Acquisition Glossary

This list gives some useful terms for understanding and discussing language development in children. It is far from exhaustive, however!

Addition

          - Involves the addition of an extra vowel sound to the end; so adult 'egg' might be pronounced 'egu'

Adjective

- An example of a Word Class. Adjectives describe nouns and appear before nouns or after the verb 'to be' (examples: 'big', 'happy')

Adverb or Adverbial

- An example of a Clause Element. It is the element which answers the question 'how', 'when', 'where', 'why' when asked of the main verb of the sentence. E.g. she

loved him always.

Article

- An example of Word Class. There are two forms:

1. Definite article

i.e. you are sure which one you are referring to - 'the', 'this', 'that', 'those'. Usually precedes a noun or adjective and noun.

2. Indefinite article

i.e. you are less sure … 'a' 'an' as in 'any' .

Assimilation

- this happens when one consonant or vowel becomes similar to another, as in 'gog' for 'dog'.

Communicative Competence

- Coined by Del Hymes re: the skills associated with conversation e.g. when and how to speak

Clause

- Traditionally a group of words containing a verb. E.g. 'After going to church'.

Concrete nouns

- A noun which refers to a tangible (visible) object rather than an idea or concept. Usually contrasted with abstract nouns.

Deletion

- Children will often simplify pronunciation by deleting certain sounds

De-voicing

- use of a de-voiced (voiceless) consonant instead of a voiced one, i.e. [t] instead of [d], or [s] instead of [z].

Diphthong

- a two part vowel such as 'au' or 'ou'

Expressive

- Also known as scribble talk. The baby makes long strings of babbled jargon sounds which sound like normal conversation. Most adults do it after a few drinks!!!

Field

- Sometimes called semantic field or lexical field, it refers to a topic in which the items have an association with one another. For example, knife, fork, dinner, salt, etc

Fricative Sounds

- Where there is vibration whilst air is released, such as [f], [z], [s] - e.g. the 's' in pleasure

Function

- This is a more technical word for the purpose of an utterance.

Gurgling

- When babies are 6-8 weeks old they make sounds like 'coo', 'goo' or 'ga-ga'.

Holophrase

- A one word utterance / sentence that conveys meaning. E.g. 'Dada', 'hot'.

Inflections

- These are parts of words (morphological markers) that show some grammatical function like past tense (-ed), or plural (-s)

Innate

- Anything which is innate is present from birth and is presumed to be biologically programmed. Derived from French verb 'nass'. Other words include natural; ante-natal etc

Intonation and stress

- The intonation of an utterance can be determined by factors like which word is stressed or whether or not the pitch rises or falls. E.g. rising intonation often indicates a question.

Lexis

- Another term for vocabulary

Linguistic competence

- Chomsky's term for a person's underlying knowledge of linguistic rules. It is the knowledge that enables people to create new sentences

Morpheme

- The smallest part of a word that has a semantic / grammatical content; always a letter or group of letters.

Morphology

- Refers to the study of morphemes

Noun phrase

- This is a collection of words that centres around a noun (the head word) with words sometimes appearing both in front of and after the head word. For example, 'The lonely shepherd with his hand in his pockets).

Object

- A Clause Element that answers the question 'who' or 'what' if placed after a verb. E.g. in The boy walked the dog, the noun phrase 'the dog' is the object.

Over - extension

- A word is given a broader, more general meaning than it should have.

Over - regularisation

- Applying regular verb tenses to irregular verbs, e.g. he drived, he goed or using regular plural - s to irregular plural forms e.g. sheeps, mouses.

Phoneme

- This is the smallest unit of sound that makes a difference to the meaning of a word. A long or short 'a' can make the difference between 'cat' and 'cart'.

Phonemic expansion

- During babbling phrase, the number of different sounds produced by child increases initially.

Phonemic contraction

- At 9-10 months reduction begins to occur.

Phrase

- A word or group of words that functions as a unit in a sentence. See Main Glossary for more.

Pragmatics

- This is the study of the way language functions in society, often with unspoken rules for communication. A child with perfect grammar but with no knowledge of pragmatics would not know what language is used for. Language use in a particular context or situation.

Pre-linguistic

- This is usually the time before a baby's first word is uttered.

Pre-natal

- Before birth

Pronoun

- A word that takes the place of a noun (e.g. 'he', 'she', 'it')

• Possessives ('mine'; 'my' etc)
• Relative ('who'; 'which')

Reduplication

- The repetition of a whole syllable, as in 'choo choo', 'moo moo' and 'woof woof'. This has become a recognised feature of 'baby talk'. Also refers to babbling.

Semantics

- This is the study of linguistic meaning or the meaning of words. In the field of language acquisition semantic development looks at how children's meanings differ from adults'. For example, when a child uses 'dog' to mean any animal with four legs.

Stages

- In language acquisition studies a stage is a period in a child's development characterised by certain linguistic features. Gordon Wells offers this advice '... 'referring' to stages is nothing more than a convenient way to describe the child's development . In fact this development is more or less continuous, with no sharp boundaries between successive stages.' (1986)

Subject

- Another Clause Element. The subject or thing that the sentence is about (usually a noun)

Substitution

- Another form of simplification involves substituting easier sounds for harder ones. E.g. [r] in rock becomes [w]

Syntax

- This refers to the rules for combining words in English

Turn-taking

- This refers to the tendency for people in conversation to take turns to speak. Linguists are interested in uncovering the rules that govern this behaviour.

Underextension

- A common semantic error made by children when a word is given a narrower meaning than it should have.

Verb

- One of the Clause Elements from which the others can be found. Traditionally verbs were called 'doing words' although many of them (called stative verbs) do not 'do' much: to be, to have, to wonder, to hope.

Voicing

- This refers to the vibration of the vocal chords to produce the difference between [z] and [s].