BBI 3209 Language Acquisition

BBI 3209 LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Wong Bee EngDepartment of EnglishFaculty of Modern Languages and CommunicationUniversiti Putra Malaysia

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Topics

Characteristics of first language acquisition

The Behaviourist Theory and first language acquisition

Universal Grammar: the logical problem of first language acquisition

The language acquisition device: Argument from the poverty of the stimulus

Stages of first language acquisition – phonological, morphological, syntactic and semantic development

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E-mail: [email protected]

Phone: 03-89468677 Wong B

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mailto:[email protected]

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FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION The process of acquiring language among

children is also known as emergence of language.

The outcome of this process is a grammar.

2 reasons for saying that the development of linguistic skills involve the acquisition of a grammar.

Source: O’Grady, W. & Cho, S. W. (2012), pp. 326-359

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FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

1. Adult users of language are able to produce and understand an infinite number of novel sentences – a basic requisite of normal language use - which can only happen if they have acquired a grammar as children.

2. Another indication that children acquire a grammar, i.e. rules of a grammar, comes from their speech errors. These provide clues about how the acquisition process works.Source: O’Grady, W. & Cho, S. W. (2012), pp. 326-359

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Since adults don’t talk the way children do, the errors made by children tell us that children don’t merely imitate what they hear.

They create rules of their own to capture regularities that they hear in their input.


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Linguists and psychologists study, i.e. they identify and describe, the process of language acquisition by analyzing the emergence grammatical system of children.

They look to the study of the following to help them:phonologymorphologysyntax


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Methods Most studies focus on children’s early

utterances, the order in which they emerge, the kinds of errors made.

2 Complementary Approaches of data collection

The naturalist approach The experimental approachSource: O’Grady, W. & Cho, S. W. (2012), pp. 326-359

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FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Naturalistic approach: usually longitudinal

Observe and record children’s spontaneous utterances, e.g. a. Diary study (researcher keeps daily notes on a child’s linguistic progress)b. Regular taping sessions, often at biweekly intervals, an hour at a time, of the child interacting with his/her caregivers. Detailed transcripts are made for subsequent analysis. (see CHILDES – Child Language Data Exchange System)


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Naturalistic studiesAdvantage: Provides a lot of information of the emergence of grammar.Disadvantages: Certain structures and phenomena may occur rarely in children’s daily speech making it difficult to gather enough data to test hypotheses or draw firm conclusions.Speech samples from individual children capture only small portion of their utterances at any given point in development (15% or less).

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Experimental Approach: usually cross-sectional

Researchers make use of specially designed tasks to elicit linguistic activity relevant to the phenomenon they wish to study.

The child’s production is used to formulate hypotheses about the type of grammatical system acquired at that point in time.

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Types of experimental studiesUse tasks that test children’s

comprehension (e.g. judge truth statements made about particular pictures or situations), production (such tasks may be difficult for children), or imitation skills (such tasks can provide important clues about grammatical development)

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FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Experimental studies

Advantage: They allow researchers to collect data of a very specific sort about particular phenomena or structures.Disadvantages: Difficult to design such experiments.Children’s performance may be affected by extraneous factors, e.g. inattention, shyness, or a failure to understand what is expected of them.

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Better to use naturalistic observation together with experimental techniques.

Together they have advanced our knowledge of the process.

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PHONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

a. Babblingb. The developmental order

Consonant inventory at age two

Stops Fricatives Other

p b m f wt d n sk g

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Consonant inventory at age four

StopsFricatives Affricates Otherpb m f v ʧ ʤ w

jt d n s z l r

k g ŋ ʃ

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c. Early phonetic processes

1. Syllable simplification – systematic deletion of certain sounds in order to simplify syllable structure.

e.g. delete [s] stop [t ɒp]

2. Syllable deletion – deletion of unstressed syllables. e.g. spa ghe tti [gǝ]

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3. Substitution processes – systematic replacement of one sound by an alternative that the child finds easier to articulate

stopping e.g. sing [tIŋ] change: s tfronting e.g. ship [sIp] change: ʃ sgliding e.g. lion [jaIn] change: l j

denasalization e.g. room [wu:b] change: m b

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4. Assimilation The modification of one or more features of a

segment under the influence of neighbouring sounds

Initial consonants voiced in anticipation of the following vowel. e.g. tell [del]

To maintain the same place of articulation for all of the consonants or vowels in a word.

e.g. doggy [gɒgi:] or [dɒdi:]

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VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT

By 18 months, the child has a vocabulary of 50 words or more.

