Kim Wood

(1) THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Choose one of the unsuccessful models of language acquisition (imitation, explicit instruction) and explain why it has problems accounting for how children acquire language. Then, clearly explain in your own words why the innateness hypothesis can account for how children acquire language. By ‘how children acquire language’, I mean (a) how they eventually get to a point of knowing language at an adult-like level and (b) the actual things that kids do while they’re acquiring language.

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(2) ACQUISITION OF SOUND PATTERNS. Consider the data below taken from Berko Gleason (2005).

First, come up with a generalization that explains how each of the children above are deviating from how an adult would pronounce the words. This is a generalization about each child’s phonology.

Generalization for Child A:__________________________________________

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Generalization for Child B:_____________________________________________

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Next, using these generalizations, provide a phonetic transcription of how you think each child would produce the ten words below.

Word Child A Child B

pull

tummy

go

peep

pay

tack

gate

kiss

seat

crab

(3) ACQUISITION BEYOND SOUND PATTERNS. Consider the examples below from children’s speech. Using linguistic terminology, you, explain what mistakes each child is making. Be as specific as possible.

(a) Child: Where are you going? Tim: I have to go back to Miami. Child: [to mother] Mom, where’s Tim’s ami?

What kind of language acquisition mistake is this? _______________________________________________________

What explains this kind of mistake? :__________

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(b) “I’ll clean it up because I was the one who mested it up.”

What kind of language acquisition mistake is this? _______________________________________________________

What explains this kind of mistake?: ___________________________________

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(C) Child uses the word “leaf” to describe leaves, grass, moss, green carpet, green towels, spinach, lettuce, and avocados.

What kind of language acquisition mistake is this? _______________________________________________________

What explains this kind of mistake?: __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

(d)“Kitty hiding.”

What kind of language acquisition mistake is this? _______________________________________________________

What explains this kind of mistake?: __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

(e) That mines.

What kind of language acquisition mistake is this? _______________________________________________________

What explains this kind of mistake?: __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

(5) REVIEW, SYNTAX. First, draw a phrase structure tree diagram for the sentence below. After you have completed your diagram, you will use it to answer the questions that follow.

The monkey with many toys ate a ripe banana.

Question 1:

Provide grammatical category evidence to support the grammatical category of each of the following words.

monkey

a. Grammatical Category: ______________________________________________________________________

b. Evidence I: ___________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________

ate

a. Grammatical Category: ______________________________________________________________________

b. Evidence I: ___________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________

with

a. Grammatical Category: ______________________________________________________________________

b. Evidence I: ___________________________________________________________________________________

ripe

a. Grammatical Category: ______________________________________________________________________

b. Evidence I: ___________________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________

Question 2: Pick one constituent in your sentence that you can prove is a constituent using all four constituency tests. Prove it. Constituent: __________________________________________________________________________________________________

Coordination Test: ___________________________________________________________________________________

Movement/Cleft Test: _______________________________________________________________________________

Single Word Replacement Test: ____________________________________________________________________

Fragment Answer Test:

Question: _____________________________________________________________________________________

Answer: _________________________________________________________________________

Question 3: Add a modifier to the sentence. The new sentence you create should be ambiguous. Paraphrase the ambiguity and draw a tree for each structure.

New Sentence: _______________________________________________________________________________________________

Paraphrase 1: ________________________________________________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________________Tree for Paraphrase 1:

Paraphrase 2: ________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________

Tree for Paraphrase 2: