First Language Acquisition

1. First Language Acquisition Chapter 14

2. 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

3. Theories of language acquisition • Behaviorism (1950s) • Children learn language through imitation • Adult: He’s going out. Child: He go out. • Though reinforcement • Correction • Nobody don’t like me • Through analogy • Hear a sample and extend it to all cases • I painted a red barn • Motherese • Child direct speech

4. 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? • In spite of different backgrounds, different locations, and different upbringings, most children follow the very same milestones in acquiring language. • We correct children’s errors sometimes. Does it help? • ‘Nobody don’t like me’

5. Theories of language acquisition • Cannot account for language development because they are based on the assumption that what the child requires is based on a set of sentences rather than rules. • Innateness hypothesis • Children are equipped with an innate template for language (Universal Grammar) • Evidence: we end up knowing more about language than what we hear around us. • The same stages in all cultures and languages.

6. 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.

7. The acquisition schedule • All normal children develop language at roughly the same time, along the same schedule. • The biological schedule is related to the maturation of the infant’s 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

8. 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!

9. 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

10. L1 acquisition

11. 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.

12. Babbling • Different vowel 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-ga-ba) • Even deaf children babble • The most common cross-linguistic sounds and patterns babbled the most, but later on they babble less common sounds

13. 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.

14. Two-word stage • Vocabulary moves beyond 50 words • By 2 years old produce utterances ‘baby chair’, ‘mommy eat’ • Interpretation depends on context • Adults behave as if communication is taking place.

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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’

18. Developing Morphology • The use of possessive ‘s’ appears ‘mommy’s 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 appear with full verbs first then with auxiliaries (does-has)

19. 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

20. 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?

21. Forming negative • Stage 1: • Putting not and no at the beginning e.g. not teddy bear, no sit here • Stage 2: • Don’t and can’t appear but still use no and not before VERBS e.g. he no bite you, I don’t want it • Stage 3: • didn’t and won’t appear e.g. I didn’t caught it, she won’t go

22. 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.

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