Glossary

Babbling is a term used to refer to the sounds that an infant produces in the process of language acquisition. These sounds are generally characterized by consonant/vowel (CV) syllabic structures. It is the stage in which a child begins to experiment with his/her vocal apparatus.

A back-formation is a type of lexical expansion in which a new word (neologism) is created. This occurs when a word which is mistaken as morphologically complex (consists of more than one morpheme) and sounds which imitate an existing affix are removed, yielding a new word. Most examples in Standard American English consist of a noun that ends in the sound similar to 'er', e.g., writer, sailor, which is deleted, resulting in a verb (write, sail). However, the resulting 'verbs' are actually new words since the 'er' suffix is actually part of the root. Examples: burgle from burglar, edit from editor

Behaviorism is a psychological approach which asserts that cognitive development is accomplished through repeated exposure to external stimuli, which builds upon an otherwise 'blank slate'. For example, behaviorist theory contends that language acquisition occurs through observation, imitation and internalization of competent speakers' language use. In language acquisition, this view contrasts with Universal Grammar.

Benefactive case marks a noun phrase that receives or benefits from the result of the action of a verb. In Standard American English, the benefactive is often embedded in a prepositional phrase usually headed by the preposition 'for'. ex: Superman opened the door 'for' Lois. Other languages use affixation to mark benefactive case such as Quechua and Basque.

The term bi-labial refers to the manner of articulation in which the lips come together to produce a sound. ex: In Standard English /p, b, m/

The term bilateral is used to describe the contrast of features in sets of phonemes. In English, /t/ and /d/ are in bilateral opposition, since these are the only phones in the phonemic inventory that are [alveolar, plosive] and only contrast in voicing.

The process by which a child acquires two languages simultaneously or sequentially, generally before puberty and is equally proficient in both.

A blend is a type of word formation in which syllables from two or more words are joined together. ex: motel from 'motor' and 'hotel' 

The term bootstrapping most commonly refers to a process in language acquisition in which a child applies existing linguistic knowledge to learning new language forms. ex: knowing the transitive features of a verb will aid the child in creating sentence structures.

A borrowing is a lexical item (word) from one language that becomes part of another. ex: 'pizza' from Italian into English.  

This term refers to the processing of language beginning with the smallest components to larger, e.g., features, phonemes, syllables, words, phrases.

A bound morpheme is generally an affix, or in some languages, a root that cannot stand on its own but must be attached to another morpheme. Examples in Standard English include affixes such as 'un' in 'uncertain' and roots such as 'cran' in 'cranberry.'

In syntax, a bound pronoun must be co-indexed with its antecedent alone and adhere to syntactic locality constraints. Reflexive pronouns are generally bound in Standard American English. Example: Rhodaᵢ loves herselfᵢ. In this example, 'herself' can only be co-indexed with, or refer to 'Rhoda'.

Breathy voice is a type of phonation in which the vocal chords are held slightly more apart than in normal speech, such that more air passes through the articulators. English speakers sometimes produce this sound when articulating /h/ in between two vowels ex: 'rehab.' In some languages such as Hindi, the feature 'breathy voice' is contrastive, meaning that both /h/ and /ɦ/ (the diacritic symbol for breathy voice) are perceived as two different sounds.

In semantics broadening refers to when the precise meaning of a word changes over time and develops a broader meaning. ex: 'dog' (was once a specific breed) now means 'canine' (a broader term). 

Broca's Area is found in the anterior section of the left hemisphere of the brain and is believed to be where syntactic processing occurs.