Understanding Child Language Acquisition

Absolutive case

See Case. Absolutive case is used in some languages to mark the object of a transitive sentence and the subject of an intransitive sentence.

Accusative case

See Case. Accusative case is used in some languages to mark the object of a transitive sentence.

Acoustic invariance

Acoustic is a word that means relating to sound or the sense of hearing. Acoustic invariance refers to sounds which always sounds the same every time they are heard. A lack of acoustic invariance refers to the fact that speech sounds often sound different each time they are heard.

Adjective

A class of word that qualifies or modifies a noun or a pronoun to provide extra detail. They can be pre-nominal (the red car) or post-nominal (the car is red).

Adverb

A class of words that qualifies or modifies a verb, adjective or other adverb and thus provides extra detail (e.g. fast in he ran fast, or extremely in he ran extremely fast).

Affix

The marker added to a stem word to add inflection (e.g. the past tense marked -ed in kicked). Affixes can be prefixes (added to the start of the stem), suffixes (added at the end), infixes (added in the middle) or circumfixes (wrapping around the stem).

Agent

The thematic role referring to the participant which is the cause of, and has control over, the action described in the sentence (e.g. the dog in the dog bit the cat).

Agglutinative languages

Languages that use a separate marker to mark each grammatical feature. See also Fusional languages.

Agreement

Agreement occurs when two words in a sentence share at least one grammatical feature. Agreement can then cause a change in the morphology of the words. For example, in English, determiners can agree with the number marking of the noun. So we say this dog (the singular determiner this agrees with the singular noun dog) but these dogs (plural determiner these and plural noun dogs).

Allophone

Allophones occur because phonemes are pronounced slightly differently depending on their position in the word.  So the /p/ in pet is pronounced slightly differently to the /p/ in map.

Allophonic variation

The variation that occurs because each instance of a phoneme is pronounced differently depending on its position in the word

Arguments

Sentences in a language are made up of arguments and predicates. The argument is the part of the sentence that refers to the participants in an event or action. In the simplest sentences, arguments are noun phrases (Orla in Orla laughed). See also Predicate.

Article

See Determiner

Aspect

Aspect markers are used to encode how an event is to be viewed with respect to time. For example, they can encode whether an event has already been completed (Cecily has kicked the ball) or is still ongoing (Cecily is kicking the ball).

Aspirated

When a phoneme is produced with a little burst of air we say it is aspirated. See also Unaspirated.

Auxiliary

An ancillary verb that co-occurs with a main verb, often used to marks grammatical features such as tense and aspect (e.g. is in the boy is eating a cake).

Case

Case marking indicates what grammatical role a noun or pronoun plays in a sentence. For example, in English, nominative case is used for the subject (I in I kicked), accusative for the object (me in kick me) and genitive for the possessor (her in her coat). Across languages there are many possible cases, not all of which are used in English, including nominative, accusative, ergative, absolutive, genitive and dative

Case-marking

See Case.

Categorical perception

The mechanism that allows a listener to categorise a number of different acoustic sounds together and identify them as one phoneme (e.g. /p/). It allows listeners to pay attention to meaningful acoustic differences in speech, such as the difference between /p/ in pat and /b/ in bat, but ignore irrelevant differences such as pronunciation differences

Circumfix

See Affix.

Clause

A grammatical unit of speech that expresses one idea and comprising, at minimum, a subject and one main verb. A clause can correspond to a single simple sentence (e.g. the boy kicked the ball) or be combined with other clauses to create a more complex sentence (e.g. the boy kicked the ball and then he ran away).

Clitics

Clitics (e.g. French me and les) are similar to English pronouns (e.g. me and them) but are more like bound morphemes, in that they attach to a host (a fully inflected) word or phrase (e.g. les in Julie les nourrit ‘Julie is feeding them’). Like pronouns, they are used when it is not necessary to identify the referent by name because it is clearly identifiable from the discourse or situation.

Co-articulation

The process by which neighbouring phonemes are affected by each other in fluent speech (e.g. the /p/ in pet will have a slightly different sound if embedded in a phrase such as Sooty is my pet rabbit).

Complement

See Syntactic phrase.

Conjunction

A word that serves to connect words, phrases, clauses, or sentences (e.g. and, but).

Consonant

A speech sound produced by restricting the airflow in some way (e.g. by narrowing the vocal tract).

