Language Acquisition and Learning (BBI3220) Week 3 PDF

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LEARNING (BBI3220) Week 3 PREPARED BY Vahid Nimehchisalem, PhD English Language Department Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication Universiti Putra Malaysia 1 Stage...

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LEARNING (BBI3220) Week 3 PREPARED BY Vahid Nimehchisalem, PhD English Language Department Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication Universiti Putra Malaysia 1 Stages of first language acquisition (Morphology, syntax and semantics) The study of language (pp. 155-161) How Languages Are Learned (pp. 5- 14) 2  The first three years: Milestones and developmental sequences High degree of similarity in the early language of children all over the world Developmental sequences for many aspects of first language acquisition: – involuntary crying that babies do when hungry or uncomfortable – cooing and gurgling sounds – babbling 3  The first three years: Milestones and developmental sequences Infants are able to hear subtle differences between the sounds (auditory discrimination) – e.g., difference between sounds as similar as pa and ba They distinguish the voice of their mothers from others They recognize the language spoken around their mother before they were born. 4  The first three years: Milestones and developmental sequences Infants stop making distinctions between sounds that are not phonemic in the language spoken around them. Babies who regularly hear more than one language in their environment continue to respond to these differences for a longer period. (Werker, Weikum, & Yoshida, 2006) 5  The first three years: Milestones and developmental sequences It is not enough for babies to hear language sounds from electronic devices. In order to learn or retain the ability to distinguish between sounds, they need to interact with a human speaker (Conboy & Kuhl, 2011). 6  The first three years: Milestones and developmental sequences Most 1-year-old babies produce one or two recognizable words. Most 2-year-old children produce at least 50 different words. Most 2-year-olds can combine words into telegraphic expressions: – mommy juice – baby fall down 7  Features of telegraphic expressions Function words and grammatical morphemes are missing: – Articles, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs are left out The word order reflects the word order of the language they are hearing – kiss baby and baby kiss have different meanings 8  The first three years: Milestones and developmental sequences Children are creative and do more than imperfectly imitating what they hear. Even their 2- or 3-word sentences can show they are using the language creatively: – more outside (I want you to go outside again) – Daddy uh-oh (Daddy fell down OR Daddy dropped something) 9  The first three years: Milestones and developmental sequences Developmental sequences or stages in language acquisition are related to children’s cognitive development: – Children do not use tomorrow or last week until they develop and understanding of time 10  Developing morphology Evidence for a developmental sequence or order of acquisition: – A child who has mastered the grammatical morphemes at the bottom of the list has also mastered those at the top, but the reverse is not true. (Brown, 1973) 11  Developing morphology Children do not acquire the morphemes at the same age or rate: – Some children master all the morphemes before 2.5 years – Others will still be working on them when they are 3.5 or 4 12  Developing morphology After 2.5 years old, children go beyond telegraphic speech forms. – They incorporate some of the inflectional morphemes indicating the grammatical function of the nouns/verbs used. 13  Developing morphology English speaking children have been reported to acquire the following grammatical morphemes in a similar sequence: (Brown, 1973) – Present progressive: mommy running – Plural –s: two books – Irregular past forms: baby went – Possessives: Daddy’s hat – Copula: Mommy is happy – Articles the and a – Regular past –ed: she walked – 3rd person singular simple present –s: she runs – Auxiliary be: he is coming 14  Developing morphology – The first to appear is usually the -ing form: cat sitting mommy reading book – Next is typically the marking of regular plurals with the -s form: boys, cats 15  Developing morphology Overgeneralization is typical – The child overgeneralizes the apparent rule of adding -s to form plurals and will talk about foots and mans. – When the alternative pronunciation of the plural morpheme used in houses (i.e. ending in[-əz]) comes into use, it too is given an overgeneralized application and forms: boyses or footses 16  Developing morphology – Some children also begin using irregular plurals: men – But then try out the general rule: some mens, two feets, two feetses – Next occurs the possessive inflection -’s: girl’s dog, Mummy’s book 17  Developing morphology – At about the same time, different forms of the verb ‘to be’ begin to be used: are, was – Also at the same time some high frequency verbs appear: went, came – These are irregular past-tense forms that we would not expect to hear before the more regular forms. – However, they do typically precede the appearance of the –ed inflection 18  Developing morphology – Once the regular past tense forms (walked, played) begin appearing in the child’s speech, their regular forms may disappear for a while, replaced by overgeneralized versions: goed, comed – For a period, the -ed inflection may be added to everything: walkeded, wented – As with the plural forms, the child works out (usually after the age of four) which forms are regular or irregular. 