3.5 Language Development/Research Ethics Vocab

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Language

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A shared system of arbitrary symbols (e.g., sounds, gestures, or written characters) governed by rules to communicate meaning.

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Phoneme

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The smallest unit of sound in a language that can distinguish meaning (e.g., the 'p' in 'pat' vs. the 'b' in 'bat').

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Morpheme

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The smallest unit of meaning in a language, which may be a word or a part of a word (e.g., 'un-' in 'undo' or '-s' in 'cats').

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Semantics

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The study of meaning in language, including how words and sentences convey meaning.

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Grammar

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The system of rules that governs the structure of sentences, including word order and sentence formation.

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Syntax

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The rules for combining words into grammatically correct sentences (e.g., 'She eats apples' vs. 'Eats she apples').

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Generativity

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The property of language that allows people to create an infinite number of new and unique sentences using a finite set of words and rules.

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Cooing

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Early stage of language development where infants produce vowel-like sounds (e.g., 'ahh' and 'ooo').

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Babbling

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Stage of language development where infants produce repetitive consonant-vowel combinations (e.g., 'ba-ba,' 'da-da').

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One-word stage

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The stage in language development where children use single words (holophrases) to express whole thoughts (e.g., 'milk' to mean 'I want milk').