🍀1. First language acquisition file.pdf

Introduction to Language
Acquisition

Definition
• Language acquisition is the process by which
humans acquire the capacity to perceive and
comprehend language, as well as to produce
and use words and sentences to communicate.

Definition of first language
• Definition of “first language” (L1):
• A person’s mother tongue or the language
acquired first, it is also referred to as native
language.

• Definition of “second language” (L2):
1. Any language other than the first language
learned (in a broader sense).
2. A language learned after the first language
in a context where the language is used
widely in the speech community (in a
narrower sense).

• Definition of “foreign language” (FL)
A second (or third, or fourth) language learned
in a context where the language is NOT
widely used in the speech community. This
is often contrasted with second language
learning in a narrower sense.

• Definition of “target language” (TL)
• A language which is being learned, where it
is the first language or a second, third
language.

Developmental Sequences
• One remarkable thing about first language
acquisition is the high degree of similarity in
the early language of children all over the
world.

Grammatical Morphemes
• In the 1960s, many researchers focused on
how children acquire grammatical morphemes
in English through the use of longitudinal and
cross-sectional studies.
• The list below shows some morphemes they
studied:

• Present progressive –ing (mommy running)
• Plural –s (Two books)
• Irregular past forms (baby went)
• Possessive ‘s (daddy’s hat)
• Copula (Annie is happy)
• Articles the and a
• Regular past –ed (she walked)
• Third person singular –s (she runs)
• Auxiliary be (he is coming)

• A child who had mastered the grammatical
morphemes at the bottom of the list was sure
to have mastered those at the top, but the
reverse was not true.
• This is evidence for a ‘developmental
sequence’ or ‘order of acquisition’.
• However, children do not acquire the
morphemes at the same age or rate.

Acquisition of Negation
Four stages:
• Stage 1: ‘no’– e.g., “No go”. “No cookie.”
• Stage 2: subject + no – e.g., “Daddy no comb hair.”
• Stage 3: auxiliaryor modal verbs (do/can)+ not
(Yet no variationsfor differentpersons or tenses)
e.g., “I can’t do it “, “He don’t want it.”
• Stage 4: correct form of auxiliaryverbs (did/doesn’t/is/are)+ not
e.g., He didn’t go. She doesn’t want it.
But sometimes double negatives are used
e.g., I don’t have no more candies.

Acquisition of Questions
Order of the occurrence of wh- question words
1. “What” - Whatsat? Whatsit?
2. “Where” and “who”
3. “Why” (emerging at the end of the 2nd year and becomes a
favorite at the age of 3 or 4)
4. “How” and “When” (yet children do not fully understand the
meaning of adults’ responses)
e.g., Child: When can we go outside?
Mother: In about 5 minutes.
Child: 1-2-3-4-5! Can we go now?

Theoretical Approaches to L1
Acquisition
1) Behaviorism: Say what I say
2) Innatism: It’s all in your mind
3) Interactionist/Developmental perspectives:
Learning from inside and out

I. Behaviorism: say what I say
• Behaviorism is a theory of learning that was
influential in the 1940s and 50s. For
language learning, the best-known
proponent of this psychological theory was
B.F. Skinner (1957).

• Skinner: language behaviour is the
production of correct responses to
stimuli through reinforcement.

• Traditional behaviorists hypothesized that
when children imitated the language
produced by those around them, their
attempts to reproduce what they heard
received ‘positive reinforcement’. This
could take the form of praise or just
successful communication.

• Thus, encouraged by their environment,
children continue to imitate and practice
these sounds and patterns until they
formed ‘habits’ of correct language use.

• According to this view, the quality and
quantity of the language the child hears, as
well as the consistency of the
reinforcement offered by others in the
environment would shape the child’s
language behavior.
• This theory gives great importance to the
environment as the source of everything
the child needs to learn.

• The behaviorists viewed imitation and
practice as the primary processes in
language development.

Language learning is the result of:
• Imitation (word-for-word repetition),
• Practice (repetitive manipulation of
form),
• Feedback on success (positive
reinforcement)
• Habit formation.