Consonant cluster

A group of consonants clustered together in a word with no intervening vowel (e.g. spr in spring).

Consonant harmony

The process by which sounds within a word are assimilated to each other, becoming more like each other (e.g. doggy -> goggy).

Dative case

See Case. Often used in a language to mark the indirect object of a verb (e.g. the person to which something is given) although, across languages, it can be used to mark other grammatical features.

Declarative

The ‘default’ sentence type, used to make a statement (e.g. I am hungry).

Definite article

See Determiner.

Derivational morpheme

A morpheme which, when added to a word, changes the meaning or grammatical category of the word (e.g. adding -ment to the verb excite turns it into the noun excitement).

Determiner

A word class used to modify or qualify nouns. Includes articles (a, the), demonstratives (this, that), quantifiers (one, many, few) and possessive determiners (my, their). It can be subcategorised into definite determiners, which refer to a particular noun identifiable to the listener (I saw the dog), and indefinite determiners that refer to nouns which are generic or not yet identifiable to the listener (I saw a dog).

Direct object

See Object.

Double object dative

In English, a structure used to express the transfer of an object or information, in which the verb takes two objects, the recipient and then the theme (e.g. I gave Francesca the book).

Ergative case

See Case. Ergative case is used in some languages to mark the subject of a transitive sentence.

Fricatives

Voiceless consonants produced by air forced through a narrow gap in the vocal tract (e.g. /f/, /s/).

Fusional (synthetic) languages

Languages that use a single marker to mark multiple features all at once. For example, in English, the verb suffix -s marks three features (3rd person, singular, present tense, e.g. He runs). See also Agglutinative languages.

Gender

A system of classifying nouns into categories such as masculine, feminine and neuter. The gender of a noun usually has an effect on the form of words related to the noun (e.g. determiners, pronouns, adjectives).

Genitive case

See Case. Genitive case is used in some languages to mark the possessor of an object (e.g. the possessive -s in Lauren’s book).

Grammar

The grammar of a language incorporates its syntax (a system of rules for building phrases out of words) and its morphology (a system by which we combine morphemes to yield words).

Head

See Syntactic phrase.

Homographs

Words that are spelt the same but pronounced differently and have different meanings (e.g. tear in the eye vs. tear in a dress).

Homophones

Words that sound the same but have different meanings (e.g. break and brake).

Iambic

Iambic stress or meter refers to the stress pattern in which an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable, as in giraffe.

Idiom

A phrase which has a figurative meaning that is different to the literal meaning of the words in the phrase (e.g. you’re pulling my leg).

Imperative

A command sentence type used to express an order or direct request (e.g. Give me a cake please).

Indefinite article

See Determiner.

Indirect object

See Object.

Inference

The process by which we derive information from a text (sentence, narrative, conversation) that is not explicitly stated in the text, by drawing on our knowledge of the situation, the real world and the mental state of the speaker.

Infix

See Affix.

Inflectional endings

See Inflectional marker.

Inflectional marker

Markers (affixes) that are added to words to mark grammatical functions such as case, person, tense, agreement and number. For example, in English we add the -ed suffix to many verbs to indicate that an action took place in the past (he kicked).

Inflectional morphology

See Inflectional system.

Inflectional (or inflection) system

The system by which a language marks grammatical functions such as case, person, tense, agreement and number. Inflections can be marked on bound morphemes (affixes added to words) or free morphemes that stand alone as words in their own right.

Inflection (inflections)

See Inflectional markers.

Interrogative (or question)

Sentences types used for questioning. Interrogatives can be yes-no questions, which can be answered with a simple yes or no (are you going to school today?) or wh-questions, which contain a wh-word such as what, where or how (where are you going today?).

Intonation

Changes in the tone or pitch of the voice during an utterance. Intonation can be used to convey differences in meaning or attitude (e.g. a rising pitch indicates a question).

Intransitive

A sentence in which the verb does not require a direct object. Used for actions or events with only one actor (e.g. The ball rolled, Morton disappeared).

Irregular verbs

Verbs that do not follow the regular pattern of conjugation in a language. For example, sang and ran are past tense verbs in English that do not take the regular past tense ending -ed.

Irony

The use of an utterance to express a different, and especially the opposite, meaning to the literal meaning (e.g. You only got 9 out of 10? What went wrong?).

