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Chapter 1
Chapter Comprehension Exercises
Explain in your own words what is meant by semanticity.
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Explain in your own words what is meant by arbitrariness.
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Explain in your own words what is meant by productivity.
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Why don’t we refer to the communications systems of other animals as languages?
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Kanzi learned to produce and understand words and produce and understand simple sentences. Why do some critics argue, despite this, that animals cannot learn human language?
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What is the evidence that adult brains are lateralised or localised for language?
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What evidence do we have that babies’ brains are not lateralised or localised for language?
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It is indisputable that both genes and environment are needed in order to acquire a language. But what aspects of the nature-nurture debate are still being discussed today?
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Chapter 2
Chapter Comprehension Exercises
Describe the problems for the learner caused by a lack of acoustic invariance.
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Describe the problems for the learner caused by cross-linguistic differences in categorical perception.
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Describe the main differences between the Universal theory (maintenance and loss) and attunement theories like Kuhl’s NLM-e.
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Identify which of the following segmentation cues are language universal (language general) and which differ across languages (and must be learnt by exposure to a language): (1) allophonic cues, (2) stress cues, (3) transitional probabilities, (4) phonotactic regularities.
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What is wrong with the idea that transitional probabilities are sufficient for infants to solve the segmentation problem?
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What are the four main types of pronunciation errors (deformations) that children produce?
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Identify one criticism/problem with the mis-perception 'mushy mouth mushy ear' theory of why children make pronunciation errors.
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Identify one criticism/problem with the Articulatory constraints on production theory of why children make pronunciation errors.
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Identify one criticism/problem with Jakobson’s maturation theory of why children make pronunciation errors.
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Identify one criticism/problem with Template theory of why children make pronunciation errors.
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Chapter 3
Chapter Comprehension Exercises
Summarise the reference problem.
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Summarise the extension problem.
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Describe a cross-linguistic study that shows that children are NOT sensitive to universal biases. How does this evidence count against the constraints approach?
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How does the social-pragmatic theory explain how children learn verbs?
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Which four cognitive mechanisms or abilities are central to the Attentional Learning Account?
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Why does the study by Naigles (1990) show that 24-month-old children can do syntactic bootstrapping?
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Chapter 4
Chapter Comprehension Exercises
In your own words, explain what is meant by the poverty of the stimulus argument.
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In your own words, explain what is meant by the bootstrapping problem.
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In your own words, explain what is meant by the problem of over-generalisation errors.
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Give a definition and an example of a transitive sentence.
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Give a definition and an example of an intransitive sentence.
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Give a definition and an example of a passive sentence.
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Give a definition and an example of a negative sentence.
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Give a definition and an example of a relative clause.
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Give a definition and an example of a syntactic subject.
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Give a definition and an example of a syntactic object.
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Give a definition and an example of a thematic role
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Describe in your own words one problem with the semantic bootstrapping theory.
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Describe in your own words one problem with a principles and parameters theory that explains errors in terms of performance limitations.
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Describe in your own words one problem with a semantic-distributional account.
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Describe in your own words one problem with the usage-based theory.
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Describe briefly (one or two sentences) how the negative evidence theory explains how children retreat from over-generalisation error.
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Describe briefly (one or two sentences) how the semantic verb class hypothesis explains how children retreat from over-generalisation error.
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Describe briefly (one or two sentences) how the entrenchment hypothesis explains how children retreat from over-generalisation error.
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Chapter 5
Chapter Comprehension Exercises
Give a brief explanation of the function of tense morphemes.
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Give a brief explanation of the function of person marking morphemes.
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Give a brief explanation of the function of number marking morphemes.
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Give a brief explanation of the function of gender marking morphemes.
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Summarise how the ATOM explains why children make errors.
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Summarise how the variational learning model explains why children make errors.
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Summarise how constructivist theory explains why children make errors.
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Which theory (ATOM, VLM, constructivist) can explain why children make more errors with eventive verbs than stative verbs, and why?
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Describe the methods by which English speakers produce past tense forms, according to the dual route model.
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Which of the methods you gave in answer to the previous question are also proposed by the single route accounts?
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Chapter 6
Chapter Comprehension Exercises
What is the key difference between ‘rich interpretation’ and ‘lean interpretation’ views of infant communicative behaviours?
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According to the socio-pragmatic theory of language development, what is required for children to learn language?
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Explain what is meant by the term ‘scalar implicature’.
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Explain what is meant when we say that reference words lie on a scale of accessibility.
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What does the study by Dunn and Shatz (1989) tell us about children’s ability to take turns in a) a conversation with familiar caregivers and b) a multiparty conversation?
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Briefly describe the theory of mind theory of communicative impairment in autism.
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Briefly describe the weak central cohesion theory of communicative impairment in autism.
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Briefly describe the language deficit theory of communicative impairment in autism.
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What are the key differences between specific language impairment, pragmatic language impairment and autism?
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Chapter 7
Chapter Comprehension Exercises
Define lexical mixing.
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Define phonological mixing.
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Define morphological mixing.
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Define syntactic mixing.
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Define pragmatic mixing.
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Language mixing probably does not indicate that children are confusing their two languages. What alternative explanations are there?
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Explain the autonomous systems view of bilingual development.
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Explain the interdependent system view of bilingual development.
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What did Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam (2009) conclude about age of acquisition effects?
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That they had important consequences for acquisition even if second language learnt from an early age. Very few children, even those who started learning language before age of 11 years, had native-like competence when looked in detail at language development.What is impact belief?
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List five factors that are important in a child’s success at learning both languages.
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State which group is best at the following tasks – bilinguals or monolinguals: (1) Conflict tasks; (2) Phonological awareness tasks; (3) Verbal fluency tasks.
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Chapter 8
Chapter Comprehension Exercises
At the beginning of the chapter we posed the question 'what factors influence how quickly and easily children learn their language under normal circumstances'? What three factors did we look at?
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What is behavioural genetics?
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After a long history of research, two clear findings emerge about the effect of the environment on individual variation in language development. What are these?
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Give three ways in which sign language is similar to spoken language.
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Define specific language impairment.
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In SLI, which area of language tends to be most affected across languages?
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Which gene is affected in the KE family in London? What effect does it have?
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Chapter 8
Chapter Comprehension Exercises
According to Chomsky, why do we need Universal Grammar to explain how children learn language?
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What is the difference between a) principles and b) parameters in UG?
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Explain why some researcher think that the existence of creoles, home sign and Nicaraguan sign language support the claim that we have a Universal Grammar.
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Describe the key difference between the following 3 views of the language mechanism: Pinker and Jackendoff’s linguistic 'toolkit'; Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch’s Language Faculty Broad and Narrow; and ‘a new machine built out of old parts’.
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Why do some researchers suggest that Williams syndrome provides evidence for a language mechanism that is separately and distinct from the mechanisms governing other cognitive functions?
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Explain why Kirby et al’s (2008) study on language evolution in the lab provides evidence for the 'new machine out of old parts' theory.