Language Acquisition

Some facts, some issues, some conjectures

Language ‘acquisition’

• Leonard Bloomfield (1933)– The acquisition of language “is doubtless the

greatest intellectual feat any one of us is ever required to perform.”

• Dan Slobin (1994)– “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.”

Language acquisition

• What are the facts?

• How might we account for those facts?

First Language Acquisition• …appears to go through similar stages

everywhere that language is learnt

– prelinguistic (stimulus driven)• sounds across all language communities sound about the

same

– but newborns are already able to respond to the linguistic sounds they hear: even when those sounds are not phonemically significant in the language around them…

– and already abstract away from differences in the acoustic signal such as male/female, young/old, etc.

Stages: babbling

• From about 6 months (0;6):– babies lose ability to discriminate between the

sounds that are not phonemic in their language community

– produce sequences of sounds that already reflect the intonational contours of their language community

– hearing children produce certain sounds and gesturing children produce certain gestures!

Stages: one word stage

• From about 1 year (1;0):– children start using the same sound sequence

to mean the same thing– this is the beginning of words– these ‘words’ are used for entire

communicative intentions, i.e., ‘word’=‘sentence’

– holophrases– the sounds are acquired in broadly similar

order, reflecting phonetic complexity

Phonetic develop-

ment

Stages: two word stage

• From about 2 years (2;0):– words start being combined into two word

phrases– this is the beginning of sentences– examples:

• “allgone sock”• “byebye boat”• “here pretty”• “allgone sticky”

– commonly: function words (closed class) and morphemes not distinguished and not produced

Stages: infinity

• Stephen Pinker– “If we divide language development into

somewhat arbitrary stages, like Syllable Babbling, Gibberish Babbling, One-Word Utterances, and Two-Word Utterances, the next stage would have to be called All Hell Breaks Loose.”

– The Language Instinct

Language development• From 2 words up, language development is

sometimes measured in terms of ‘Mean Length of Utterance’ (MLU)

• This is a better indication of language development than chronological age– “Cat stand up table”– “He play little tune”– “Andrew want that”

• Note: apart from lacking grammatical morphemes, these utterances appear to be sentence-like!

‘Critical Age’ Hypothesis

• beyond a certain age (figures vary, approximately that of puberty), the ability to learn a native language appears to disappear….

Theories of Language Acquisition

• Imitation• Reinforcment• Analogy• Rules• Innateness• Interactional• Usage-based

ImitationChild: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we

patted themAdult: 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.

Reinforcement

Child: Nobody don’t like me.Mother: No, say “Nobody likes me”Child: Nobody don’t like me.

(dialogue repeated 8 times)Mother: Now, listen carefully, say “Nobody

likes me.”Child: Oh, nobody don’t likes me.

Analogy

• What would be the bounds of analogy?• How does the child know just what analogies are

going to work and which not?

– I painted a red barn– I painted a barn red

– I saw a red barn– I saw a barn red ????

Rule formation and grammar

• ‘Errors’ always appear to be not mistakes, but examples of following rules that differ from the grammar of the adult language

• The rules are ‘acquired’ without formal instruction

• The converge over time with those of the adult language

Acquiring Morphology

• The [plural] allomorph rule (1958, Berko-Gleason)

Theories …

• The ‘innateness’ hypothesis– If the child has an in-born set of constraints on

just what kind of rules there might be, then the task of learning a language is much simplified

– X-bar is one such suggestion

• Is this the only way it could work?

Mysteries…

• Why are there no primitive languages?

• Why are there no other species with similar language capabilities?

• Why are human languages all so similar?

• How can children learn any language as their ‘mother tongue’ so readily?

Bee communication

From: Michael Dobrovolsky (1996) “Animal Communication”. In: O’Grady / Dobrolovksy / Katamba Contemporary Linguistics: an introduction. p636

~1.1m high, bipedal

1.7 million

Years ago

700 thousand

130 thousand

3 millionGenus:

Homo

Smithsonianhttp://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/a_tree.html

Australopithecus afarensisca. 3.5 million years

Smithsonian: http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/afarcomp.htm

Homo Habilis: “Handy man”

Smithsonian: http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins/ha/oh24.html

Ca. 1.8 million years Simple stone tools based on chipped pebbles

Comparative views of skulls

Homo Habilis Homo Neanderthalensis Homo Sapiens

Smithsonian: http://www.mnh.si.edu/anthro/humanorigins

Language acquisition by non-human primates

• 1930-1940s: Gua + Viki[baby chimpanzees, spoken language]

• 1960s– Sarah– Lana– Kanzi

• 1970s– Washoe [chimp, ASL]– Koko [Gorilla, ASL]– Nim Chimpsky …

[large buttons on keyboard]

Patterson (1978) “Language is no longer the exclusive preserve of man.”

Mickey Maus28.2.2005p52

The debate continues…

• Seidenberg and Petitto:“We believe that … there is no basis to conclude

that signing apes acquired linguistic skills.”

• Fouts:– “When these projects [Washoe, Lana, Sarah and

Nim] are taken together, it can be seen that chimpanzees are within the range of language behaviour of humans and therefore have the capacity for language.”

More modern studies

• Max Planck Institute for evolutionary anthropology– trying to discover more finely just what skills

go into language behaviour…– comparative experiments with young apes

and children– just what are the abilities that are necessary

for language acquisition? where are the differences?

Comparisons