16240 13First Language AcquisitionSP08

First Language Acquisition
“The capacity to learn language is deeply ingrained in us as a species, just as the capacity to walk, to grasp objects, to recognize faces.
We don’t find any serious difference in children growing up in congested urban slums, in isolated mountain villages, or in privileged suburban villas”
Dan Slobin, The Human Language Series 2 (1994)
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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
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First Language Acquisition
Learning to speak and understand a language is different than learning to read and write.
“ We are designed to walk.. That we are taught to walk is impossible. And pretty much the same is true of language.
Nobody is taught language. In fact you can’t prevent a child from learning it”
Chomsky 1994
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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?
We correct children’s errors sometimes. Does it help? ‘Nobody don’t like me’
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Noisy data

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Theories of language acquisition
Nature vs. Nurture
Behaviorism (1950s)
Children learn language through imitation, reinforcement and analogy
He go out.
A my pencil
What the boy hit?
Nobody don’t like me
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Theories of language acquisition Innateness hypothesis
Children are equipped with an innate template for language (Language
Acquisition Device and Universal
Grammar)
Evidence: we end up knowing more about language than what we hear around us.
The same stages in all cultures and languages 6

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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.

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The acquisition schedule
In spite of different backgrounds, different locations, and different upbringings, most children follow the very same milestones in acquiring language.
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 8

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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!
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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

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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

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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. 12

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Babbling
Different vowels 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
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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.
Differ from adult language
[da]
[sa]
[aj]
[daw]

dog sock light down Convey a more complex message
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Two-word stage
Vocabulary moves beyond 50 words
By 2 years old, children produce utterances ‘baby chair’, ‘mommy eat’
Interpretation depends on context
Adults behave as if communication is taking place.

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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

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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
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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’
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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 appears with full verbs first then with auxiliaries (does-has)

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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

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Forming questions
1st stage:
Insert where and who to the beginning of an expression with rising intonation
E.g. sit chair? Where horse go?

2nd stage:
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?
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Forming negative
Stage 1:
Putting not and no at the beginning
e.g. not teddy bear, no sit here

Stage 2:
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
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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. 23

Developing Semantics
Antonymous relations are acquired late The distinction between more/less, before/after seem to be later acquisition. 24

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Thank you
See you next class
Read chapter 15

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