First Language Acquisition PDF

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION  HOW DO WE ACQUIRE LANGUAGE? 1. A child requires interaction with other language-users in order to bring the general language capacity into contact with a particular language such as English. 2. A child who does not hear or is...

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION  HOW DO WE ACQUIRE LANGUAGE? 1. A child requires interaction with other language-users in order to bring the general language capacity into contact with a particular language such as English. 2. A child who does not hear or is not allowed to use language will learn no language. 3. Cultural transmission is important. How a child learns is not genetically inherited, but is acquired in a particular language-using environment. 4. The child must also be physically capable of sending and receiving sound signals in a language.  THEORIES OF LEARNING AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION  I. NATIVIST THEORY q “Innatist” Hypothesis q Auram Noam Chomsky – Father of Modern Linguistics q Language acquisition is an innate structure or function of the brain. q There is an optimal learning age (ages 3-10). q The child doesn’t need a trigger to begin language acquisition. q Language Acquisition Device (LAD) q Language ability/development is preprogrammed.  II. BEHAVIORIST THEORY q Chief Proponents: B.F. Skinner, Watson, Pavlov q Human behavior is conditioned or instilled. q Language acquisition as a cognitive behavior q OPERANT CONDITIONING– trial-and-error q Limitations: Children are unable to repeat what an adult says especially if the adult appearance contains a structure the child has not yet started to use. q Parents focus on the truthfulness or accuracy of statements rather than reinforce correct grammar.  III. SOCIAL INTERACTIONIST THEORY q Chief Proponents: Bruner, Gleason q Language is learned through active interaction between the child and the environment. q Language learning is a process of socialization. q Needs contact and social interaction with other human beings  IV. CONSTRUCTIVISM/COGNITIVE THEORY q Chief Proponent: Jean Piaget q Cognitive abilities, including language, are constructed from sensorimotor skills that the child has acquired during earlier stages. q Interplay between the child and the environment  V. THE MONITOR MODEL qChief Proponent: Krashen q Acquisition-Learning Distinction Hypothesis q Natural Order Hypothesis q Input Hypothesis q Affective Filter Hypothesis q Monitor Hypothesis FIRST YEAR q COOING q BABBLING Deaf infants stop at six months. Therefore, in order to speak a language, a child must be able to hear that language being used. However, according to Moskowitz (1991): With deaf parents who gave their normal-hearing son ample exposure to television and radio programs, the boy did not acquire an ability to speak or understand English. What he did learn very effectively, by the age of three, was the use of American Sign Language, that is, the language he used to interact with his parents. INPUT OF LANGUAGE  Under normal circumstances, human infants are certainly helped in their language acquisition by the typical behavior of older children and adults in the home environment who provide language samples, or input, for the child. Mother: “Bobot, ma abuji buji ka na?” Abuji buji = toothbrush CAREGIVER SPEECH The characteristically simplified speech style adopted by someone who spends a lot of time interacting with a young child  “Motherese” or “Child- directed Speech q Frequent use of questions, often using exaggerated intonation, extra loudness and a slower tempo with longer pauses. q In the early stages, this type of speech also incorporates a lot of forms associated with “baby talk.” q These are either simplified words (tummy, nana) or alternative forms, with repeated simple sounds and syllables, for things in the child’s environment (choo-choo, poo-poo, pee-pee, wa-wa).  CONVERSATION MOTHER: Look! CHILD: (touches pictures) MOTHER: What are those? CHILD: (vocalizes a babble string and smiles) MOTHER: Yes, there are rabbits. CHILD: (vocalizes, smiles, looks up at mother) MOTHER: (laughs) Yes, rabbit. CHILD: (vocalizes, smiles) MOTHER: Yes. (laughs)  CAREGIVER SPEECH v also characterized by simple sentence structures and a lot of repetition. v These simplified models produced by the interacting adult may serve as good clues to the basic structural organization involved. v Moreover, it has generally been observed that the speech of those regularly interacting with very young children changes and becomes more elaborate as the child begins using more and more language. THE ACQUISITION SCHEDULE  All normal children develop language at roughly the same time, along much the same schedule. This biological schedule is tied very much to the maturation of the infant’s brain.  Very young children are paying attention to by the way they increase or decrease “sucking behavior” in response to speech sounds or turn their heads in the direction of those sounds.  