Child Development 131 (3):

Language and Learning

Spring 2002

Dr. Weissman

Exam 1 Study Guide

Exam 1 will be administered on Thursday, March 21^st during regular class time. The exam will consist of a mix of fill-in, multiple choice, short essay, and true/false questions, and will be worth a total of 75 points. You only need to bring a writing utensil to class.

 A few questions to which I would know the answers if I were you

1.          What are Speech, Language, and Communication? How are they different and how are they related?

2.          What are the parts of speech? Be able to determine parts of speech based on the context of a sentence.

3.          What is syntax? What are the rules for word order?

4.          What is morphology? Explain the different types of morphemes.

5.          What does semantics do for us?

6.          How do words derive meaning?

7.          What is pragmatics? What are the rules of pragmatics?

8.          Know the types of speech acts and how utterances are defined using the types.

9.          What are Grice’s Maxims? How are they used?

10.      How does Grice deal with the issue of context and semantics within pragmatics?

11.      What is phonology? What are phonemes and allophones?

12.      How are consonant speech sounds produced?

13.      What is the general guide for classifying vowel speech sounds?

14.      Explain how co-articulation works.

15.      What is phonotactics?

16.      Understand how the phonetic symbols are used in transcription.

17.      How do behaviorists describe language learning? What is their explanation for verbal behaviors? What are the terms associated with the general theory? Know some strengths and weaknesses of the approach.

18.      What is the syntactic model of language acquisition and processing? What are the rules for linguistic processing? How can we analyze a linguistic utterance? Who is associated with this theory? How does the theory explain language acquisition? Know some strengths and weaknesses of the approach.

19.      What is the semantic/cognitive model of language acquisition and processing? What is cognitive determinism? What is case grammar? Understand the 7 cases. How does the theory explain language acquisition? Know some strengths and weaknesses of the approach.

20.      What is the sociolinguistic model of language development? How do we define speech acts; what do they consist of? And, what are some speech act categories? How does this theory explain acquisition? Know some strengths and weaknesses of the approach.

21.      What are some ways that infants seem to be prepared for the task of oral/speech communication (e.g., reflexes, babbling)?

22.      Know some general patterns of child development and how they might relate to language learning and use. Note: you don’t need to know every detail at every age, but you should have a general idea about how infants vs. toddlers vs. preschoolers vs. school-aged children communicate.

23.      What is language comprehension? Production? What areas of the brain might be involved in comprehension and production?

24.      What is the information processing model of linguistic processing? Know the major components and how they work. What is metacognition?

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