The quality and
quantity of the
language that the
child hears
as well as the
consistency of the
reinforcement offered by
others in the
environment
would shape the
child’s language
behaviour.

However
1. Unlike a parrot who imitates the familiar
and continues to repeat the same things
again and again, children appear to
imitate selectively.

2. Children’s imitations are not random:
Their imitation is selective and based on
what they are currently learning.
3. Many of the things they say show that
they are using language creatively, not
just repeating what they have heard.

– Patterns in language
• Mother: Maybe we need to take you to the doctor.
Randall (36 months): Why? So he can doc my little
bump?” (showing the understanding of the suffix
‘er/or’)
• Son: I putted the plates on the table!
Mother: You mean, I put the plates on the table.
Son: No, I putted them on all by myself.
(showing the understanding of using ‘ed’ to make the
past tense for a verb” and the focus on the meaning,
not form)
– Unfamiliarformulas/ focus on meaning:
• Father: I’d like to propose a toast.
Child: I’d like to propose a piece of bread.
• Mother: I love you to pieces.
Child: I love you three pieces.

• Question formation:
• Are dogs can wiggle their tails?
• Are those are my boots?
• Are this is hot?

• Order of events:
• You took all the towels away because I can’t
dry my hands.
• Children at this stage of development tend to
mention events in the order of their
occurrence, the child here did not yet
understand how a word like ‘before’ or
‘because’ changes the order of cause and
effect.

• These examples of children’s speech provide us
with a window on the process of language
learning.
• Imitation and practice alone cannot explain some
of the forms created by children. They are not
merely repetitious of sentences that they have
heard from adults.
• Children appear to pick up patterns and generalize
them to new contexts. They create new forms or
new uses of words. Their new sentences are
usually comprehensible and often correct.

• Behaviorism seems to offer a reasonable
way of understanding how children learn
some of the regular and routine aspects of
language especially at the earliest stages.
• However, classical behaviorism is not a
satisfactory explanation for the acquisition
of the more complex grammar that children
acquire.
• These limitations led researchers to look for
different explanations for language
acquisition.

2) Innatism: it is all in your mind
• Noam Chomsky is one of the most
influential figures in linguistics, and his
ideas about how language is acquired and
how it is stored in the mind sparked a
revolution in many aspects of linguistics
and psychology, including the study of
language acquisition.

• The innatist perspective is related to
Chomsky's hypothesis that all human
languages are based on some innate
universal principles.

• Chomsky challenged the behaviorist
explanation for language acquisition. He
argued that children are biologically
programmed for language and that
language develops in the child in just the
same way that other biological functions
develop

• For example, every child will learn to
walk as long as adequate nourishment and
reasonable freedom of movement are
provided. The child does not have to be
taught.
• Most children learn to walk at about the
same age, and walking is essentially the
same in all normal human beings.

• For Chomsky, language acquisition is
very similar. The environment makes
only a basic contribution -in this case,
the availability of people who speak to
the child. The child, or rather, the
child’s biological endowment, will do
the rest.

• Chomsky (1959) argues that
behaviorism cannot provide
sufficient explanations for children’s
language acquisition for the
following reasons:

• Children come to know more about the
structure of their language than they could be
expected to learn on the basis of the samples
of language they hear.

• The language children are exposed to
includes false starts, incomplete sentences
and slips of the tongue, and yet they learn
to distinguish between grammatical and
ungrammatical sentences.
• Children are by no means systematically
corrected or instructed on language by
parents.

• He concluded that children’s minds are not
blank slates to be filled by imitating
language they hear in the environment.

• Instead, he hypothesized, children are born
with a specific innate ability to discover
for themselves the underlying rules of a
language system on the basis of the
samples of a natural language they are
exposed to.

• This innate endowment was seen as a sort
of template, containing the principles that
are universal to all human languages. This
universal grammar (UG) 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.

• Researchers who study language
acquisition from the innatist perspective
argue that complex grammar could
never be learned purely on the basis of
imitating and practicing sentences
available in the input.