Labial consonant

A type of consonant produced by bringing the lips close together or touching (e.g. /p/, /b/ or /m/).

Larynx

An organ in the neck involved in breathing and sound production. Also called the voice box.

Lateralised (lateralisation)

A term used to refer to the fact that different hemispheres of the brain become specialised to carry out different functions (lateral means side).

Lexeme

Because words can occur in different inflected word-forms (e.g. like, likes, liked) we say they are derivations of a single lexeme (LIKE). The lexeme represents the core meaning shared by all the word-forms. See also Word.

Lexicon

Our mental dictionary of words and morphemes.

Liquid

Liquid consonants comprise laterals and rhotics. Laterals are produced by obstructing air in the midline with the tongue but allowing air to pass around one or both sides (e.g. /l/). Rhotics are a more heterogeneous category, with no unifying means of articulation, but include the English /r/.

Localised (or localisation)

A term used to refer to the fact that different regions of the brain seem to be specialised to carry out different functions (e.g. Broca’s area is implicated in language processing).

Manner

A term referring to the type of motion event expressed by a motion word (e.g. running vs. walking). See also Path.

Mean length of utterance (MLU)

The average length of the utterances expressed by a speaker during a sample of spontaneous speech. It is usually calculated in morphemes, though sometimes in whole words. It is traditionally used as a measure of a child's grammatical development.

Metalinguistic awareness

Our conscious awareness of the nature of language and its functions.

Metaphor

A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that refers to one idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness between them (e.g. He’s drowning in paperwork).

Morpheme

‘The smallest meaningful constituent of words that can be identified’ (Haspelmath & Sims, 2010, p. 3). Morphemes can be further divided into bound morphemes, which are affixes that attach to a word stem (e.g. -ed in kicked) or free morphemes, that can stand alone as words (e.g. is, are).

Morphology

The system that languages use to combine morphemes to yield words. Also refers to the study of how morphemes are combined into words. Together with syntax, morphology comprises a language’s grammar.

Narrative

A verbal or written description of a sequence of events, either imagined or that occurred in the past. By definition, a narrative must be longer than a single utterance.

Negation

The system used by languages to reverse the polarity of a proposition or idea (e.g. turning a positive statement into a negative one). In English, this is achieved using the negator words such as not (e.g. Samuel is not happy) and negative affixes such as un (e.g. unhappy).

Negator

See Negation.

Neuron

A nerve cell.

Nominative case

See Case.

Noun

One of the major lexical categories of a language. Often used to refer to people, objects or events. Nouns can act as arguments of the verb (e.g. the subject or object) and as the head of noun phrases (see syntactic phrase).

Noun phrase

A syntactic phrase that has a noun as its head, often combined with a complement. For example, the noun phrase a dog has the head noun dog and the complement a. See also Syntactic phrase.

Null marker

Null markers are affixes that happen to be phonologically null (i.e. not pronounced). For example, in English, the first person singular, present tense form of the verb kick (I kick) is phonologically identical to the stem form (kick) because the first person singular present affix is null.

Null subject

Syntactic subjects that are phonologically null (i.e. not pronounced). Null subjects are permissible in null subject languages such as Spanish (e.g. llueve means literally ‘is raining’).

Number

Words are marked for number to indicate the number of people or objects under discussion. In English, number marking simply distinguishes whether an event involved one person (singular: I, it, dog, cat) or many (plural: we, they, dogs, cats).

Object

The terms grammatical (or syntactic) subject and object refer to the syntactic position of arguments (e.g. nouns, pronouns) in a phrase. The object is the argument that is the complement of the verb. For example, in the dog kicked the man, the man is the object. Sometimes a sentence has a direct and an indirect object, as in I gave the cake to Biba. In this case, the direct object is the object acted upon directly (the cake) and the indirect object is the person to whom the cake is given (Biba).

Object clitic

See Clitic.

Participle

A non-finite (i.e. untensed) verb form. In English they are combined with auxiliaries (e.g. the present participle falling in I am falling or the past participle fallen in I have fallen).

Passive

A sentence type in which the syntactic subject role is filled by the patient of the action and the agent is backgrounded (e.g. The cake was eaten by the girl). Sometimes, the agent is omitted, in which case it is a short passives (e.g the cake was eaten).

Path

Term referring to the direction of motion expressed by a motion word in relationship to a landmark such as a house (e.g. into the house, out of the house, over the house). See also Manner.

