Language Acquisition for Psycholinguistics

7/30/2019 Language Acquisition for Psycholinguistics

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How do children learnlanguage?

Sem I 2012-2013DNM

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION



L1 Acquisition and Behaviorism

1. Behaviorist ideas of language learning

Before 1960‟s -- study of child language

dominated by behaviorist approach to

language learning.

Proponent -- B.F. Skinner wrote “Verbal

Behavior” (1957)

According to behaviorists, language isnot a mental phenomenon: it is behavior.



It is behavior, learned by a process called

habit-formation in which the main components

are:

Child imitates the patterns and sounds

heard in the environment.

Child‟s attempts similar to adult modelsand reinforced through approvals or

positive feedback.

Child repeats sound and patterns, sothat these become habits.



Continuation...

Child‟s verbal behavior is

conditioned or shaped until the

habits become like adults‟.

Child‟s own utterances seen as a

faulty version of adult speech .

Mistakes as results of imperfectlearning.



2. Inadequacies of the

Behaviorists’ Approach

1960‟s onwards -- The behaviorists‟

views ---- strongly opposed by

Chomsky‟s linguistic theories &

cognitive psychology



Arguments against behaviorist

theory of language learning:

1. Basic view of language as verbalbehavior is unacceptable.

Underlying the actual behavior -- a

complex system of rules which enablespeakers to create and understand an

infinite number of sentences (mostly

never encountered before).



Arguments against...

2. What children learn is an abstract knowledge of rules (or competence ).(But not what they‟re exposed to --

exposed only to people‟s speech or termed “performance”).

Process of extracting abstract

knowledge from concrete examplescannot be explained by habit-formation.



Continuation...

3. Rules are often reflected very indirectly in

the actual surface structure of speech.

E.g Surface structure of sentence:

(I) “John is easy to please”

looks identical/same as that of

(ii) “ John is eager to please”

(i.e.Deep structure is different.)



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(I) the question of other peoplepleasing John.

(ii) John himself who wants to do the

pleasing.

Such information about deeprelationships cannot be acquir ed

simply by observing & imitating

verbal behavior.



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Learning task is complex.

Yet occurs at a very early age and with

exceptional speed

By the age of 3 1/2and 5: normally-endowed children have internalized all

the basic structures of their language

(This cannot be explained by habit-formation alone.)



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Children are exposed to different actualspeech, but they arrive at the same underlying rules as other children in the

community. They pass through similar stages or

sequences in acquiring these rules.

Children seem to be constructing their own rule systems.



Continuation...

Children generally adapt towardsthe adult system.

i.e. Child‟s language is not simply

shaped by external forces.

Rather, creatively constructed by

the child as s/he interacts withthose around her/him.



An innate language-learning

capacity?

The factors outlined led people to

believe that children are born with

an innate capacity for acquiring

language.

Termed Language Acquisition Dev ice

or LAD



Characteristics of LAD

Specific to human species (homosapiens).

Never fails to operate in normal human beings

-- from infancy up to age 11 (debatable). Provides children a means of processing the

speech in the environment; so that they can

construct its underlying system.

To enable it to operate so quickly, it may

already contain some of the universal



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features which are found in all knownlanguages. E.g. use of word order to signal

meaning, or basic grammatical relationships

such as between subject and object.

LAD as a term has lost its currency.

Few people would question the basic notion:

children possess an innate ability to acquirelanguage.



Continuation...

The main debate -- the extent to whichthere is a specific capacity earmarked

for language alone.

The other argument --- languageacquisition can be explained in terms of

same cognitive capacity used by

children in making sense of other aspects of their world.



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Eg. Children‟s ability to discover relationshipsbetween subject and object in grammar may

originate in their general ability to perceive the

world in terms of agents and objects of action.

If there is a special language learning capacity--

and if the capacity declines at about the age

of 12 or so, this is significant in explaining whysecond language learning (L2 learning) is

often difficult or even unsuccessful.



Grammatical Development in

Children

Main stages in a child‟s languagedevelopment:

1.Telegraphic speech

Lacks inflections and function words,e.g. articles and prepositions

Earliest stage consists of one-word

utterance.



Grammatical development of children…cont‟n

Examples:

allgone sticky (after washing hands)

allgone outside (after closing the door)

more page (asking adult to continue reading)

sweater chair (showing where the sweater is)

Utterances are very reduced such that thesituation plays an important role in conveying

meaning.



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Same two words may mean different things in different situations.

E.g. mommy sock -- mother‟s socks

(possession) or when mother was dressing

him (agent and object).

Even at this stage, language is usedcreatively (for they can never have heard

them before)



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Like adults, the child is making use of anability to combine items from a limited

set to communicate meanings.

Researchers try to write the “grammarsof children‟s speech”.