HEAD TURNING HEART RATE HIGH AMPLITUDE SUCKING  I. COOING q During the first few months of life, the child gradually becomes capable of producing sequences of vowel-like sounds, particularly high vowels similar to [i] and [u]. qBy four months of age, the developing ability to bring the back of the tongue into regular contact with the back of the palate allows the infant to create sounds similar to the velar consonants [k] and [ɡ], hence the common description as “cooing” or “gooing” for this type of production.  I. COOING qSpeech perception studies have shown that by the time they are five months old, babies can already hear the difference between the vowels [i] and [a] and discriminate between syllables like [ba] and [ɡa].  II. BABBLING q Between six and eight months, the child is sitting up and producing a number of different vowels and consonants, as well as combinations such as ba-ba-ba and ga-gaga. q This type of sound production is described as babbling.  II. BABBLING q In the later babbling stage, around nine to ten months, there are recognizable intonation patterns to the consonant and vowel combinations being produced, as well as variation in the combinations such as ba-ba-da- da. q Nasal sounds also become more common and certain syllable sequences such as ma-ma-ma and da-da-da are inevitably interpreted by parents as versions of “mama” and “dada” and repeated back to the child. q We should always treat statements concerning development stages such as “by six months” or “by the age of two” as approximate and subject to variation in individual children.  III. ONE-WORD STAGE q Between 12 to 18 months q Characterized by speech in which single terms are uttered for everyday objects such as “milk,” “cookie,” “cat,” “cup” and “spoon” (usually pronounced [pun]). q Other forms such as [ʌsæ] may occur in circumstances that suggest the child is producing a version of What’s that, so the label “one-word” for this stage may be misleading and a term such as “single-unit” would be more accurate.  “HOLOPHRASTIC” – meaning a single form functioning as a phrase or sentence – describes an utterance that could be analyzed as a word, a phrase, or a sentence. – An empty bed may elicit the name of a sister who normally sleeps in the bed, even in the absence of the person named. – During this stage, then, the child may be capable of referring to Karen and bed, but is not yet ready to put the forms together to produce a more complex phrase.  IV. TWO-WORD STAGE q an occurrence of two distinct words used together, q can begin around eighteen to twenty months, as the child’s vocabulary moves beyond fifty words. qa variety of combinations, similar to baby chair, mommy eat, cat bad, will usually have appeared. qThe adult interpretation of such combinations is, of course, very much tied to the context of their utterance. Example The phrase baby chair may be taken as an: 1. expression of possession (= this is baby’s chair); 2. or as a request (= put baby in chair); 3. or as a statement (= baby is in the chair)  IV. TWO-WORD STAGE q The adult behaves as if communication is taking place. That is, the child not only produces speech, but also receives feedback confirming that the utterance worked as a contribution to the interaction. q Moreover, by the age of two, whether the child is producing 200 or 300 distinct “words,” he or she will be capable of understanding five times as many, and will typically be treated as an entertaining conversational partner by the principal caregiver. V. TELEGRAPHIC SPEECH qBetween two and two-and-a-half years old, qthe child begins producing a large number of utterances that could be classified as “multiple-word” speech. qThe salient feature of these utterances ceases to be the number of words, but the variation in word forms that begins to appear. V. TELEGRAPHIC SPEECH q This is characterized by strings of words (lexical morphemes) in phrases or sentences such as this shoe all wet, cat drink milk and daddy go bye-bye. q The child has clearly developed some sentence building capacity by this stage and can get the word order correct. q While this type of telegram-format speech is being produced, a number of grammatical inflections begin to appear in some of the word forms and simple prepositions (in, on) are also used. q By the age of two-and-a-half, the child’s vocabulary is expanding rapidly and the child is initiating more talk while increased physical activity includes running and jumping. q By three, the vocabulary has grown to hundreds of words and pronunciation has become closer to the form of adult language. At this point, it is worth considering what kind of influence the adults have in the development of the child’s speech. THE ACQUISITION PROCESS  As the linguistic repertoire of the child increases, it is often assumed that the child is, in some sense, being “taught” the language. This idea is not really supported by what the child actually does. “Children are actively constructing, from what is said to them, possible ways of using the language.” The child’s linguistic production appears to be mostly a matter of trying out constructions and testing whether they work or not.  