Language Acquisition 2013

1. Language Acquisition
By Samira Bakeer
1 01/04/2013

2. What is Language?
 a system of symbols and rules that enable us
to communicate
 a symbolic code used in communication
 the systematic, meaningful arrangement of
symbols
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3. What is Language Acquisition?
 The process of attaining a specific variant of
human language.
 The process of learning a native or a second
language.
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4. Language Acquisition
 By itself, language acquisition refers to first
language acquisition, which studies infants'
acquisition of their native language, whereas
second language acquisition deals with
acquisition of additional languages in both
children and adults.
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5. Language Acquisition
First language
acqusition
Second language
acqusition
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6. First language acquisition
 Individual’s potential for acquiring any
lauguage
 Competence (Chomsky)
 Irrelevant to cultural diffierences,nor race
differences
 A spontaneous process
 From babyhood
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7. babyhood
Stages of language aqusition
 Pre-language stages （ 3 － 10 months ）
 The one-word or holophrastic stage
 (12 － 18months)
 The two-word stage （ 18 － 20months ）
 Multiple-word stage ( 2 － 3 months)
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8. Follow milestonesFollow milestones
 In spite of different
backgrounds, different
locations, and different
upbringings, most children
follow the very same
milestones in acquiring
language.
 Is this criterion met?
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9. Pre-language stages
 Cooing:3months old
the first recognizalble sounds
with velar consonants such as [k] [g]
as well as high vowels such as [i] [u]
 Babbling:6months old
fricatives,nasals,syllabletype sounds
9months old
recognizable intonation patterns,combination
10-11months old
use vocalizations to express emotions and emphasis
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10. The one-word or holophrastic stage
 Characterized by speech in which single
terms are uttered for everyday objects
 Already extending their use
 Most verbs and nouns,
infrequent function words
 Tend to use informative words
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11. 01/04/201311
First words: one-word stage.
 Infants as young as 9 months can recognise
individual words from a string of speech, but
the first word is not produced until between
12-18 months. The first word often sounds
like babble, although it is consistently used to
refer to one thing.
 This stage is also referred to as holophrastic
because each word conveys as much
meaning as an entire phrase. "Milk" can refer
to the milk, to spilling it, drinking it, etc.

12. Milk
I want milk ….
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13. extending their use
Mama
Mama is coming !
I saw Mama’s
socks !
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14. 01/04/201314
Early word use: Under- and over-
extension
 During the early one-word stage the child will
both underextend and overextend the meaning
of words.
 underextension is when the child learns the
word birdie in reference to the family budgie, and
does not use it to refer to other birds.
 overextension of word meanings, where the
child extends a word like doggie to refer to all
four-legged animals. Overextension is more
common and appears to be limited to production.

15. The two-word stage
 Begin Around 18 to 20 months,
 As child’s vocabulary moves beyond 50
distinct words
 Combinations: Mama book.
Toy mine.
Baby chair.
Sock pretty
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16. Mama book
 A)possession: This is Mama’s book.
 b)request : Mama gave me the book.
 (c)statement ： Mama is reading the book.
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17. Multiple-word stage
 Between 2-3 years old
 Producing a large number of utterances
 Telegraphic speech: strings of lexical
morphemes in phrases
 Develop some sentence-building capacity
 Can order some forms correctly
 A number of grammatical inflections begin to
appear
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18. Telegraphic speech
 Cathy build house.
 Cat stand up table.
 Daddy like this book.
 Chair all broken.
 I good boy today.
 What that?
 What her name?
 No sit there.
 Mummy no play.
 Me put it back.
 Baby no eat apple
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19. Preliminaries:
Do children learn their L1 only through imitation?
Give examples to support your point.
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20. Childish creativity
Despite the obvious impact the environment has on the
choice and general direction of mother-tongue learning,
children are prone to come up with all kinds of words
and expressions which they have never heard in their
environment.
 Daughter: Somebody’s at the door.
 Mother: There is nobody at the door.
 Daughter: There is yesbody at the door.

21. Theories in L1A
1. behaviourist learning theory
(popular in the 1950s and 60s)
2. the nativist approach
3. the cognitive approach
4. the functional approach
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22. 1)Behaviourist Learning Theory (popular in
the 1950s and 60s)
1. B.F. Skinner
2. Viewpoint: LL is a kind of behaviour similar
to other human behaviour. Language is learnt
in much the same way as anything else is learnt.
stimulus → organism → response
↓ ↓ ↓
input the learner imitation
e.g. ‘This is a pencil → ‘This is a pencil’.22 01/04/2013

23. Is Language Behaviour?
• B.F. Skinner (1904-1990)
claimed that language is
just another form of behaviour.
It is a response to stimuli in the
environment. And it is learned.
• Children’s creativity with
language is a problem for
this theory.
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24. Four steps for a child to acquire his/her L1
imitation→reinforcement→repetition→habituation
positive negative good habit bad habit
positive reinforcement: praise or reward
negative reinforcement: corrections
good habit: correct performance
bad habit: errors24 01/04/2013

25. Imitation : Children memorize words
and sentences they hear from a
language.
X Pros
 Language symbols
are arbitrary and
not logically
connected to the
things they represent
 Children only learn
the language people
around them speak
Cons
 Children use forms of
words that adults never
say
 The mistakes children
make are consistent
between children and
between language
groups
 Children produce words
and sentences they have
never heard.
 Children undertand
words and sentences
Consensus
says
“Cons” Win !

