PS102 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Oneword, Metalinguistic Awareness, Acculturation
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Cognition: mental processes involved in acquiring knowledge. Language: consists of symbols that convey meaning, plus rules for combining those symbols, that can be used to generate an infinite variety of messages. Phonemes: smallest speech units in a language that can be distinguished perceptually. Morphemes: smallest units of meaning in a language. Semantics: area of language concerned with understanding the meaning of words and word combinations. Syntax: a system of rules that specify how words can be arranged into sentences. Milestones in language development (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) (cid:1) Reflexive communication: vocalizes randomly, coos, laughs, cries, engages in vocal play, discriminates language from nonlanguage sounds. Babbling: verbalizes in response to the speech of others; responses increasingly approximate human speech patterns. First words: uses words, typically to refer to objects. One-word sentence stage: vocabulary grows slowly; uses nouns primarily; overextensions begin. Vocabulary spurt: fast mapping facilitates rapid acquisition of new words (cid:1)