LECTURE 1

• Language
Acquisition
• Theories in
Language
Acquisition.
Language
Acquisition
• Acquisition
• Input
• Baby talk
• The Acquisition Schedule.
 How do children
accomplish Language
language Learning in Early
learning? Childhood.

Does child
language develop
similarly around
the world?

How do bilingual
children acquire
more than one
language?
 Acquisition
 Theprocess of language acquisition has
some basic requirements.
Language development requires interaction
with other language-users.
• A child who is not allowed to use language will learn no
language.

The importance of cultural transmission.

• A child learns is not genetically inherited but is acquired

in a particular language-using environment.
The child must be physically capable
of sending and receiving sound signals
in a language.
• All infants make ‘cooing’ and ‘babbling’ noises
during their first year but congenitally deaf
infants stop after six months.
• In order to speak a child must be able to hear
the language being used. However, hearing is
not enough.
 Moskowitz (1991) reported:

Deaf parents who gave their normal-

hearing son ample exposure to television
and radio programs, the child 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
Under normal circumstances, human infants are
certainly helped in their language acquisition by the
typical behaviour of older children and adults in the
home environment who provide INPUT for the child.

Adults: tend to not Baby talk:

address the little simplified words or
children as if they alternative forms
are involved in with repeated
normal adult-adult simple sounds and
conversation. syllables.
Characteristics of Baby Talk

Frequent use Exaggerated

of questions. intonation

Slower tempo
Extra
with longer
loudness
pauses
The Acquisition Schedule
 Allnormal children has the same basis as
the biologically determined development
of motor skills and the maturation of the
infant's brain.
Theories in Language
Acquisition.
• The behaviourist perspective:
Say what I say.
• The innatist/nativist perspective:
It is all in your mind.
• Interactionism perspective:
Learning from inside and out.
 The behaviourist
perspective:
Say what I say.
• Behaviorism was a
theory of learning that
was very influential in
I.P PAVLOV the 1940s and 1950s.

• Hypothesis: Children
imitated the language
produced by those
around them, their
attempts to reproduce
what they heard
received ‘positive
reinforcement’.
B.F SKINNER
 Children would This theory gives great
continue to imitate and importance to the
practice these sounds environment as the
and patterns until they source of everything
formed habits of the child needs to
correct language use. learn.

Quality=Quantity=Consistency of the
reinforcement-would shape the child’s
language behaviour.
 Definitions and Examples
 The behaviorists viewed imitation and practice as
the primary processes in language development.

Imitation:
word-for-word • Mother: Shall we play with the
repetition of dolls?
all/part of someone • Lucy: Play with dolls.
else’s utterance

Practice:
• Cindy: He eats carrots. The other
Repetitive one eat carrots. They both eat
manipulation of
form carrots.
Patterns in Language
• Mother: Maybe we need to
Over- take you to the doctor.
generalizing • Randall: Why? So he can doc
my little bump?

• Father: I’d like to propose

Unfamiliar a toast.
formulas • David: I’d like to propose a
piece of bread.
 • Are dogs can wiggle their
Question tails?
formulation • Are those are my boots?
• Are this is hot?

• Randall (3 years, 5 months) was

Order of looking for a towel.
events • You took all my towels way
because I can’t dry my hands.

He meant ‘ I can’t dry my hands because you took all the towels
away’, but he made a mistake about which clause comes first.
Children at this stage of language development tend to mention
events in the order of their occurance.
 CRITICISMS & ARGUMENTS
Opposition from the famous Noam Chomsky: language is a
intricate rule based system, and children are born with LAD, it
has nothing to do with behaviour.

Behavioural learning strategy can’t be used to all

situation because learners mood and feelings are
unpredictable.
Dependent with the use of reinforcement and
punishment.
People and animals are able to adapt their
behavior when new information is introduced,
even if a previous behavior pattern has been
established through reinforcement.
 The innatist
perspective:
It is all in your
mind.
“Human
language
appears to be a
unique
phenomenon,
without
significant
analogue in the
animal world.”
(Noam Chomsky)
Introduction
 Noam Chomsky is one of the most
influential figures in linguistics.
 A central part of his thinking is that all
human languages are fundamentally
innate.
 He challenged the behaviourist
explanation for language acquisition.