Patient

A thematic role specifying the argument that is affected by the action or the referent towards whom the action is directed (e.g. the cake in Biba ate the cake).

Periphrastic causative

A structure that expresses the meaning that a causer did something which resulted in a second person (causee) carrying out an action. In English, this is usually achieved by the use of the verb make (e.g. he made me laugh).

Person

Person markers are inflectional markers that identify whether the subject (and object in some languages) is the person speaking (first person; I kick, we kick), the listener (second person; you kick) or other people not involved in the conversation (third person; he kicks, she kicks).

Phoneme

The smallest units of sound that have contrastive meaning in a language. For example, /b/ and /m/ are defined as phonemes because replacing one with another creates a word with a different meaning (e.g. bat becomes mat).

Phoneme boundary

The point on a continuum of speech sounds at which the listener perceives the sound as changing from one phoneme to another (e.g. /b/ to /p/).

Phonological system

See Phonology.

Phonology

The sound system of a language, as well as the rules governing how speech sounds combine. Also refers to the study of the sound system of the language.

Phonotactic regularities

Regularities that result from restrictions on which sounds can co-occur in a language (e.g. [vzg] is not permissible at the beginning of words in English).

Pitch

A term used to refer to the acoustic property of speech that is affected by the rate at which the vocal cords vibrate. For example, speech can be high pitched like a mouse’s squeak or low pitched like a bear’s growl.

Plosives

Consonants that are produced with the lips pressed together. The closure of the lips causes an obstruction that blocks the air in the mouth cavity for a short time. Then the lips are opened quickly and the air passes through with an (ex)plosion (e.g. /p/ and /b/).

Plural

See Number.

Possessive

A word or marker used to indicate a relationship of possession between two objects. For example, English has the possessive -s suffix (e.g. the girl’s hat).

Pragmatics

The system governing how we use language to communicate effectively, which allows us to convey and infer information beyond the literal meaning of a sentence. Also used to refer to the study of this system.

Predicate

Sentences are combinations of arguments and predicates. The predicate refers to the event or action being described. In the simplest sentences, the predicate is the verb (barked in the dog barked) but it can be more complex (e.g. barked at the cat in the sentence the dog barked at the cat). See also Argument.

Prefixes

See Affix

Preposition

One of the major lexical categories of a language, often used to denote manner or location (e.g. on, in, under, from, to). Acts as the head of a prepositional phrase (e.g. to the park, in the box).

Prepositional dative

In English, a structure used to express the transfer of an object or information, in which one participant (the theme) is encoded as a direct object and another (the recipient) is marked by a preposition (e.g. I gave the book to Francesca).

Preterit tense

Used to denote events that took place or were completed in the past (e.g. Spanish: acabó ‘finished’).

Pronoun

A class of lexical words that can stand for a noun or noun phrase whose identity is readily accessible to the listener (and thus, does not need to be referred to by name).

Prosodic cues

Cues relating to the rhythm, stress pattern and intonation of speech that could be used to segment words from the speech stream.

Prosody

The term used to refer to characteristics of the speech stream such as rhythm, loudness, pitch and tempo. Changes in prosody can signal changes in meaning (e.g. use of a rising pitch to signal a question).

Question

See Interrogative.

Recipient

A thematic role referring to the argument that is the recipient of the object (theme) in a sentence (e.g. Cecily in Biba gave Cecily the cake).

Recursion

The process that allows one syntactic phrase to be embedded inside another in language. In principle, recursion can occur ad infinitum, allowing sentences of infinite length.

Reference words

The words used to identify an object, person or event. They can be nouns (Lauren), noun phrases (the girl) or pronouns (she).

Referent (or reference words)

The object, event or idea that is referred to by a word.

Relative clause

A clause headed by a pronoun such as that or who, which qualifies or modifies the noun e.g. the boy that Alec saw is happy.

Scalar implicature

A term that refers to the inference that listeners make when they assume that a speaker who used an informationally weak term like some is implying that the informationally stronger term (all) does not apply.

Segmentation

The process by which listeners carve up the speech stream into meaningful units such as phonemes, syllables, words and phrases.

Semantics

The system of a language that conveys meaning. Also refers to the study of this system.

Sentence

A grammatical unit of speech comprising one or more clauses. See Clause.

Short passives

See Passive.

Singular

See Number.

