Test Bank
Chapter 2: Building Blocks of Language
Multiple Choice
1. Words that differ by only one phoneme, such as “low” and “row,” are called
______________________________.
a. Minimal pairs
b. Phonotactics
c. Internal representations
d. Maximal pairs
2. ______________________________ is/are the child’s acquisition of internal representation
of the phonemes composing his or her native language.
a. Phonological knowledge
b. Phonological productions
c. Prosody
d. Phonotactic productions
3. Children’s phonological knowledge and production are sufficiently well developed by age
________________ year(s) to provide for fully intelligible speech.
a. 1 ½
b. 2-3
c. 3-4
d. 6
4. A contributing factor to the struggle some children have in developing basic word-reading
skills is underdeveloped ______________________________.
a. Phoneme counting
b. Phonological productions
c. Phonemic awareness
d. Phonological awareness
5. ______________________________ is the importance of a phoneme in the phonemic
inventory of a language.
a. Phonemic contrast
b. Phonemic frequency
c. Functional load
d. Consonantal dominance
6. What is the earliest-appearing grammatical morpheme?
a. Plural –s
b. Present progressive –ing
c. Past tense –ed
d. –ly
7. When a child includes a grammatical morpheme in ___________ or more of obligatory
contexts, he or she has mastered the morpheme.
a. 50%
b. 60%
c. 75%
d. 80%
8. Children who can readily switch between dialects may have heightened
____________________________, which can support reading development.
a. Metalinguistic awareness
b. Theory of mind
c. Phonological awareness
d. Executive function
9. One hallmark feature of SLI is difficulty with __________________________.
a. Derivational morphemes
b. Grammatical morphology
c. Metalinguistic knowledge
d. Semantic feature analysis
10. By age _____________, a child’s utterances are nearly as long as those of adults.
a. 4
b. 5
c. 6
d. 8
11. The ________________________________is a calculation of the average number of
morphemes per utterance.
a. Type-token ratio
b. Total number of words
c. Morphological percentage
d. Mean length of utterance
12. _______________________________ sentences make a statement.
a. Declarative
b. Interrogative
c. Imperative
d. Compound
13. A _______________________________ is a cluster of words organized around a bead.
a. Conjunction
b. Phrase
c. Clause
d. Sentence
14. The ________________________________ hypothesis emphasizes that the grammatical
properties of children’s language use depend on exposure to the properties in child-directed
speech.
a. Nature versus nurture
b. Learning-from-input
c. Language disorder
d. Syntactic complexity
15. Adolescents with Down syndrome produce sentences that average ____________
morphemes long.
a. 4
b. 6
c. 8
d. 10
16. A child learns about _____________ new words per year between ages 1 and 7 years.
a. 210
b. 380
c. 590
d. 860
17. ___________________________________ are words that refer to all members of a category.
a. Categorical terms
b. General nominals
c. Specific nominals
d. Modifiers
18. Children often do not acquire words that describe beliefs and mental states until about age
______________.
a. 1 ½
b. 2 ½
c. 3
d. 6
19. In _________________________________, a great deal of contextual information is
provided about a novel word either linguistically or extralinguistically.
a. Inferential contexts
b. Nonostensive word learning contexts
c. Supralinguistic contexts
d. Ostensive word learning contexts
20. Early gender differences in vocabulary learning often attenuate by around age __________.
a. 5
b. 7
c. 8
d. 10
21. The term _______________________________ refers to stylistic variations in language that
occur in different situational contexts.
a. Communication function
b. Protoconversation
c. Context-specific
d. Register
Essay
1. Name three tasks that can be used to examine a child’s phonological awareness.
2. What is the difference between bound morphemes and free morphemes?
3. What are the three earliest developing wh-words.
4. What is complex syntax?
5. Describe beliefs about vocabulary growth in terms of the vocabulary spurt versus a linear
growth.
6. What is the difference between a lead-in and a follow-in?
7. Explain the concept of spreading activation as it relates to semantic networks.
8. What are the components of conversational schema?
9. Why should practitioners consider the social and cultural contexts of language development
when working with a child?
ANSWER KEY
Chapter 2: Building Blocks of Language
Multiple Choice