Common words refer toEntities – people, food/drinks,

animals, clothes, toys, vehicles, other (e.g. bottle, key, book)

Properties – e.g. hot, dirty, here, thereActions – e.g. up, sit, see, eat, go, downPersonal-social – e.g. bye, no, yes,

please, thank-you

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Noun-like words – largest class, followed by verb-like words, and adjective-like words.

Over the next few years – children learn between 10-12 words a day.

By age 6, they have 13,000-14,000 words.

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3 Strategies for acquiring word meaning

The Whole Object AssumptionA new word refers to a whole object

The Type AssumptionA new word refers to a type of thing, not just to a particular thing.

The Basic Level AssumptionA new word refers to objects that are alike in basic ways (appearance, behaviour, etc.)

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Contextual clues

Ability of the child to make use of contextual clues to draw inferences about the category and meaning of new words.e.g. Children can use the presence or absence of determiners to differentiate between names and common nouns.

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Meaning Errors

OverextensionsThe meaning of the child’s word is more general or

inclusive than that of the corresponding adult form.e.g. the word dog is frequently overextended to include horses, cows, etc.

UnderextensionsThe use of lexical items in an overly restrictive

fashion. e.g. the word kitty might be used to refer to the family pet, but not to other cats.

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Verb meaningse.g. the word fill means pour into rather than make

full.

Such errors disappear as children realize the actual meaning of fill.

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Dimensional termsTerms describing size and dimensions are acquired in

a relatively fixed order.

1st group of adjectives – big , small (can be used for talking about any aspect of size – height, area, volume, etc.)

2nd group - tall, long, short, high, low (can only be used for a single dimension – height-length)

Other modifiers – thick-thin, wide-narrow, deep-shallow – more restricted in use – describe secondary or less extended dimension of an object.

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MORPHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

Overgeneralizations or Overregularizations

e.g. *mans

*runned

*felled

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DEVELOPMENTAL SEQUENCE

A. Typical developmental sequence for non-lexical morphemes

1. -ing2. plural –s3. possessive – ’s4. the, a 5. past tense –ed6. third person singular –s7. auxiliary be

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B. Some Determining factors

1. Frequent occurrence in utterance-final position (children tend to notice elements that occur at the end of an utterance)2. Syllabicity (they tend to notice morphemes e.g. –ing, which are syllables on their own, than those that are single consonants, e.g. –s)3. Absence of homophony (this tends to hasten acquisition of a word)4. Few or no exceptions in the way it is used (all singular Ns form possessive with –s but not all verbs form past tense with –ed; exceptions can hinder acquisition process)5. Allomorphic invariance (the suffix –ing has the same form for all verbs, while the –ed has 3 main allomorphs; the latter can slow down morphological development)6. Clearly discernible semantic function (the plural –s expresses easily identifiable meaning, but 3rd person singular –s makes no obvious contribution to meaning of a sentence; thus the latter is acquired more slowly)

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WORD FORMATION PROCESSES

Derivation and compounding emerge early in the acquisition of English.

First derivational suffixes

are the most common ones in adult language.

Children’s creativity with

compounds shows a preference for building words from other words.

Ending Meaning Word

/-ness/ state sadness

/-ing/ activity running

/-er/ doer/-ie/ diminutive

teacherdoggie

Child’s word Intended meaning

car-smoke N-N exhaust

firetruck-man N-N fire fighter

cup-egg N-N boiled egg

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The 2 processes that apply most freely in English, i.e. the formation of a noun by the addition

of the agentive affix –er to a verb (a derivational process) and

compounding, are the first to emerge.

e.g. A person who swims is a ___________.