Spatial relations (spatial terms)

Words that describe the location of an object in relation to other objects (e.g. on, in, under).

Stem

The uninflected base form of a word. Stems can be combined with affixes to create an inflected form (e.g. kick + -ed = kicked).

Stop consonant

A consonant produced by completely stopping the air in the vocal tract for a short period (e.g. blocking the air with the lips as in /b/).

Stress

The degree of emphasis given to a sound or syllable in speech. Stressed syllables are emphasised (e.g. [doc] in doctor) and unstressed syllable are not (e.g. [tor] in doctor).

Subject

The terms grammatical (or syntactic) subject and object refer to the syntactic position of arguments in a phrase. The subject is the argument which governs the verb, in the sense that if the language has agreement, the verb usually has to agree with the subject (see Agreement). For example, in the dog kicked the man, the dog is the subject. See also Object.

Subject clitic

See Clitic.

Subject-verb agreement

See Agreement.

Suffix

See Affix.

Syllable

A basic unit of speech that comprises a nucleus (usually a vowel) that can be preceded by and/or followed by a consonant. For example, pie is a syllable with a vowel nucleus and a preceding consonant (onset). Ape is a syllable with a vowel nucleus and a following consonant (coda). Words can be composed of one syllable (e.g. pie, ape) or many (e.g. establishment).

Syntactic phrase

A grammatical unit such as a noun phrase or verb phrase, made up of a head and a complement. The nature of the head depends on the nature of the syntactic phrase. For example, the noun phrase a dog has the head noun dog and the complement a. The verb phrase eat a cake has the head verb eat and the complement a cake. See also Noun phrase, Verb phrase.

Syntax

The system by which languages build phrases out of words and sentences out of phrases. Together with morphology, syntax comprises a language's grammar.

Synthetic languages

See Fusional languages.

Tense

Tense markers encode the location of an event in time (i.e. when an event took place) and are usually added to the verb. For example, in English, we can add -ed to indicate past tense (kick becomes kicked).

Tense markers

See Tense.

Thematic roles

Specify the role that particular arguments play in the action. Examples are agent, patient, theme and recipient. For example, in Biba threw the ball, Biba is the agent (the one throwing the ball) and the ball is the patient (the object being thrown).

Tone

The differences in pitch used to convey different meanings in language (e.g. anger, excitement). In some languages different words are distinguished by tone (e.g. in Mandarin mā (high level tone) means ‘mother’ but mǎ (falling then rising tone) means ‘horse’.

Transitive

A sentence in which the verb has to be accompanied by a direct object. Often used to express the action of an agent on a patient (e.g. Amy ate the cake).

Trochaic

Trochaic stress or meter refers to the stress pattern in which a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed syllable, as in doctor.

Unaspirated

When a phoneme is produced without a little burst of air we say it is unaspirated (see also Aspirated).

Verb

One of the major lexical categories of a language. Verbs are considered to be at the heart of every sentence. Verbs often carry the weight of a language’s inflectional system and are mostly (though not always) used to refer to activities (e.g. kicking), states (e.g. knowing) and sensations (e.g. feeling).

Verb argument structure

The argument structure of a verb determines how many arguments there are in a clause. The verb laugh requires only one argument, the sentence subject (e.g. Orla laughed). The verb kicked requires two arguments (Orla kicked the ball).

Verb phrase

A syntactic phrase that has a verb as its head, often combined with a complement. For example, the verb phrase eat the cake has the head verb eat and the complement the cake.  See also Syntactic phrase.

Vocal cords (or vocal folds)

Two folds of muscle stretched horizontally across the larynx. When they vibrate they produce voiced speech sounds (e.g. /b/ and /d/).

Vocal tract

The cavity within the throat that extends from the opening in the vocal cords to the mouth.

Voice Onset Time (VOT)

The length of time that passes between the lips opening and the vocal cords vibrating. VOT varies according to the consonant produced (e.g. /p/ and /b/ differ in VOT).

Voicing

See Vocal cords.

Vowel

A speech sound produced when air is allowed to flow freely through the vocal tract and out of the mouth.

Wh-question

See Interrogative.

Word

A distinct meaningful element of speech that symbolises, and thus communicates, a particular meaning. It is the smallest element in a sentence that may be used meaningfully in isolation. See also Lexeme.

Yes-no question

See Interrogative.