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Flashcards · 9093 · A Level Topic 3
Paper 3 – Language Analysis (A Level) flashcards
14 cards on A Level Topic 3, subtopics 3.1 to 3.2. Pick a subtopic or study them all.
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3.1 Section A: Language Change
- What period of English does 9093 Paper 3 Section A cover?
- The development of English from Early Modern English to Contemporary English. Paper 3 is 2 hours 15 minutes, 50 marks, 25% of the A Level, with two compulsory 25-mark sections.
- What is borrowing, with an example?
- Taking a word from another language (a loanword), for example bungalow from Hindi or algebra from Arabic.
- Compounding, blending and affixation: what is the difference?
- Compounding joins two whole words (laptop). Blending fuses parts of words (brunch, podcast). Affixation adds a prefix or suffix (unfriend, googleable).
- What is conversion (functional shift)?
- A word moving into a new word class without changing form, for example the noun text becoming the verb to text.
- What are broadening, narrowing, amelioration and pejoration?
- Kinds of semantic change: a meaning becomes more general (broadening), more specific (narrowing), more positive (amelioration, as with nice) or more negative (pejoration, as with silly, once meaning blessed).
- Prescriptivism or descriptivism: what is the difference?
- Prescriptivism sets a correct form and treats deviation as error. Descriptivism records and analyses how language is actually used and treats change as natural.
- How do you use an n-gram graph or word-frequency table in Section A?
- Identify the overall trend (rising, falling, a sudden spike), then link it to a plausible cause such as a technological or social change. The skill is interpreting the data given, not reciting dates.
3.2 Section B: Child Language Acquisition
- What are the stages of child language acquisition, with approximate ages?
- Pre-verbal/cooing (0–6 months), babbling (6–12 months), holophrastic (12–18 months), two-word (18–24 months), telegraphic (24–36 months), post-telegraphic (36 months+).
- What age range does 9093 Section B cover?
- Language acquisition from birth to around eight years, so post-telegraphic development (complex sentences, narrative and conversational skills) is in scope.
- What is the behaviourist theory of acquisition, and its main criticism?
- Skinner: children learn by imitation and reinforcement. Criticism: it cannot explain novel utterances a child has never heard.
- What is the nativist theory of acquisition, and its main criticism?
- Chomsky: children have an innate Language Acquisition Device; the input alone is too poor to explain what they learn (poverty of the stimulus). Criticism: no physical basis for the LAD has been identified.
- What is the social interactionist theory, and its main criticism?
- Bruner: carers support learning through interaction, a Language Acquisition Support System. Criticism: not all cultures use child-directed speech, yet children still acquire language.
- What is the cognitive theory of acquisition, and its main criticism?
- Piaget: language reflects prior cognitive development. Criticism: it cannot explain children who develop language despite cognitive impairment.
- What does over-generalisation ("goed", "sheeps") show?
- The child is applying a regular rule to an irregular form: evidence of rule-based, creative learning, not imitation. Such errors cannot have been copied from adults.