A house for a dog is a ___________.

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SYNTACTIC DEVELOPMENT

I. The one-word stage

A child begins to produce one-word utterances (holophrases = whole sentences) between the ages of 12 months and 18 months.

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A basic property of these one-word utterances is that they can be used to express the type of meaning that would be associated with an entire sentence in adult speech.

E.g. dada can mean I see daddy.

Children seem to choose the most informative word that applies to the situation at hand.

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SEMANTIC RELATIONS IN CHILDREN’S ONE-WORD UTTERANCES

Semantic relation Utterance Situation

Agent of an action dada as father enters the room

Action or state down as child sits downTheme door as father closes the

doorLocation here as child pointsRecipient mama as child gives mother

somethingRecurrence again as child watches

lighting of a match

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II. The two-word stage

a. Within a few months of their first one-word utterances, children begin to produce two-word mini-sentences.

b. The vast majority of two-word utterances employ an appropriate word order, suggesting a very early sensitivity to this feature of sentence structure.

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SOME PATTERNS IN CHILDREN’S TWO-WORD SPEECH

Utterance Intended meaning Semantic relation

Baby chair The baby is sitting agent-location

on the chair.

Doggie bark The dog is barking. agent-action

Hit doggie I hit the doggie. action-theme

Sam water Sam is drinking water. agent-theme

Daddy hat Daddy’s hat. possessor-possessed

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III. The telegraphic stage

Early sentences are mainly words from the major grammatical categories of nouns, verbs, and adjectives.

The missing elements are determiners, prepositions, auxiliary verbs, and the bound morphemes that go on the ends of nouns and verbs. These are the grammatical morphemes.

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It is possible that these grammatical morphemes are omitted because they are not essential to meaning.

Another reason is children have cognitive limitations on the length of utterance they can produce, independent of their grammatical knowledge.

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Given such limitations, children may sensibly leave out the least-important parts.

Such words may not be stressed in adults’ utterances and therefore children may be leaving out unstressed elements.

Other researchers also suggest that children’s underlying knowledge does not include grammatical categories that govern the use of the omitted forms.

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IV. Later development

The development of different sentence forms

1. Expressing negation

2. Asking questionsYes/no questions – can be answered with either yes or no.

Wh-questions – begin with wh-words such as who, where, what, why, when, how.

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Development of different sentence forms

Expressing negation – children’s negative sentence form, in order of development

i. Sentences with external negative markere.g. No … wipe finger

No the sun shiningii. Constructions with internal negative marker but no auxiliariese.g. I can’t see you

I don’t like youI no want book

iii. Constructions with auxiliariese.g. I didn’t did it

Tom won’t let goNo, it isn’t

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CHILDREN’S QUESTION FORMS, IN ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT

Yes/no questionsand Wh-questions

1. Constructions with external question marker

Yes/No questions

Wh-questions

I ride train? Who that?

Sit chair? What daddy doing?

Mommy milk?

Where milk go?


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CHILDREN’S QUESTION FORMS, IN ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT (CONT.)

Yes/no questionsWh-questions

2. Constructions withAuxiliaries - but nosubject-auxiliaryinversion in Wh-questions

Yes/No questions

Wh-questions

Does the kitty stand up?

What you did say?

Will you help me?

Why kitty can’t run?


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CHILDREN’S QUESTION FORMS, IN ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT (CONT.)

Yes/no questions Wh-questions

3. Subject-auxiliary inversion

Yes/No questions

Wh-questions

- What you you doed?

- What does coffee taste like?


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The Development of Complex Sentences

After the development of grammatical morphemes and different sentence forms is well under way, the next grammatical development is the appearance of sentences that contain more than one clause.

There are many different types of complex sentences, and some appear in children’s spontaneous speech much earlier than others do.

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Children’s complex sentences, in order of development

1. Object complementationWatch me draw circles.I see you sit down.

2. Wh-embedded clausesCan I do it when we get home?I show you how to do it.

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Children’s complex sentences, in order of development (cont.)