Children are biologically programmed for language and that

language develops in the child in the just the same way that
other biological functions develop. The child does not have to
be taught. Environment makes a basic contribution.
 Chomsky argued that the behaviorist
theory failed to account for the logical
problem of language acquisition.
 The language children are exposed
includes false starts, incomplete
sentences and slips of the tongue and yet
they learn to distinguish between
grammatical and ungrammatical
sentences.
He concluded that:
Children’s minds are not Children are born with a
blank slate to be filled by specific innate ability to
imitating language they
hear in the environment. I discover for themselves the
underlying rules of a
language system .
N
S
T
E
A
SLATES D
 Important

UG aspects in
Innatism Theory.

• Universal
Grammar
LAD • Language
Acquisition
Device

CPH
• Critical Period
Hypothesis
 This innate endowment was
seen as a sort of TEMPLATE,
containing the principles that
are universal to all human
languages.
• This UG (UNIVERSAL
GRAMMAR) would prevent
the child from pursuing all
sorts of wrong hypotheses
about how language
systems might work.
• If children are pre-equipped
with UG, then what they
have to learn is the ways in
which the language they
are acquiring makes use of
these principles.
 LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
DEVICE (LAD)

 “LAD” also known as a “Black Box”.

 It is an unobservable machine.
 Children are equipped with it at
birth.
 Responsible for processing all the
linguistic data to enable a child to
pick up a language.
 Once activated, a child is
LAD Is triggered when a able to process the
child is exposed to a structure of the existing
language in the language with the
environment. language heard in the
environment.

LAD has the capability to

formulate hypotheses A child check the
about the structure of the hypotheses and modifies
language heard in the it, often.
environment.

The process of checking

and rechecking the
hypotheses leads the
child to a successful
grammar and broaden
their knowledge.
 At this stage, the child can
generate correct grammar and
reject ungrammatical ones.

However,
the child is Universal
unconscious Grammar is
about the in LAD.
process.
Critical Period Hypothesis
A maturational period during which
some experience will have its peak
effect on development or learning
resulting in normal behaviour
attuned to the particular
environment the organism has been
exposed to. If exposure to this
experience happens after this time,
it will only have reduced or no
effect. (Newport)
Evidences on CPH

Feral Child
children aphasia

Deaf L2
speakers learners
Most famous cases:
Victor & Genie
In 1799, a 12 years old boy named Victor was
found wandering naked in the woods in France.
He succeeded to
Jean-Marc- some extent in
Completely wild
Gaspard Itard developing
and had no
devoted 5 years Victor’s
contact with
trying to teach sociability,
humans.
him language memory and
judgement.

There was little progress in his language ability.

Only responded to Eventually spoke
the sounds of two words:
cracking a nut,
Lait (Milk)
animal sounds or
the sounds of rain. O Dieu (Oh God)

He said ‘lait’ only

Never used the
when he saw a
word to ask for it.
glass of milk.
After nearly two
hundred years
later….
• Genie, a 13 year old girl who
has been isolated, neglected
and abused was discovered
in California.
• Irrational demands of a
disturbed father and the
submission and fear of an
abused mother-she spent
more than 11 years tied to a
chair or crib in a small,
darkened room.
• Father had forbidden his wife
and son to speak to Genie.
• Only growled and barked at
her. Was beaten when she
made any kind of noise.
• Had long since resorted to
complete silence.
Genie was undeveloped physically, emotionally and intellectually .
She had no language

 After she was discovered, she was cared

for and educated with the participation
of many teachers and therapists.
 After brief period in a rehabilitation
centre, she lived in a foster home and
attended special schools.
 Becoming Deep personal
socialized and r/ship and
cognitively strong individual
aware. tastes and traits.

HOWEVER, after 5 years of

language exposure,
Genie’s language Larger than normal
was not like a gap between Used grammatical
typical kids of her comprehension forms inconsistently.
age. and production

Overused formulaic
and routine speech
 TUTORIAL ACTIVITY
(LIBRARY SEARCH & SELF-STUDY)
 Read and digest the topic on ISSUES IN 1ST Language
Acquisition.
 Gather all unknown vocabulary.
 Less than three slides. Must be non-linear form.

G2
G1
Comprehension and G3
Competence & Production. Universal
Performance.
Nature or nurture.

G4
Systematicity & G5 G6
Variability.
Imitation & Practice Input & Discourse.
Language and
Thought.
 Post your slides before 2.30pm, 7 July 2017
at our FB page: PBEM 3083.
 Write the details of your group.
Preparation for the next
lecture & tutorial.
 Read the raw notes given by Miss Tasha.
 Gather unknown vocabulary.
 Bring a laptop for discussion and
information search purpose.