Communication Sciences and Disorders Program


CMSD 351 Language Development

Study Questions

Spring 2014

Instructor: Professor Patrick McCaffrey, Ph. D.


Answer each set of study questions prior to the lecture.

  • Lecture 1. Linguistic overview

    1. What are the 5 parameters of language.

    2. Compare pidgin and creole. 

    3. Know the nativist, behaviorist, sociolinguist/interactionist, and sociolinguist/pragmatic theories of language development.

    4. Who are the people associated with above positions.

    5. Explain Lenneberg's maturation theory.

  • 6. What is adult morphizing?

  • 7. What aspect of language is reinforced by parents/caregivers?

  • 8. Know the early stages of communication: perlocutionary, illlocutionary, and locutionary.

    Lecture 2. Phonology/phonemics

  • 1. Define phonology/phonemics.

    2. Compare phonemics and phonetics. Give examples.

    3. What are minimal pairs?

    4. Define phonotactics.

    5. Give examples of the syllables of English.

    6. Describe and give examples of distinctive features

    7. Discuss simplification processes.

    • Lecture 3. Grammar

    1. What is grammar?

    2. Does grammar include semantics and pragmatics?

    3 Describe morphology broadly.

    4. What are inflected and derived morphemes.

    5. How are allophones and allomorphs different? Give examples of each.

    6. How many allomorphs are in the English language?

    7. How many derived morphenes are there?

    8. What is syntax?

    9. Why do you calculate a mean length utterances?

    10. How do you calculate the utterance?

    • Lecture 4. Semantics

    1. Describe semantics.

    2. Discuss semantic markers and selection restrictions.

    3. Explain content, form and use.

    4. Explain linguistic competence.

  • 5. Explain linguistic performence.
  • • Lecture 5: Pragmatics

    1. What is pragmatics?

    2. Describe paralinguistic codes.

    3. Give examples of nonlinguistic cues.

    4. What are metalinguistic cues?

    5. Discuss form, content, and use.

    6. Who came up with the terms?

    7. Describe Austin's speech acts.

    8. Describe Grice's cooperation principals.

    • Lecture 6. Pre-cursers to language development

    1. Explain biological preparation for a genetic basis for language acquisition. 

    2. Explain lateralization or asymmetry of the brain.

    3. Describe neural plasticity.

    4. Explain the power of language.

    5. Explain how caregivers are systematic and repetitive.

    6. What is a categorization and storage system?

    7. When does the child begin to understand the power of language?

    • Lecture 7. Piaget’s ideas regarding cognition/language development

    1. What is the role of organization?

    2. Explain adaptation.

    3. What is its two parts?

    4. Explain assimilation.

    5. Explain accommodation.

    6. Give examples of assimilation.

    7. Give examples of accommodation..

    8. Describe equilibrium.

    9. Discuss precursors to linguistic content.

    • Lecture 8. Transition from birth to the one word stage

1. Explain differentiated actions with objects.

2. What do you see at 8-9 months?

3. Give an example of means-end skills.

4. Explain causality.

5. Describe symbolic play.

6. At what age children show objects to others.

7. Explain the perlocutionary stage.

8. When does the illocutionary stage begin and end?

9. Describe variegated babbling?

10. What are the transitions to the one word/holophrastic stage?

11. What is the the holophrastic stage?

12. Are all one word utterances holophrases?

13. Describe Paula Menyuk's contribution to the one word stage.

14. Be able to explain the differences between phonetically consistant forms (pcf) and true words.

15. Explain the criteria for true words.

16. Describe the phonological characteristics of true words.

17. Explain primitive grammar.

18. Do we see true grammar in the one word stage?

  • Lecture 9. One word/holophrastic stage

    1. Describe child's vocabulary during the first year.

    2. Explain semantic markers during the first two years.

    3. Describe underextension and overextension. 

    4. Explain substantive words.

    5. Explain relational words.

    6. Describe Clark's semantic feature hypothesis.

    7. Describe Nelson's functional core hypothesis.

    8. Explain early pragmatics.

    9. Explain how young children lack pre-suppositional  skills? 

    10. Why are labeling/requesting so important in early pragmatics?

    • Lecture 10. Multi-word stage

    1. When does the two word stage begin?

    2. What are the transitions to the two word stage?

    3. Why are successive single-word utterances so important?

    4. Describe semantics at the two word stage.

    5. Describe semantic syntactic rules.

    6. What is case grammar.

    7. Who coined the term?

    8. Define a case.

    9. Know MacDonalds's eight semantic syntactic rules.

    10. How does Roger Brown explain how children go from the two word to the three word stage?

    11. What's Moskowitz's take on the distinction between the three and four word stages.

  • Lecture 11. Morphological inflections/allomorphs

    1. Describe Roger Brown’s list of 14 grammatical morphemes.

    2. When does the morphene "ing" develop?

    3. Differentiate the two types of grammatical morphene: free and bound.

    4. Know when all nine allomorphs develop.

    5. How do children learn grammatical morphemes?

    6. How are derived morphemes learned?

    7. How many derived morphemes can you remember?

    • Lecture 12. Development of auxiliary and copula to be

    1. Why are the copula and auxiliary important to language development?

    2. Know the differences between them.

    3. What is an uncontractable auxiliary or copula?

    4. Besides "to be" what are the other auxiliary and modals?

    5. What are morphophonemic rules.

  • 6. Differentiate primary and secondary auxiliaries.

  • 7. When do children get do,  have, and will?

  • 8. Explain Laura Lee's ideas regarding the difficulty some children have to learn the auxiliary to be.
  • 9. Why is the development of the auxiliary so important?
  • 10. Explain elliptical responses.
  • 11. Explain the emphatic "to do."

    • Lecture 13. Verb negation

  • 1. Describe negation at the one word stage.
  • 2. Describe negation at the two word stage.
  • 3. Describe negation at the 3/4 word stages.

    4. Describe verb negation.

  • 5. Describe the differences between negation and verb negation.
  • 6. Have several examples of negation without an auxiliary.
  • 7. Have several examples of verb negation.

    • Lecture 14. Early questions development: various stages of development:

    1. Explain the pre linguistic stage of questions.

  • 2. Describe the one-word stage of questions.

  • 3. Describe the two-word stage.

  • 4. Describe wh questions without the auxiliary. 

  • 5. Describe questions after the child is using the auxiliary.

  • 6. Explain tag questions.

  • 7. Explain and give examples: interrogative reversals, wh question introducers, wh question forms, and tag questions.

  • Lecture15. Preparation for the final exam

  • Final exam.


    This document is maintained by Patrick McCaffrey, Ph.D.
    Last Updated : 10/21/2013