Transcript First Language Acquisition

First Language Acquisition
Chapter 14
First Language Acquisition


Every language is complex.
Before the age of 5, the child knows most of
the intricate system of grammar.






Use the syntactic, phonological, morphological
and semantic rules of the language
Join sentences
Ask questions
Use appropriate pronouns
Negate sentences
Form relative clauses
Theories of language acquisition

Behaviorism (1950s)

Children learn language through imitation


Though reinforcement

Correction


Nobody don’t like me
Through analogy

Hear a sample and extend it to all cases


Adult: He’s going out. Child: He go out.
I painted a red barn
Motherese

Child direct speech
Issues in first language
acquisition





How do children acquire such a complex system so
quickly and effortlessly?
Does a child decide to consciously pursue certain skills?
(e.g., walking)
Do babies make a conscious decision to start learning a
language?
In spite of different backgrounds, different locations, and
different upbringings, most children follow the very same
milestones in acquiring language.
We correct children’s errors sometimes. Does it help?
 ‘Nobody don’t like me’
Theories of language
acquisition


Cannot account for language development
because they are based on the assumption
that what the child requires is based on a set
of sentences rather than rules.
Innateness hypothesis



Children are equipped with an innate template for
language (Universal Grammar)
Evidence: we end up knowing more about
language than what we hear around us.
The same stages in all cultures and languages.
Basic requirements



Environment and interaction to bring
this capacity into operation- E.g. Genie
– cultural transmission
The child must be physically capable
(being able to hear)
Interaction.

All these requirements are related.
The acquisition schedule



All normal children develop language at
roughly the same time, along the same
schedule.
The biological schedule is related to the
maturation of the infant’s brain to cope with
the linguistic input
Young children acquire the language by
identifying the regularities in what is heard
and applying those regularities in what they
say
Caretaker Speech (motherese)

A type of simplified speech adopts by
someone who spends time with the child
characterized by:








Frequent use of questions
Simplified lexicon
Phonological reduction
Higher pitch- extra loudness
Stressed intonation
Simple sentences
A lot of repetition
Oh, goody! Now Daddy will push choo choo!
Caretaker Speech (motherese)








Assign interactive roles to young children
MOTHER: Look!
CHILD: (touches picture)
MOTHER: what are those?
CHILD: (vocalizes a babble string and smiles)
MOTHER: yes, there are rabbits
CHILD: Vocalizes and smiles
MOTHER: (laughs) yes, rabbit
L1 acquisition
Stage
Typical
age
description
cooing
3-5
months
Vowel-like sounds
babbling
6-10
months
Repetitive CV patterns
One-word stage
12-18
months
Single open-class words or
word stems
Two-word stage
18-20
months
"mini-sentences" with
24-30
months
sentence structures of lexical
words no functional or
Telegraphic stage
simple semantic relations
grammatical morphemes
Later multiword stage
30+
months
Grammatical or functional
structures emerge
Cooing





Few weeks: cooing and gurgling, playing with
sounds. Their abilities are constrained by
physiological limitations
they seem to be discovering phonemes at this point.
Producing sequences of vowel-like sounds- high
vowels [i] and [u].
4 months- sounds similar to velar consonants [k] &
[g]
5 months: distinguish between [a] and [i] and the
syllables [ba] and [ga], so their perception skills are
good.
Babbling







Different vowel and consonants ba-ba-ba and ga-ga-ga
9-10 months intonation patterns and combination of
ba-ba-ba-da-da
Nasal sounds also appear ma-ma-ma
10-11-- use of vocalization to express emotions
Late stage- complex syllable combination (ma-da-gaba)
Even deaf children babble
The most common cross-linguistic sounds and patterns
babbled the most, but later on they babble less
common sounds
The word stage (holophrastic)


Single terms are uttered for everyday
objects ‘milk’, ‘cookie’, ‘cat’
Produce utterance such as ‘Sara bed’
but not yet capable of producing a
phrase.
Two-word stage




Vocabulary moves beyond 50 words
By 2 years old produce utterances ‘baby
chair’, ‘mommy eat’
Interpretation depends on context
Adults behave as if communication is
taking place.
Telegraphic stage




By 2 years & a half, they produce
multiple-word speech.
Developing sentence building capacity.
E.g. ‘this shoe all wet’, ‘cat drink milk’,
‘daddy go bye-bye’
Vocabulary continues to grow
Better pronunciation
The acquisition process


The child does not acquire the language by imitating
adults- trying out constructions and testing them.
CHILD: my teacher holded the baby rabbit and we
patted them
MOTHER: did you say your teacher held the baby
rabbit?
CHILD: yes. she holded the baby rabbit and we
patted them
MOTHER: Did you say she held them tightly?
CHILD: no, she holded them loosely
Developing Morphology



By 2-and-a-half years old- use of some
inflectional morphemes to indicate the
grammatical function of nouns and verbs.
The first inflection to appear is –ing after it
comes the –s for plural.
Overgeneralization: the child applies –s to
words like ‘foots’ ‘mans’ and later ‘feets’
‘mens’
Developing Morphology




The use of possessive ‘s’ appears ‘mommy’s
bag’
Forms of verb to be appear ‘is’ and ‘are’
The –ed for past tense appears and it is also
overgeneralized as in ‘goed’ or holded’
Finally –s marker for 3rd person singular
preset tense appear with full verbs first then
with auxiliaries (does-has)
Developing syntax

A child was asked to say the owl who
eats candy runs fast and she said the
owl eat candy and he run fast.

The development of two syntactic
structures- three stages


Forming questions
Forming negatives
Forming questions

1st stage:


2nd stage:


Insert where and who to the beginning of an
expression with rising intonation
E.g. sit chair? Where horse go?
More complex expression
E.g. why you smiling? You want eat?
3rd stage:

Inversion of subject and verb
E.g. will you help me? What did I do?
Forming negative

Stage 1:


Stage 2:


Putting not and no at the beginning
e.g. not teddy bear, no sit here
Don’t and can’t appear but still use no and not
before VERBS
e.g. he no bite you, I don’t want it
Stage 3:

didn’t and won’t appear
e.g. I didn’t caught it, she won’t go
Developing Semantics



During the two-word stage children use their limited
vocabulary to refer to a large number of unrelated
objects.
Overextension: overextend the meaning of a word on
the basis of similarities of shape, sound, and size.
e.g. use ball to refer to an apple, and egg, a grape
and a ball.
This is followed by a gradual process of narrowing
down.
Developing Semantics


Antonymous relations are acquired
late
The distinction between more/less,
before/after seem to be later
acquisition.