First language acquisition

LING 400

Winter 2010

Overview

• Characteristics of L1

• Theories of L1

• L1 and innateness

• Critical period

• L1 and ASL

Please turn off your cell phone.

For further learning: LING/PSYCH 347

Some questions about L1• How is it that by age 5 children (basically)

know their language?

• What they do along the way?

Characteristics of L1

• Regular stages (milestones)– Babbling– One-word stage– Two-word stage

Babbling • “Precanonical babbling”

– 0-1 months: crying, coughing – 2-3 months: “cooing and gooing” (velar Cs)

• “Canonical babbling”– 4-6 months: greater variety of sounds, more like language – 7-9 months: CV syllables, often reduplicated ([tata])

• “Advanced forms”– 12 months: long sequences of gibberish, possibly with

intonation– 18-20 months: babbling ceases

• Examples of babbling at different stages (http://www.vocaldevelopment.com/)

One-word stage • 12-18 months (overlaps with

babbling)

• Characteristics – words used as sentences– simple phonology: CV syllables;

CVCV words – typical communicative functions

• naming

• child’s action or desire for action

• child’s emotion

Words produced by Eve at 15

months

• Mommy• Daddy• go• go?• gimme• baba ‘grandma’• dollie• cup• what?• wawa ‘water’• nana ‘blanket’

2-word stage (±24

months

• Eve at 18 months– short “sentences”

• eating • open toybox • no celery • more grape juice

– limited inflection• What doing, Mommy? • Mommy_ soup • Mommy_ head?

– limited function words• write a paper • Oh! Horsie _ stuck

– pronouns rare• my pencil • _ drink juice

Beyond 2-word stage

• Eve at 27 months– Pronouns and other pro-forms

• You make a blue one for me.• Put in you coffee

– Embedding• I put them in the refrigerator to freeze.

– Determiners and auxiliaries• What is that on the table? • How ‘bout another eggnog instead of _ cheese sandwich?

– Omission of be• See, this one _ better but this _ not better.

– Wrong verb forms• That why Jacky comed.

Production lags behind comprehension• Sounds recognized before produced

– ‘One of us...spoke to a child who called his inflated plastic fish a fis. In imitation of the child’s pronunciation, the observer said: “This is your fis?” “No,” said the child, “my fis”. He continued to reject the adult’s imitation until he was told, “That is your fish.” “Yes,” he said, “my fis.”’

• Word order understood before long sentences produced– Clip from Acquiring Language (bigbird.mov, 0:44-2:31)

Some theories of L1• Reinforcement hypothesis

– Children learn from corrections.

• Imitation hypothesis– Children imitate only what they hear.

• Active construction of grammar hypothesis– Children construct, refine grammatical rules.

• Children don’t get a lot of corrections – some lexical/content corrections – not many grammatical

• Children don’t absorb corrections– Child: Nobody don’t like me.

– Mother: No. Say ‘nobody likes me’.

– Child: Nobody don’t like me.

– ...

– Mother: Now listen carefully. Say ‘nobody LIKES me’.

– Child: Oh...Nobody don’t LIKES me.

Corrections

Imitation• Children imitate lg of environment to a large

extent• But also produce forms not heard

– ‘other one spoon’ – novel verbs

• ‘Why you didn’t jam my bread?’ – novel forms of verbs

• Child: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.• Adult: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits?• Child: Yes.• Adult: What did you say she did?• Child: She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.• Adult: Did you say she held them tightly?• Child: No, she holded them loosely.

Grammar construction hypothesis• Children’s deviations from adult grammar are

systematic, not random

• Regularization of morphology– Plurals

• gooses

– Past tense forms of verbs• I tooked it smaller

– Comparative forms • He hitted me. He’s a puncher he is. He’s being badder and

badder.

Systematic deviation from adult phonology

• A 2-year-old’s English consonant inventory

• No C clusters– “[gu] here” (glue)

• Syll-final Cs are stops– “mummy [gb]” (give)

• No syllabic consonants– “me [ll]” (little)

• Cs must be all oral or all nasal– “take [mnæn]” (banana)

p b t d k g

f s h

m n

w

l

Systematic semantic errors• Hyponyms

– car (first referent: only family Pontiac)

– dish (child’s dish only)

– mow-mow (family cat only)

• Hypernyms– fly (first referent, housefly; later, specks of dirt, dust,

all small insects, child’s own toes, crumbs, small toad)

– koko (first, rooster crowing; later, piano, phonograph, tunes played on violin, accordian, all music, merry-go-round)

L1 and innateness

• Innateness Hypothesis– Humans genetically programmed for language

– Universal Grammar constrains possible form of human language

– Actual form of language determined by environment

• Syntactic errors may resemble well-formed sentences in other languages– A clip from Acquiring the human language,

childerror1.mov (1:47-3:56)

L1 as an innate behavior• Emerges before ‘needed’

– L1 complete age 5

• No conscious decision to learn – L1: immersion in lgc environment sufficient

• Not triggered by external events – L1 ‘poverty of stimulus’: motherese, adult performance

• Not affected by explicit instruction– Correction has no effect on L1

• Normal stages of achievement– L1: Independent of other cognitive skills, cross-linguistic

regularities, uniformity of resulting grammars

• ‘Critical age’ for learning the behavior

L1 as a critical age skill• Critical Age Hypothesis

– Critical age for learning behavior/skill in order for complete mastery

– L1: approximately puberty• Some differences between L1, L2

– Instruction• L1: none• L2: usually overt and necessary

– Speed of learning• L1: relatively fast• L2: relatively slow

– Resulting grammar• L1: more uniform• L2: more idiosyncracy

– Stages in learning• L1: regular stages resulting in complete mastery• L2: no such stages, incomplete mastery

Cases of isolated children

• Victor, Genie (1970), Chelsea, Maria Noname, etc.

• Documentary about Genie

ASL and L1• Lance Forshay: “Fourth of

five Deaf generations.”– In right environment, same

milestones as hearing children

• But 90%+ deaf children born to hearing parents

• “signers are the only large population that undergoes delayed exposure to a primary language” (Meier 1991)

Washington School for the Deaf, Vancouver WA

Acquisition summary

• L1 proceeds in regular stages

• L1 learners construct, refine grammar as they go

• L1 appears to be an innate behavior

Question

• Paul at age 2. How does Paul’s pronunciation systematically differ from adult pronunciation?

Paul:– sun [sʌn]

– see [si]

– spoon [pun]

– snake [neɪk]

– sky [kɑɪ]– stop [tɑp]