• They hypothesize that since all children
acquire language of their environment,
they must have some innate mechanism
or knowledge that allows them to
discover such complex syntax in spite of
limitations of the input. They hypothesize
furthermore that the innate mechanism is
used exclusively for language
acquisition.

• The innatist perspective emphasizes that
almost all children successfully acquire their
native language if they live in a multilingual
community.
• Children who are profoundly deaf will learn
sign language if they are exposed to it in
infancy, and their progress in the acquisition of
that language system is similar to hearing
children’s acquisition of spoken language.

• Even children with very limited cognitive
ability develop quite complex language
systems if they are brought up in
environments in which people interact
with them.

Children are
biologically
programmed
for language
Language
develops in the
child
In the same way
of other
biological
functions

LAD: Language Acquisition Device
( or Black Box)
• It contains all and only the principles which are
universal to all human languages
(i.e.. Universal Grammar – UG).

If children are pre-
equipped with UG.
What they have to learn is
The ways in which their
own language makes use
of those principles

children
need access
only to
samples of
a natural
language
which
serve as a
trigger to
activate
the device.
Once the
LAD is
activated
They discover
the structure
of the
language to be
learned
By matchingthe
innate
knowledge of
basic
grammatical
principles (UG)
to the
structures of
the particular
languagein
the
environment.

• Hence, children’s acquisition of grammatical
rules is guided by principles of an innate UG
which could apply to all languages.
• Children “know” certain things of the language
just by being exposed to a limited number of
samples.

Evidence used to support Chomsky’s
innatist position:
Virtually all children successfully learn their
native language at a time in life when they
would not be expected to learn anything else
so complicated (i.e. biologically
programmed).

• Language is separate from other
aspects of cognitive developments
and may be located in a different
“module" of the brain.

The language children are exposed
to does not contain examples
of all the linguistic rules and
patterns.

• Children acquire grammatical rules without
getting explicit instruction

The biological basis for the innatist
position:

The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)
• The innate perspective is often linked to the
Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)

• The hypothesis states that animals, including
humans, are genetically programmed to
acquire certain kinds of knowledge and skills
at specific times in life. Beyond those 'critical
periods', it is either difficult or impossible to
acquire those abilities.'

• With regard to language, the CPH suggests
that children who are not given access to
language in infancy and early childhood
(before puberty) (because of deafness or
extreme isolation) will never acquire language
if these deprivations go on for too long.

• It is difficult to find evidence for or against the
CPH, since nearly all children are exposed to
language at an early age. However, history has
documented a few 'natural experiments’ where
children have been deprived of contact with
language. Two of the most famous cases are
those of 'Victor' and 'Genie'.

• ln 1799, a boy who became known as Victor
was found wandering naked in the woods in
France.

• When Victor was captured, he was about 12
years old and completely wild, apparently
having had no contact with humans. Jean-
Marc-Gaspard Itard, a young doctor
accustomed to working with deaf children,
devoted five years to socializing Victor and
trying to teach him language

• Although he succeeded to some extent in
developing Victor’s sociability, memory and
judgement, there was little progress in his
language ability.

• Nearly 200 years later, Genie, a 13-year-old
girl who had been isolated, neglected, and
abused, was discovered in California. Because
of the irrational demands of a disturbed father
and the submission and fear of an abused
mother, Genie had spent more than 11 years
tied to a chair or a crib in a small, darkened
room.

• Her father had forbidden his wife and son to
speak to Genie and had himself only growled
and barked at her. She was beaten when she
made any kind of noise, and she had long since
resorted to complete silence. Genie was
undeveloped physically, emotionally and
intellectually. She had no language.

• After she was discovered, Genie was cared for
and educated with the participation of many
teachers and therapists.
• Genie made remarkable progress in becoming
socialized and cognitively aware. She
developed deep personal relationships and
strong individual tastes and traits.

• However, after five years of exposure to
language, Genie’s language was not like that of
a typical five-year old. There was a larger than
normal gap between comprehension and
production.