3. Coordinating conjunctions He was stuck, and I got him out. When I was a little girl I could go “geek-

geek” like that, but now I can go “this is a chair.”

4. Subordinating conjunctionsHere’s a set. It must be mine if it’s a little one.I want this doll because she’s big.

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Individual Differences in Grammatical Development

Children differ in both the rate and course of grammatical development.

Differences in rate are the most obvious.

Some children produce multiword utterances at age 18 months, whereas others do not start combining words until they are 2 years old.

Differences in the kinds of multiword utterances children produce – some children rote-learn these as wholes; other children combine separate words from the start.

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Some children pay more attention to syllables and phonemes; others pay more attention to the overall prosodic “tune” (Peters, 1997).

The tune approach or holistic approach or top-down approach, results in many unanalysed chunks.

e.g. Idontwanna (for I don’t wanna)

The other approach is the analytical or bottom-up approach.

In this approach, children break down speech into smaller units and then combine them.

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Most children use both top-down and bottom-up strategies, and most children include both unanalyzed chunks and smaller units in their early sentences.

However, children vary in how much they rely on one strategy versus the other, and the route to syntax some children take seems to be extremely holistic or extremely or extremely analytic (Hoff, 2001: 223).

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WHAT MAKES LANGUAGE POSSIBLE?

The role of adult speech - caregiver speech The role of feedback – recasts The role of cognitive development The role of inborn knowledge

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IS THERE A CRITICAL PERIOD?

Normal linguistic development is possible only if children are exposed to language during a particular time frame or critical period.

Evidence for the existence of such a period – from studies of individuals who do not experience language during the early part of their lives, e.g. Genie.

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BBI 3209 ASSESSMENT

The assessment requirements for the course include:

Assignments: 30% Mid-semester test: 30 % Final examination: 40 %

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Assignment The questions for the assignment will be sent to

you by PPL.

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Mid-semester Test The mid-semester test will include topics

covered in the first face-to-face, and units 1, 2, and 3 of this module.

Types of question: Multiple-choice Structural 2 questions which require longer answers

(paragraphs)

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Project 1Deadline for submission: 2nd Face-to-

Face

Task Select a Malaysian subject aged between 2 and

5 years. This subject should speak Malaysian English as

the first language (L1). Make about 3 recordings of about 45-60

minutes over a period of about 3 or 4 weeks at regular intervals (2 weeks).

Then transcribe the subject’s utterances. Investigate the acquisition of phonology,

morphology, syntax and semantics.

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Describe the properties that the subject has acquired up to the point of study.

If stages of development of the properties you

are investigating are obvious over the period of data collection, chart them.

Then, explain the phenomena you observe in the data, for example, if the subject is using certain rules to produce particular forms at a particular time.

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Your report should include the following:

A. Introduction Include the objective or provide research questions for the

study.B. Literature review

Write a review of L1 acquisition and the stages an infant goes through in the acquisition of English as a first language.

C. MethodologyDescribe the subject (age, gender, background) and the procedure (collection, transcription and analysis of data). Also describe the equipment used.

D. Results and discussionAnalyse, interpret and discuss the data.

E. ConclusionF. References

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Your report should:

1. be around 15 pages long including appendixes (12 point, double spacing).

2. include a cover page with the course code, title of the course, your name and matriculation number.

3. have a content page.4. have in-text referencing/citations wherever

applicable (surname of author/s, year, page number).

NB: Submit the hard copy of the report with a CD /soft copy which should have the taped sessions with the subject, the transcribed data and the report saved.

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REFERENCES O’Grady, W. & Cho, S. W. (2012). First Language Acquisition

(pp. 326-359). In O’ Grady, W. & Archibald, J. Contemporary Linguistic Analysis: An Introduction (Seventh Edition). Toronto: Pearson Canada.

Hoff, E. (2009). Language Development (Fourth Edition). Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

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BBI 3209 Language Acquisition

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