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26. Reinforcement: Children learn to speak
by being praised or corrected by adults.
Pros
???????
Cons
 Corrections are rare
when total number
of speech events is
considered.
 Praise is rare when
the total number of
speech events is
considered.
 Even without ANY
praise or corrections
children acquire
language
 Praise or corrections
frequently don’t
change child
Consensus
says
“Cons” Win !
X 
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27. Input/Experience : Children figure out
and learn grammatical patterns from
hearing adult language patterns
Pros
Children make
systematic
mistakes in
grammar by “over
regularizing”
forms
Cons
The speed with
which children
acquire all of the
grammatical
patterns of a
language is so
rapid that is is
difficult to see how
they can figure
out all grammar
from experience in
A Tie?
 
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28. Over Regularized Forms
Verb Forms
Children learn such past tense patterns as e.g. walked,
hugged, wanted, then apply the rules to irregular verbs
e.g.“bringed”, “eated”, “runned”
Nouns
Given nonsense nouns like “wug” children make them
plural by adding “s” and Children regularize plurals of
irregular nouns e.g. womans, mans
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29. Criticisms of behaviourist learning theory
① overemphasize the external factors
② ignore the internal factor, i.e. the role of
learner himself
③ overemphasize the role of imitation
relations with FLT (Audio-lingual Method)
pattern drills
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30. 2) The nativist approach
1. viewpoint: Children’s ability to learn a
language is innate.
2. innate hypothesis: ↑
3. Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
characteristics of LAD:
Universal grammar (UG): Chomsky’s term for
the abstract principles that comprise a child’s
innate knowledge of language and that guide LA
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31. 01/04/2013
Noam Chomsky’s L-A-D
Chomsky’s theory of the LAD
(Language Acquisition Device)
states that every human is born
with innate principles of language.
Children learn language spontaneously
and speak creatively.
The “poverty of the stimulus theory”
states that what children hear is
incomplete and often
ungrammatical, and cannot account
for the creativity of their
utterances.
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32. Language UniversalsLanguage Universals
 What evidence is there for innate knowledge of
certain basic language features present in all human
languages?
 LINGUISTIC UNIVERSALS > UNIVERSAL GRAMMARLINGUISTIC UNIVERSALS > UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
 All languages have:
 A grammar
 Basic word order (in terms of SOV, etc.)
 Nouns and verbs
 Subjects and objects
 Consonants and vowels
 Absolute and implicational tendencies
 E.g., If a language has VO order, then modifiers tend to follow the
head)

33. ““Universal Grammar”Universal Grammar”
 Humans then learn to specialize this
“universal grammar” (UG) for the particulars of
their language.
 Word order, syntactic rule preferencesWord order, syntactic rule preferences
 Phonetic and phonological constraintsPhonetic and phonological constraints
 LexiconLexicon
 Semantic interpretationsSemantic interpretations
 Pragmatic ways to conversePragmatic ways to converse

34. Behaviourist learning theory (A) vs. The nativist approach
(B)
① A holds the view that LL is similar to the
learning of other things; B holds the view that LL
is different from the learning of other things;
We’re born with a kind of faculty which is
unique to LL.
② A attaches great importance to the role
of language input; B holds that input is needed,
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35. Weakness of the nativist approach:
hard to find out the nature of LAD
difficult to observe LAD
Contributions of the nativist approach:
It regards children’s language as a
reasonable system rather than something full
of errors.
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36. Team Discussion: nature vs.
nurture
Much debate has taken place
concerning the importance of nature
(what is innate) and nurture
(environmental factors) in the
acquisition of language.
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37. Team Discussion: nature vs.
nurture
 Now consider what you believe the relative importance
of nature and nurture to be in the acquisition of
language, given the finding that the human genome
contains only about 26,000 to 30,000 genes, less than
the number of genes in some plants.
– nature (innate factors) is more important
– nurture (environmental and learning factors) is more
important
– other (explain)
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38. 3) The cognitive approach
1. viewpoint:
Children’s language development relies on
their understanding of the world or cognition.
2. Cognitive research is concerned with the mental
processes involved in language acquisition, and
how they can explain the nature of learners'
language knowledge.
3. the computational model
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39. 4) The functional approach
1. to probe LA not from the angle of
language structure, but from the angle of
language communication.
2. viewpoint:
Children can learn a language successfully for
the reason that they realize language could help
do things.
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