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 dont 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)

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 cant 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 childrens errors sometimes. Does it help? Nobody dont like me 4 Noisy data

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 dont 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
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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.

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 infants 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
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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 cooing babbling One-word stage Two-word stage Telegraphic stage
Later multiword stage

Typical age
3-5 months 6-10 months 12-18 months 18-20 months 24-30 months 30+ months

description
Vowel-like sounds Repetitive CV patterns Single open-class words or word stems "mini-sentences" with simple semantic relations
sentence structures of lexical words no functional or

grammatical morphemes

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.
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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 mommys 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:
Dont and cant appear but still use no and not before VERBS e.g. he no bite you, I dont want it

Stage 3:
didnt and wont appear e.g. I didnt caught it, she wont 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.

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

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Thank you
See you next class Read chapter 15

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