Key Terms

Listed below are key terms and definitions for your reference that are needed to be understood to fully grasp the depth of this project. Feel free to come back to this page while your browsing the website!

Form, Content, and Use

Form: refers to phonology (rules about speech sounds), morphology (small units of meaning within words), and syntax (word order)

Content: refers to semantics (meaning of words).

Use: refers to pragmatics (rules for communication through language)

(Notes)

Phonology and Articulation

Form

Phonology "refers to the rules of language governing the sounds that make syllables and words" (Textbook)

Phonemes: Meaningful sound (Textbook)

Allophones: "subtle variations of phonemes that occur as a result of contextual influences on how phonemes are produced in different words" (Textbook)

Articulation refers to an "act of expressing something in a coherent verbal form, or an aspect of pronunciation involving the articulatory organs" (vocabulary.com)

Can also mean the "the act or process of speaking or expressing in words" (dictionary.com)

Phonological awareness: "sensitivity to the sound structure of words" (Textbook)

Phonology and Articulation involve the production of language, so it can not be receptive, only expressive. Because of this, there will be nothing for these sections highlighted as it is all expressive.

(Textbook, p. 17) (Vocabulary.com) (Dictionary.com)

Morphology

Form

Morphology "pertains to the rules of language governing the internal organization of words"

Morphemes: smallest unit of language that carries meaning

Morphology is an "important linguistic tool that not only allows us to add precision to language but also to expand vocabulary exponentially using a relatively small core of words and morphing them into a much larger pool of word families"

An important concept related to this is Brown's Stages of Syntactic and Morphological Development. This was created by Roger Brown to provide a framework of the normal expressive language development in English. This includes Brown's 14 Grammatical Morphemes.

(Textbook, p.19)

Syntax

Form

Syntax "refers to the rules of language governing the internal organization of sentences"

Syntax and Semantics often get confused but, "Semantics provides the meaning to utterances, syntax provides the structure"

"Noam Chomsky’s well-known proposition that Colorless green ideas sleep furiously illustrates the difference between semantics and syntax, in which a sentence is devoid of meaning but conforms to sophisticated syntactic rules."

(Textbook, p.19)

Semantics

Content

"refers to the rules of language governing the meaning of individual words and word combinations"

"Knowledge of semantics tells you something is wrong with the sentence linguist"

"Noam Chomsky produced, Colorless green ideas sleep furiously, and differentiates the meaning the words express (semantics) from the grammar that organizes them into a sentence (syntax)"

(Textbook, p.19)

Pragmatics

Use

"pertains to the rules governing language use for social purposes, and is a synonym for the term social communication"

"comprises:

(a) using language for different functions or intentions (communication intentions)

(b) organizing language for discourse, including conversation

"In using language for social purposes, pragmatic rules govern linguistic, extra linguistic, and para linguistic aspects of communication, such as word choice, turn taking, posture, gestures, facial expression, eye contact, proximity, pitch, loudness, and pauses."

Pragmatics involves the use of language, so it can not be receptive, only expressive. Because of this, there will be nothing for these sections highlighted as it is all expressive.

(Textbook, p.20)

Preliteracy Skills

According to Scholastic,

"Preliteracy skills cover far more than a child's ability to identify letters, numbers, or shapes. It includes important skills such as oral language and phonological and phonemic awareness (the awareness of sounds), as well as knowledge of the alphabet and vocab and an understanding of common print concepts (print goes from left to right and from up to down on a page)."

"The most significant factors in your child's reading success are his oral language skills. Language is the foundation of reading development and is strongly tied to your child's growth in reading and writing."

Preliteracy skills are a building block of language development and milestones in children, making these skills very important.

(Scholastic.com)

Expressive Language

"The amount of language an individual can produce spontaneously without imitating another person’s verbalizations" (Textbook, p.144)

In simple terms, what does the child PRODUCE

For this project, expressive language skills will be highlighted in orange.

Receptive Language

"The amount of language an individual can comprehend" (Textbook, p.144)

In simple terms, what does the child UNDERSTAND

For this project, expressive language skills will be highlighted in purple.

Phonological Processes

Form

Phonological processes refers to "typical patterns of error used by all children when they try to imitate adults as they are developing speech."

As a child grows, their correct speech will become easier because their tongue and motor skills mature and gain experience. They may not be aware they are making any issues as well.

Specific processes will be identified in the phonology/articulation section of each age.

According to Speech Sisters, standard guidelines are:

"Between 19 – 24 months, your child should be 25-50% intelligible to an unfamiliar listener"
"Between 2 – 3 years old they should be 50-75% intelligible to an unfamiliar listener"
"Between 4-5 years old they should be 75-90% intelligible to an unfamiliar listener even if a few articulation errors are still present in their speech."

(home-speech-home.com, speechsisters.com)

Fast Definitions:

Infant Directed Speech: "the speech adults use in communicative situations with young language learners"

Joint Attention: "the simultaneous engagement of two or more individuals in mental focus on a single external object of attention"

Late Talkers: "children who demonstrate early delays in expressive language development. Fewer than 50 words by age 2"

Early Talkers: "children who are ahead in expressive language use. These children are 11-21 months who score in top 10% of for vocab production at their age"

Fast Mapping: "Ability to pick up words after only a few incidental exposures, or even a single exposure. The brief exposure to the novel word and its referent, for which children form a lexical representation."

MLU: "Total number of morphemes/Total number of utterances. Measure of complexity of child's language."

Overextension/Overgeneralization: "the process by which children use words in an overly general manner. Example: child learned the word milk and called all liquids “milk.”"

Underextension: "use words to refer to only a subset of possible referents"

Overlap: "overextend a word in certain circumstances and underextend the same word in other circumstances"

Kinship terms: "words used to identify relationships between individuals in a family"

Deictic Terms: "words whose use and interpretation depend on the location of a speaker and listener within a particular setting."

Temporal Terms: "describe the order of events (before, after), the duration of events (since, until), and the concurrence of events (while, during)."

Narrative: "spoken or written description of a real or fictional event from the past, the present, or the future."

(Textbook, p.133-233)

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