• Although Victor and Genie appear to provide
evidence in support of CPH, it is difficult to
argue the hypothesis is confirmed on the basis
of evidence from such unusual cases. We
cannot know what factors besides biological
maturity might have contributed to their
inability to learn language. (see the chapter for
more examples, p: 24)

Criticism of Innatism:
1. Too much emphasis on the “final
state” but not enough on the
developmental aspects of language
acquisition.
➢This means that innatism focuses on
the final stage of language development
without much explanation of how this
development occurs gradually.

2. Innatists dealt with FORMS of the language,
not with the FUNCTIONAL levels of meaning
constructed from SOCIAL INTERACTION.
➢This means that they neglect the role of the
environment in the development of language.

3) Interactionlist/developmental
perspectives:
Learning from inside out

INTERACTIONISM:
Language acquisition is an example of children’s
ability to learn from experience.
What children need to know is essentially
available in the language they are exposed to.

the innate
learning ability
of children
the environment
in which they
develop
LANGUAGE
DEVELOPMENT

CRUCIAL ELEMENT
in language acquisition process
MODIFIED SPEECH

Caretaker Talk
• It is the way adults modify their speech when
communicating with kids. It is characterized by:
• Slower rate of speech
• Higher pitch
• More varied intonation
• Shorter simpler sentence patterns
• Frequent repetition
• Paraphrase

Hence, developmental psychologists attribute
more importance to the environment but they
recognize a powerful learning mechanism in
the human brain.

PIAGET
• “Children’s cognitive development determines their
language development.”
• He argued that the developing cognitive understanding
is built on the interaction between the child and the
things which can be observed, touched, and
manipulated.
• For him, language was one of a number of symbol
systems developed in childhood, rather than a separate
module of the mind. Language can be used to represent
knowledge that children have acquired through physical
interaction with the environment.

The interaction
between the
child
things which can
be observed,
touched, and
manipulated
the
developing
cognitive
understanding

Language
was one of a number of
symbol systems developed in
childhood,
rather than a separate module
of the mind.

VYGOTSKY
Socio-cultural theory of human mental
processing.
He argued that language develops primarily from
social interaction.

Zone of proximal development
(ZPD):
• A level that a child is able to do when there is support
from interaction with a more advanced interlocutor.
• A supportive interactive environment enables children
to advance to a higher level of knowledge and
performance than s/he would be able to do
independently.

• Vygotsky observed the importance of
conversations which children have
with adults and with other children
and saw in these conversations the
origins of both language and thought.

THOUGHT
ESSENTIALLY
INTERANALIZED
SPEECH
SPEECH
EMERGED IN
SOCIAL
INTERACTION

Childhood Bilingualism
• “Simultaneous bilinguals”
– Children who learn more than one language from birth.
• “Sequential bilinguals”
– Children who begin to learn a second language after they
have acquired the first language.

• Is it difficult for children to cope with 2
languages?
1. There is little support for the myth that learning more
than one language in early childhood slows down the
child’s linguistic development or interferes with
cognitive and academic development.
2. Bilingualism can have positive effects on abilities that
are related to academic success, such as metalinguistic
awareness.
3. The learning of languages for bilingual children is more
related to the circumstances in which each language is
learned than to any limitation in the human capacity to
learn more than one language.

• Language attrition for bilinguals
“Subtractive bilingualism” (Lambert, 1987)
▪ When children are “submerged” in a second language for long
periods in early schooling, they may begin to lose their native
language (L1) before they have developed an age-appropriate
mastery of the L2.
▪ It can have negative consequences for children’s self-esteem.
▪ In some cases, children continue to be caught between two
languages; not having mastered the L2, but not having continued
to develop the L1. During the transition period, they may fall
behind in their academic learning.

• Solution for “subtractive bilingualism”:
to strive for “additive bilingualism”
– Parents should continue speaking the L1 to their children to
maintain the home language, while the L2 is being learned
at school.
– Maintaining the family language also creates opportunities
for the children to continue both cognitive and affective
development in a language they understand easily while
they are still learning the L2.

🍀1. First language acquisition file.pdf

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