List two-three factors that influence semantic development. For each, specify how a specific factor might affect a childs semantic development.

List two-three factors that influence semantic development. For each, specify how a specific factor might affect a child’s semantic development.

Discuss specific ways in which one’s morphology may be influenced by the dialect one is speaking.

How does calculating the mean number of morphemes per utterance provide a simple proxy for estimating the syntactic complexity of children’s utterances, at least in the first five years of development.
How do phonotactic rules impact a child’s phonological development?

What are some factors that influence a child’s development of a phonemic inventory? Explain your answer.
List and describe the three areas of pragmatic development that emerge during early childhood and are fine-tuned throughout one’s life?

Chapter 2 Review

1. List two-three factors that influence semantic development. For each, specify how a

specific factor might affect a childÕs semantic development.

The first factor that will influence semantic development is the gender of the child.

Different gendered children are undoubtably not treated the same while being raised, which

consequently leads to a difference in language acquisition and semantic development. There are

many different variables contributing to this discrepancy, however the most prominent are

biological, social, and psychological factors. Biologically, girls tend to neurologically mature

more quickly than boys. However, this discrepancy is not just biological. Due to different

societal gender roles, young girls are typically exposed to more language than their male

counterparts. For example, when wanting to engage in play, young girls stereotypically enjoy

verbal co-play activities such as playing house, having tea parties, and playing with dolls. All of

the activities listed require much more communication between a caregiver and the child, or even

requires the child to talk as more than one character (if for example, playing by herself with

dolls). Stereotypical young boy activities consist of much less conversational speech, such as

playing with cars, trains, or balls. This access to more complex speech gives young girls an

advantage in acquiring larger vocabularies and language.

Another factor that will influence semantic development is the childÕs language exposure.

There is a significant relationship between the size of a childÕs vocabulary and amount of words

that the child is exposed to. Children who do not have the privilege of having engaged and

emotionally available parents acquire significantly less language due to the lack of

conversational interactions. Low income children and children in orphanages have significantly

lower vocabularies when compared to their higher income peers. This may be caused by a lack of

conversational interactions with their parents and caregivers, but also might be due to less

extracurricular opportunities that higher income families would be able to afford such as

tutoring, sports, music lessons, and many other social groups.

2. Discuss specific ways in which oneÕs morphology may be influenced by the dialect one is

speaking.

Morphology and morphological features greatly vary depending on the dialect that one is

speaking. Each dialect has their own specific Òmorphological building blocksÓ that allow the

speakers of the language to understand the grammatical and word structures used in that dialect.

Different dialects can have different morphological features from each other and from the

general dialect, which can affect the ability to code switch between the two if not acquired early

enough in life. For example, those who speak African American English (AAE) include a

different use of completive and auxiliary verbs, possessive and plural inflections, and verb tense

inflections when compared to General American English. Children learning AAVE are going to

acquire different morphemes than children learning GAE, among with many other varying

grammatical structures and vocabulary terms.