FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

OBJECTIVES

• Know the language system a child of the age 5 acquire.• List the issues that are related to 1L acquisition.• Explain the theories that interpret 1L acquisition.• List the requirements for L1 acquisition.• Explain the role of Caretaker speech (motherese)

in L1 acquisition.• Explain the stages of L1 acquisition.• Explain how children develop morphological,

syntactic and semantic language systems.

“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 don’t 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

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 children’s errors sometimes. Does it

help?“Nobody don’t like me”

THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

• Nature vs. Nurture• Behaviorism (1950s)

Children learn language through imitation, reinforcement and analogy- Look at these examples

He go out. A my pencilWhat the boy hit?Nobody don’t like me

THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

• Innateness hypothesisChildren 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

BASIC REQUIREMENT

• Environment and interaction to bring this capacity into operation- E.g. Genie• 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 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.

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• example: Oh, goody! Now Daddy will push choo

choo!

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

L1 ACQUISITION

Stage Typical Age Description

cooing 3-5 months Vowel-like sounds

babbling 6-10 months Repetitive CV patterns

One-word stage 12-18 months Single open-class words orword stems

Two-word stage 18- 20 months

"mini-sentences" withsimple semantic relations

Telegraphic stage 24-30 months sentence structures of lexicalwords no functional orgrammatical morphemes

Later multiword stage

30+ months Grammatical or functionalstructures emerge

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.

BABBLING

• Different vowels and consonants ba-ba-ba and ga-gaga

• 9-10 months- intonation patterns and combination of ba-ba-ba-da-da

• Nasal sounds also appear ma-ma-ma• 10-11months 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

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] dog• [sa] sock• [aj] light• [daw] down

• Convey a more complex message

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.

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

THE ACQUISITION PROCESS

• The child does not acquire the language by imitating adults but really they are 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

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’ and ‘mens’

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 appears with full verbs first• then with auxiliaries (does-has)

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

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?

FORMING NEGATIVES

Stage 1:• Putting not and no at the beginning e.g. not teddy bear, no sit hereStage 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

DEVELOPING SEMANTICS

• During the two-word stage children use their limited

vocabulary to refer to a large number of unrelatedobjects.

• 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

DEVELOPING SEMANTICS

• Antonymous relations are acquired late

• The distinction between more/less, before/after seem to be later acquired.