Language Knowledge
This type of grammar describes how speakers actually use language in real life, rather than setting strict rules on how they "should" speak.
Descriptive grammar
This term refers to the actual speech utterances infants hear in their environment, demonstrating permissible language structures.
Positive evidence (positive evidence consists of valid, natural speech input that children hear in their environment)
This term describes the influence or carryover of a native language (L1) structure onto a second language (L2).
Linguistic transfer (or L1 transfer / cross-linguistic influence)
In an experimental design, this variable represents the condition or variable directly manipulated by the researcher.
Independent variable (IV)
These are the smallest contrastive sound units in a language that can distinguish meaning between words.
Phonemes
This property of language refers to how lower-level, meaningless sound units (phonemes) combine to form higher-level, meaningful units (morphemes and words).
Duality of patterning
The emergence of this sign language in the late 1970s provided researchers with compelling evidence of children naturally generating structured grammar.
Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL)
NSL emerged spontaneously when deaf children were brought together in schools in Nicaragua, showing how children can regularize and expand input into a fully systematic grammar.
This type of bilingual individual acquires two languages at the same time from early infancy.
Simultaneous bilinguals
In an Acceptability Judgment Task (AJT) where participants rate sentences from 1 to 7, identify the independent variable and dependent variable.
Independent Variable = Sentence type / Grammaticality;
Dependent Variable = Rating score (1–7 scale).
The researcher manipulates sentence structure or correctness (IV) and measures the participant's judgment rating (DV).
Define allophones and explain what it means for two sounds to be in complementary distribution.
Allophones are non-contrastive physical variants of a phoneme; complementary distribution means two allophones never occur in the same phonetic environment.
For example, aspirated [p] in pin and unaspirated [p] in spin are allophones of /p/ in complementary distribution
Proponents of this theoretical perspective argue that humans possess an innate capacity for language called Universal Grammar.
Nativism (or the Nativist perspective)
Name two distinct prelinguistic speech production stages that infants pass through before producing their first words.
Cooing (vocalic sounds, ~2–4 months) and babbling (consonant-vowel sequences like ba-ba, ~6+ months) are key prelinguistic developmental stages.
State one major similarity and one major difference between child L1 acquisition and adult L2 acquisition.
Similarity: Both pass through systematic developmental stages;
Difference: Adults have existing L1 knowledge and higher domain-general cognitive maturity.
Both child L1 and adult L2 learners build rule-governed interlanguage systems. However, adult L2 learners experience L1 transfer and rely more on explicit cognitive strategies compared to children.
This statistical hypothesis proposes that there is no true difference or effect between the experimental conditions being tested.
The null hypothesis
Describe the Conditioned Head-Turn procedure and what it measures in infant speech research.
Infants are trained to turn their head toward a visual reward whenever an auditory stimulus changes, revealing perceptual sound boundaries.
This argument asserts that children acquire language rapidly and accurately despite receiving input that is limited, noisy, and underdetermines complex rules.
Poverty of the Stimulus argument
Explain why positive evidence alone is theoretically insufficient for a child to eliminate ungrammatical overgeneralization errors.
Positive evidence alone does not tell children which overgeneralizations (e.g., "goed", "mouses") are ungrammatical; without negative evidence (explicit correction), children must rely on internal mechanisms or indirect negative evidence to unlearn errors.
Provide one piece of evidence FOR and one piece of evidence AGAINST a strict Critical Period in Second Language Acquisition.
FOR: Declining native-like accent/syntax proficiency with increasing age of arrival;
AGAINST: High individual variability and exceptional adult learners who reach native-like mastery. Age-of-arrival strongly correlates with phonological and syntactic outcomes, but some adults achieve native-like fluency, challenging a strict biological window.
State one advantage and one disadvantage of using an artificial language paradigm in language research.
Advantage: Complete control over input and exclusion of prior linguistic knowledge;
Disadvantage: Lack of ecological validity / simplified structure.
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Distinguish between top-down and bottom-up cues in speech perception
Bottom-up cues use raw acoustic signals; top-down cues use context/meaning.
Bottom-up processing analyzes incoming auditory signals, while top-down processing leverages semantic/syntactic context.
Explain the concept of arbitrariness in human language
Arbitrariness means there is no natural or logical connection between a word's physical form/sound and its meaning.
Describe two lines of empirical evidence supporting the Critical Period Hypothesis in first language acquisition.
Evidence from cases of extreme isolation (e.g., Genie) and age-of-acquisition studies in deaf signers.
Individuals deprived of linguistic input during childhood fail to acquire full complex syntax later in life.
Studies with deaf individuals acquiring sign language at different ages show that late learners achieve significantly lower syntactic mastery than native/early learners.
Explain whether linguistic transfer operates equally across all language domains (e.g., phonology vs. syntax vs. vocabulary).
No, transfer is not equal across all domains.
Transfer is often strongest in phonology (producing an accent) and complex syntax, whereas lexical vocabulary acquisition depends primarily on exposure and rote learning rather than L1 structural transfer
Identify two potential confounding variables in a forced-choice listening identification task.
Acoustic quality/volume, word frequency, participant tiredness, or ambient background noise.
Confounding variables are extraneous factors that could systematically influence reaction times or accuracy instead of the targeted independent variable.
How do bilingual infants differ from monolingual infants regarding the timeline for perceiving non-native phonemic contrasts?
While monolinguals narrow their phonetic sensitivity to native contrasts around 10–12 months, bilinguals remain sensitive to contrasts in both input languages.