categorial grammarn
see montague grammar
categorical perceptionn
the ability of humans to focus on distinctive acoustic features of speech and
to ignore irrelevant differences such as differences between two speakers.
Categorical perception develops very early in first language acquisition
as children become sensitive to differences between phonemic categories of
the language they are hearing and less sensitive to differences within those
categories. In second language acquisition, establishing categorical
perception in accordance with the phonemic categories of the target language
is much slower, and in some cases it appears not to happen at all.
categorical scalen
see scale
categorizevcategorizationn
to put items into groups (categories) according to their nature or use.
For example:
anouns may be categorized into animate and inanimate nouns.
bverbs may be categorized into transitive and intransitive verbs.
categoryn
see grammatical category^2
category symboln
see grammatical category^2
category systemn
an observation system used to code, classify or analyze different classroom
behaviours. Many different category systems have been used for observing
and describing language classes, including colt (the Communicative Orien-
tation of Language Teaching ), and focus (Foci on Communication Used in
Settings ). These systems attempt to provide a set of categories which can be
used to describe objectively different dimensions of classroom behaviour,
such as the purpose of a communicative event, the media used for com-
municating content, the manner in which the media are used, and the areas
of content that are communicated. Other approaches allow researchers to
develop separate category systems for different research sites and research
questions.
see also interaction analysis, high inference category
category system