inadequate as a basis for success in school. Applied linguists have criticized
this hypothesis and contrasted it with the difference hypothesis. This states
that although the language of some children (e.g. children from certain social
and ethnic groups) may be different from that of middle-class children, all
dialectsare equally complex and children can use them to express complex
ideas and to form a basis for school learning.
see also cultural deprivationdefining relative clause n
also restrictive relative clause
a clausewhich gives additional information about a noun or noun phrase
in a sentence. A defining relative clause restricts or helps to define the
meaning of the noun. It usually begins with who, which, whom, whose,
or that, and in written English is not separated from the noun by a
comma:
The man whom you metis my uncle.
The woman that you want to speak tohas left.
This may be contrasted with a non-defining relative clause (also called a
non-restrictive relative clause), which gives additional information but
which does not restrict or define the noun or noun phrase. In writing, it is
separated by a comma:
My uncle, who is 6 4 , still plays football.
defining vocabulary n
a basic list of words with which other words can be explained or defined.
Defining vocabularies are used to write definitions in dictionaries for
children and for people studying foreign languages. They are based on research
into word frequency. In the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
English, all definitions are written using a 2000 word defining vocabulary,
so that anyone who knows the meaning of those 2000 words will be able to
understand all the definitions in the dictionary.
definite article n
see article
definition method n
see methods of development
degenerate adj
(in generative theory) the claim that the input to language learners is
degenerate, that is, imperfect or containing performance errors. Because
learners have no principled way to distinguish between degenerate and
degenerate