LING 355 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Vocal Tract, Lexical Item, Null Hypothesis
Document Summary
Can be viewed as a series of evolving" grammars, i. e. g1 g2 gn. 3-5 years: most difficult aspects of gt acquired. 7 years: ability to learn language begins to decline. Language treated as a behaviour, not a mental phenomenon. L believed to be learned from the environment by a process of habit formation. Stimulus-response theory; children are mimicking input, then are reinforced or corrected. Once forms mastered, children generalize them, extending what they know by analogy. But parents seem to treat grammatical & ungrammatical sentences alike (understand and express approval equally for both) Parents actually care more about tv of children"s utterances, eg momma isn"t a boy, he"s a girl that"s right . Children don"t just repeat things, they use language creatively, eg. who deaded my kitty cat? ; don"t giggle me . Children learn language from linguistic input alone, by inference, using. Children extract relevant generalizations from input, then entertain various logically possible hypotheses to learn language.
