) occurs when children are exposed to an utterance that is not corrected

Question 29

A _________ occurs when children adopt a _______as their native language.

A) dialect, creole
B) pidgin, dialect
C) creole, pidgin
D) creole, dialect

Question 30

Bickerton's (1984) preemption principle stated that when ______________, the language bipogram was suppressed.

A) children were exposed to a second language
B) children had a sufficient amount of normal linguistic input
C) children were born deaf
D) chidren were linguistically deprived during the critical period

Question 31

The mechanism within of universal grammar that allows children to learn the specific subsystems of language is:

A) the subset principle
B) induction
C) parameter setting
D) the linguistic biprogram

Question 32

In Chomsky's view (1981), a noun is the most essential component of a noun phrase, and is referred to as:

A) the induction
B) the subset
C) the head parameter
D) the default