19  Developing morphology – Finally the regular -s marker on third- person-singular present-tense verbs appears. – It occurs initially with full verbs: comes, looks – And then with auxiliaries does, has  Developing morphology Reason for developmental sequence: – Frequency with which the morphemes occur in parents' speech – Cognitive complexity of the meanings represented by each morpheme, and – Difficulty of perceiving or pronouncing them. However, no simple satisfactory explanation for the sequence The order is determined by an interaction among a number of different factors. 21  Developing morphology Some carefully designed procedures developed to further explore children’s knowledge of grammatical morphemes. One of the first is the so-called wug test (Gleason, 1958): 22  Wug test – Children are shown drawings of imaginary creatures with novel names or people performing mysterious actions. – Here is a wug. Now there are two of them. There are two ………….. – Here is a man who knows how to bod. Yesterday he did the same thing. Yesterday he …………… 23  Wug test – By completing these sentences with wugs and bodded, children demonstrate they know the patterns for plural and simple past in English. – By generalizing these patterns to words they have never heard before, they show that their language is more than just a list of memorized word pairs such as book/books and nod/nodded. 24  Developing syntax Imitation is not the basis of children’s speech production: – ADULT: [to the child] Listen and repeat this: “The owl who eats candy runs fast.” – CHILD: Owl eat candy and he run fast. Children understand what adults are saying but have their own way of expressing it. 25  Developing syntax Futility of overt adult ‘correction’ of children’s speech: – CHILD: Nobody don’t like me. – MOTHER: No, say “nobody likes me”. – CHILD: : Nobody don’t like me. (Eight repetitions of this dialog) – MOTHER: No, now listen carefully; say “nobody likes me”. – CHILD: Oh! Nobody don’t likes me. 26  Developing syntax Forming questions Three generally identifiable stages: – Stage 1: 18-26 months – Stage 2: 22-30 months – Stage 3: 24-40 months. 27  Syntax: Questions A predictable order in which the wh- words emerge (Bloom 1991). What > Where and Who > Why > How > When Why emerges at the end of the second year Why becomes a favourite for the next year or two. Children ask endless questions with why: as it effectively gets adults to engage in conversation 28  Developing syntax (Forming questions) Stage 1 (18-26 months) Add a Wh-form (Where, Who) to the beginning of the expression, or Utter the expression with a rise in intonation towards the end: – Where kitty? – Doggie? – Where horse go? – Sit chair? 29  Developing syntax (Forming questions) Stage 2 (22-30 months) More complex expressions are formed The rising intonation strategy continues to be used. More Wh- forms come into use: – What book name? – You want eat? – Why you smiling? – See my doggie? 30  Developing syntax (Forming questions) Stage 3 (24-40 months) Inversion appears: ₋ Can I go? But, the Wh- questions do not always undergo inversion (until year 5) Stage 3 questions generally quite close to the adult model: 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? 31  Syntax: Negation Children learn functions of negation very early. Even at the single-word stage they learn – to comment on disappearance of objects – to refuse a suggestion – to reject and assertion 32  Developing syntax (Forming negatives) Stage 1: Putting ‘no’ or ‘not’ at the beginning: – no mitten – not a teddy bear – no fall – no sit there 33  Developing syntax (Forming negatives) Stage 2: Additional negative forms don’t and can’t appear No and not increasingly used in front of the verb rather than at the beginning of the sentence: – He no bite you – I don’t want it – That not mommy – You can’t dance 34  Developing syntax (Forming negatives) Stage 3: Using other auxiliary forms didn’t and won’t The typical stage 1 forms disappear A very late acquisition is the negative form isn’t, some stage 2 forms (with not instead of isn’t) continue to be used, as in the examples: – I didn’t caught it – He not taking it – She won’t let go – This not ice cream 35  Developing semantics Children use words in strange ways: – Having been warned that flies bring germs into the house, one child was asked: ADULT: What are “germs”? CHILD: Something the flies play with 36  Developing semantics During the holophrastic stage many children use their limited vocabulary to refer to a large number of unrelated objects: – One child first used bow-wow to refer to a dog > a fur piece with glass eyes > a set of cufflinks > a bath thermometer Bow-wow meaning ‘object with shiny bits’ Other children often extend bow-wow to refer to cats, cows and horses. (Overextension) 37  Developing semantics Overextension – A child’s words initially develop through a process of overextension, followed by gradually narrowing down the application of each term as more words are learned. – Children overextend the meaning of words based on the similarities of shape, sound, size, movement, and texture: 38  Developing semantics – Ball is extended to all kinds of round objects: a lampshade a doorknob the moon – Tick-tock, initially used for a watch, can also be used for a bathroom scale with a round dial. – Fly first used for the insect came to be used for specks of dirt and even crumbs of bread. – Sizo first used for scissors was then extended to all metal objects. 