Introduction to Linguistics 10 L1 Acquisition

1. Introduction to Linguistics 10 L1 Acquisition Prof. Jo Lewkowicz

2. The miracle of language • Bt age 4 English speaking children know 10,000+ words, equivalent of 10 new words per day • Compare this with number of words you have learned in English during past week/month/year

3. Chronology of L1 acquisition • V. early stage • Approx 6 mths • Approx 1 year • One-word stage • Crying, smiling, cooing (4 -7 mths use pitch & loudness to play with ‘cooing sounds’) • Babbling (e.g. dadada; bababa, mama) • Children begin to realise the concept that words refer to something. As nos. words increases, so babbling decreases. • When this starts varies from one child to another. What may be 2 words in adult language may be 1 word for a child , e.g ‘allgone’. Also children may overextend words (e.g. bunny to mean many things such as doll, bear, toy lion etc. Children may also underuse a word, e.g ‘tree’ referring to leafless tree in winter and not to one in spring, summer

4. From sound to syntax • Sounds/pro-nunciation • Syntax • Children learn some sounds more quickly than others • Often delete a sound or syllable (e.g. ‘tein’ for ‘train’; ‘dedo’ for ‘potato’), replace one sound for another (‘wabbit’ for ‘rabbit’) • May perceive sound differences they cannot produce • Combining words together starts at approx 2 years. • At first, speech is telegraphic, i.e. only content words used, e.g. mummy gone; Ethan no go. • Sequence of learning predictable (especially noticeable in terms of morphology)

5. Interest in L1 acquisition • Interest in L1 acquisition has long history • Example is the experiment carried out by Mogul Emperor in India in 16th century • First comprehensive theory of language acquisition is developed by Skinner in late 1950s • Will look at some of the theories of L1 acquisition since 1950s.

6. Behaviourist views of L1 acquisition • Believed that language learned through imitation and habit formation • BUT • What we say is unique so children are unlikely to remember exactly what they have heard • Children are creative in their language use: say things they will never have heard before • Children overgeneralize rules, e.g. In English add ‘ed’ ending to past tense of irregular verbs • Evidence that children also from an early stage accommodate to their speakers • Children hear vast quantities of language – too much to remember everything

7. Mentalist approach • All humans are hard-wired to learn to speak: defining factor for humanity. • If this is so, how to we ‘classify’ those persons born without the power of acquiring spoken language? • Children cannot simply learn from what they hear as this is often fragmentary, ungrammatical and imprecise. YET • Parents do accommodate their speech when taking to infants: speak more slowly, more clearly and often in complete sentences • Children have huge amounts of practice • Parents do direct infants attention to aspects of language • Infants early own can discover the limits of their communicative competence, which may lead to further L1 acquisition

8. Roger Brown’s contribution to L1 acquisition theory • Studied 3 unrelated children for a period of time. • Found that there was a consistent pattern in what the children learned • Found that they learned grammar in the same order but at a different rate • Found that frequency with which the children encountered morphemes did not relate to the order in which they learned them • But, children will not learn constructions they never hear.

9. Halliday’s contribution to L1 acquisition • Child starts by developing a ‘proto-language’: one-to-one correspondence between utterance & meaning • At this stage there is no grammar & no words (as we know them) • Sounds uttered are functioning as signs – drawing caregivers attention • When words first appear a single word used to mean many things, i.e. overgeneralization: dog may mean: I like the dog, go away dog, I want a dog, etc.

10. Things young children can do with language • Satisfy material needs • Get others to do things • Interact socially • Express their own uniqueness • Explore the world • Use language imaginatively • Later 7th function = informative

11. Functionalist views of L1 acquisition • First utterances are not imitations of adult language • Children go through number of stages in acquiring their language • Acquire words then grammar • When words first appear a single word used to mean many things, i.e. overgeneralization: dog may mean: I like the dog, go away dog, I want a dog, etc • Children learn to nominate a topic of conversation early on. They also know how to take turns in the interactive process • Learn to talk about the hear and now before talking about things that are not present • Suggest that children do not learn words and then grammar to make meaning, but they learn to function using language to fulfil certain functions and as they do so, they acquire grammatical accuracy. • Language acquisition stimulated by our drive to meet physical and emotional needs, including the need to socialise and become members of social groups.