Certainly, children can be heard to repeat versions of what adults say on occasion and they are clearly in the process of adopting a lot of vocabulary from the speech they hear. Example NOAH: (picking up a toy dog) This is Woodstock. (He bobs the toy in Adam’s face) ADAM: Hey Woodstock, don’t do that. (Noah persists) ADAM: I’m going home so you won’t Woodstock me. q Adult “corrections” are a very effective determiner of how the child speaks. q A lot of very amusing conversational snippets, involving an adult’s attempt to correct a child’s speech, seem to demonstrate the hopelessness of the task. Example CHILD: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them. MOTHER: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits? CHILD: Yes. MOTHER: What did you say she did? CHILD: She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them. MOTHER: Did you say she held them tightly? CHILD: No, she holded them loosely. q The child’s acquisition process is the actual use of sound and word combinations, either in interaction with others or in wordplay, alone. q One two-year-old, described in Weir (1966), was tape- recorded as he lay in bed alone and could be heard playing with words and phrases, I go dis way … way bay …baby do dis bib…all bib…bib…dere. Word play of this type seems to be an important element in the development of the child’s linguistic repertoire. I. DEVELOPING MORPHOLOGY q By the time a child is two-and-a-half years old, he or she is going beyond telegraphic speech forms and incorporating some of the inflectional morphemes that indicate the grammatical function of the nouns and verbs used. q The first to appear is usually the -ing form in expressions such as cat sitting and mommy reading book. I. DEVELOPING MORPHOLOGY q Second, the marking of regular plurals with the -s form, as in boys and cats. q The acquisition of the plural marker is often accompanied by a process of overgeneralization. q foots and mans. q houses (i.e. ending in [-əz]) comes into use, it too is given an overgeneralized application and forms such as boyses or footses can be heard. q Some children also begin using irregular plurals such as men quite appropriately for a while, but then try out the general rule on the forms, producing expressions like some mens and two feets, or even two feetses. I. DEVELOPING MORPHOLOGY q Third, not long after, the use of the possessive inflection -’s occurs in expressions such as girl’s dog and Mummy’s book. q Fourth, different forms of the verb “to be,” such as are and was, begin to be used. The appearance of forms such as was and, at about the same time, went and came should be noted. These are irregular past-tense forms that we would not expect to hear before the more regular forms. I. DEVELOPING MORPHOLOGY qHowever, they do typically precede the appearance of the -ed inflection. qOnce the regular past-tense forms (walked, played) begin appearing in the child’s speech, the irregular forms may disappear for a while, replaced by overgeneralized versions such as goed and comed. qFor a period, the -ed inflection may be added to everything, producing such oddities as walkeded and wented. qAs with the plural forms, the child works out (usually after the age of four) which forms are regular and which are not. I. DEVELOPING MORPHOLOGY q Finally, the regular -s marker on third person singular present-tense verbs appears. qIt occurs first with full verbs (comes, looks) and then with auxiliaries (does, has). The evidence suggests that the child is working out how to use the linguistic system while focused on communication and interaction rather than correctness.  II. DEVELOPING SYNTAX q One child, specifically asked to repeat what she heard, would listen to an adult say forms such as the owl who eats candy runs fast and then repeat them in the form owl eat candy and he run fast. q It is clear that the child understands what the adult is saying. She just has her own way of expressing it.  II. DEVELOPING SYNTAX q In the formation of questions and the use of negatives, there appear to be three identifiable stages. q The ages at which children go through these stages can vary quite a bit, but the general pattern seems to be that Stage 1 occurs between 18 and 26 months, Stage 2 between 22 and 30 months, and Stage 3 between 24 and 40 months. (The overlap in the periods during which children go through these stages is a natural effect of the different rates at which different children normally develop these and other structures.)  A. FORMING QUESTIONS q STAGE 1: Simply add a Wh-form (Where, Who) to the beginning of the expression or utter the expression with a rise in intonation towards the end, as in these examples: Where kitty? Doggie? Where horse go? Sit chair?  A. FORMING QUESTIONS q STAGE 2: More complex expressions can be formed, but the rising intonation strategy continues to be used. It is noticeable that more Wh-forms come into use, as in these examples: What book name? You want eat? Why you smiling? See my doggie?  