39  Developing semantics Overextension documented in children’s speech production but not necessarily in speech comprehension: – 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. 40  Developing semantics One interesting feature of the young child’s semantics is the way certain lexical relations are treated: – In terms of hyponymy, the child will almost always use the ‘middle’-level term in a hyponymous set such as animal–dog– poodle. Children first use dog with an overextended meaning close to the meaning of ‘animal’. 41  Developing semantics Antonymous relations acquired fairly late (after the age of five). – Kindergarten children pointed to the same heavily laden apple tree when asked Which tree has more apples and also when asked Which tree has fewer apples; they thought the correct response would 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. 42  Developing semantics By the age of 5, the child has completed the greater part of the basic language acquisition process. The child is then in a good position to start learning a second (or foreign) language. 43  The pre-school years By 4, most children can – ask questions, – give commands, – report real events, and – create stories about imaginary ones, – using correct word order and grammatical markers most of the time. 3/4-year-olds continue to learn vocabulary at the rate of several words a day. They begin to acquire less frequent and more complex linguistic structures such as passives and relative clauses. 44  The pre-school years In the late pre-school years they develop their ability to use language in a widening social environment and a greater variety of situations. They interact more often with unfamiliar adults. They begin to talk sensibly on the telephone to invisible grandparents (younger children do not understand that their telephone partner cannot see what they see) 45  The pre-school years They acquire the aggressive or cajole language that is needed to defend their toys in the playground. They have learned the difference between adult-child and child-child language They explore and begin to understand why language varies 46  The pre-school years They acquire the aggressive or cajole language that is needed to defend their toys in the playground. They have learned the difference between adult-child and child-child language They explore and begin to understand why language varies 47  The pre-school years Develop metalinguistic awareness: Ability to use language as an object separate from the meaning it conveys – 3-year-olds can tell Drink the chair sounds ‘silly’ but can’t tell what’s wrong with Cake the eat. – 5-year-olds know that Drink the chair is wrong in a different way from Cake the eat. 48  The school years Learning to read boosts metalinguistic awareness Seeing words represented by letters leads children to a new understanding that language has form as well as meaning They learn that the is a word just as house is They learn that caterpillar is a ‘longer’ word than train They understand ambiguity – knowing words and sentences can have multiple meanings gives them access to jokes, trick questions and riddles 49  The school years Astonishing growth of vocabulary – Children enter school with the ability to understand and produce several thousand words – Thousands more learned at school – In both the spoken and written language at school, words such as homework or ruler appear frequently in situations where their meaning is either immediately or gradually revealed. – Words like population or latitude occur less frequently, but they are made important by their significance in academic subject matter. 50  The school years Gardner (2004) suggests that reading a variety of text types is an essential part of vocabulary growth. – There are words in non-fiction texts that are unlikely to occur in stories or novels. – Non-fiction includes more opportunities to see a word in its different forms (mummy, mummies, mummified). 51  The school years Acquisition of different language registers – how written and spoken languages differ – how the language used to speak to the principal is different from the language of the playground – how the language of a science report is different from the language of a narrative 52  The school years Children speaking an ethnic or regional variety of the language that is different from the teacher’s have more to learn (Piper, 2006). They learn that the standard variety is required for successful academic work. Others speaking a different language altogether face additional opportunities and/or challenges. 53 Terima Kasih | Thank You 54