A. FORMING QUESTIONS q STAGE 3: The required movement of the auxiliary in English questions (I can have … ! Can I have …?) becomes evident in the child’s speech, but doesn’t automatically spread to all Wh-question types. qIn fact, some children beginning school in their fifth or sixth year may still prefer to form Wh-questions (especially with negatives) without the type of inversion found in adult speech (e.g. Why kitty can’t …? instead of Why can’t kitty …?).  A. FORMING QUESTIONS q Apart from these problems with Wh-questions and continuing trouble with the morphology of verbs (e.g. Did I caught …? instead of Did I catch … ?), Stage 3 questions are generally quite close to the adult model, as in these examples: Can I have a piece? Did I caught it? Will you help me? How that opened? What did you do? Why kitty can’t stand up?  B. FORMING NEGATIVES q Stage 1 seems to involve a simple strategy of putting No or Not at the beginning, as in these examples: no mitten not a teddy bear no fall no sit there  B. FORMING NEGATIVES q In Stage 2, the additional negative forms don’t and can’t appear, and with no and not, are increasingly used in front of the verb rather than at the beginning of the sentence, as in these examples: He no bite you I don’t want it That not touch You can’t dance  B. FORMING NEGATIVES q Stage 3 sees the incorporation of other auxiliary forms such as didn’t and won’t while the typical Stage 1 forms disappear. q A very late acquisition is the negative form isn’t, with the result that some Stage 2 forms (with not instead of isn’t) continue to be used for quite a long time, as in the examples: I didn’t caught it He not taking it She won’t let go This not ice cream Futility of overt adult “correction” of children’s speech q CHILD: Nobody don’t like me. q MOTHER: No, say “nobody likes me.” q CHILD: Nobody don’t like me. q (Eight repetitions of this dialog) q MOTHER: No, now listen carefully; say “nobody likes me.” q CHILD: Oh! Nobody don’t likes me.  III. DEVELOPING SEMANTICS Having been warned that flies bring germs into the house, one child was asked what “germs” were and the answer was “something the flies play with.” It is not always possible to determine so precisely the meanings that children attach to the words they use.  III. DEVELOPING SEMANTICS q During the holophrastic stage, many children use their limited vocabulary to refer to a large number of unrelated objects. q One child first used bow-wow to refer to a dog and then to a fur piece with glass eyes, a set of cufflinks and even a bath thermometer. q The word bow-wow seemed to have a meaning like “object with shiny bits.” Other children often extend bow-wow to refer to cats, cows and horses.  III. DEVELOPING SEMANTICS q This process is called overextension and the most common pattern is for the child to overextend the meaning of a word on the basis of similarities of shape, sound and size, and, to a lesser extent, movement and texture.  Specks of dirt An insect Crumbs of bread FLY  Doorknob Lampshade Moon BALL III. DEVELOPING SEMANTICS The semantic development in a child’s use of words is usually a process of overextension initially, followed by a gradual process of narrowing down the application of each term as more words are learned.  III. DEVELOPING SEMANTICS q Overextension isn’t necessarily used in speech comprehension. q One two-year-old used apple, in speaking, to refer to a number of other round objects like a tomato and a ball, but had no difficulty picking out the apple, when asked, from a set of round objects including a ball and a tomato.  III. DEVELOPING SEMANTICS q One interesting feature of the young child’s semantics is the way certain lexical relations are treated. q In terms of hyponymy, the child will almost always use the “middle”- level term in a hyponymous set such as animal – dog – poodle. q It would seem more logical to learn the most general term (animal), but all evidence indicates that children first use dog with an overextended meaning close to the meaning of “animal.”  III. DEVELOPING SEMANTICS q In antonymous relations are acquired fairly late (after the age of five). q In one study, a large number of kindergarten children pointed to the same heavily laden apple tree when asked “Which tree has more apples?” and also when asked “Which tree has less apples?”. q They just seem to think the correct response will be the larger one, disregarding the difference between more and less. The distinctions between a number of other pairs such as before/after and buy/sell also seem to be later acquisitions.  III. DEVELOPING SEMANTICS It is normally assumed that, by the age of five, the child has completed the greater part of the basic language acquisition process. According to some, the child is then in a good position to start learning a second (or foreign) language. However, most people don’t start trying to learn another language until much later.  REFERENCES Yule, G. (2010). The study of language (4th ed.). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.