Two main classes of words: a restricted

“pivot” class and a larger “open class”



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Another approach: focus on the meaningsof the two-words

Lois Bloom (1970): sentences containing

two nouns used to express 5 kinds of relationships:

1. Conjunction (cup glass -- cup and glass)

2. Description (party hat - a party hat)

3. Possession (daddy hat - daddy‟s hat)



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4. Location (sweater chair - showing

where the sweater is)

5. Agent - Object (mommy book - mommy is

reading a book)

Dan Slobin (1979): studied

communicative functions in childrenacquiring 6 different languages e.g.



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1. Locating or naming (there book, buch da)

2. Demanding or desiring (more milk, mehr Milch)

3. Negating (not hungry, Kaffee nein )

4. Describing an event or situation (block fall,puppe kommt)

5. Indicating possession (my shoe, Mamas Hut)



Continuation...

6. Describing a person or thing (pretty dress,

Milch Heiss)

7. Questioning (where ball, wo Ball )



Development of inflections and

function words

Telegraphic stage goes beyond the two-word stage.

E.g. Even as processing capacity grows,the longer utterances are still

telegraphic:

Mamat want that.Cat stand up table.



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Children are still trying to master inflections ( “s” in want and stand ;articles such as “a” or “the”.

(These are “morphemes ”.)

Roger Brown (1973) -- studied 3children acquiring 14 of thesemorphemes.



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Children master each morpheme gradually.Order of morphemes found:

1. Present progressive: -ing

2. Preposition: - on

3. Preposition: -in

4. Plural -s: two books

5. Irregular past forms: She went.



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6. Possessive „s ( daddy‟s hat )

7. Uncontractible copula ( “is” in “Yes,

she is ”. )

8. Articles “the” and “a”

9. Regular past tense: -ed ( She walked. )

10. Regular third-person singular “s”

(She runs .)



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Brown found that the order of frequency does not correlate with order of acquisition , and cannot relate to habit-

formation.

He further added the idea of the child as

an active contributor to the acquisitionprocess (Brown‟s study was a longitudinal

study).



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Children‟s acquisition of verb inflections ---evidence of their active contribution to the

learning process.

e.g.

Where it goed? (Go + ed)

[Where did it go?]

It comed off. (Come + ed)

[It came off. ]



Development of transformations

Children also learn to carry out

transformations of basic sentences to more

complex sentences.E.g. Acquisition of negatives:

1. First, the negative element is simply attached

to the beginning or end.

E.g. No singing song.

No the sun shining.



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2. Second stage, the negative element isinserted into the sentence.

E.g.

I no want envelope.

He no bite you.

He don’t want it.



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3. At this stage, child begins to producethe appropriate part of do, be or the

modal verb.

E.g. You don‟t want some supper.Paul didn‟t laugh.

I am not a doctor.



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In interrogatives , children first producesentences in which the internal structure is not affected.

In Yes/No questions, children use

intonation.

E.g. See hole? You can’t fix it?



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For Wh-interrogatives, the question word is placed in front of the sentence:

Where daddy going? Why you caught it?

Where my spoon goed ?

Later, the use of inversion with the auxiliary do as in an adult system.



Later development

As the child grows, the limitations on hisperformance decreases.

Distinctions or fine differences in

sentence structure is acquired late.

E.g. John asked Bill to come.

John promised Bill to come.



Cognitive Factors in First Language

Acquisition

How is first language acquisition relatedto cognitive factors?

Language and concepts -- languagedevelopment depends on conceptschildren form about the world andmeanings they wish to communicate.

E.g. two-word utterances can be used for similar range of meanings



Continuation...

Perfect tense is acquired late.

i.e. after children have acquired the

underlying concept of “presentrelevance”



Language-Learning Mechanism

The child has a number of “operating

principles” for making sense of data:

1. Avoid exceptions.

2. Underlying meaning-relationships

should be marked clearly. -- Thisexplains why the passive is more difficult

than the active voice.



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Use of grammatical mar kers shouldmake semantic sense.

Children look for a system which is:

(a) rule-governed in a consistent way,

(b) the clues to meaning are clearly

displayed, and

(c) where each item or distinction has adefinite function in communicating

meaning.

Language Environment of the



Language Environment of the

Child

Language used by adults serve as

models for the child. E.g. caretaker

speechCharacteristics of caretaker speech:

1. Generally spoken more slowly and

distinctly.2. Contains shorter sentences.

3. More grammatical, and with fewer

broken sentences.



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4. Contains fewer complex sentences: less variety of tenses

range of vocabulary is limited

more repetition

speech related to the “here” and “now”

More repetitions

Caretaker speech helps children learn .



Why Study L1 Acquisition ?

Why? Why? Why?



Because…

important source of data to infer from instudying how the second language or L2 is

learned

Information gleaned from L1 data – e.g.

errors, stages children go through, rules,

structures, and words used; all provide rich

information on how utterances are produced

and understood evidence for HOW we learn language



THANK YOU

That‟s all for today!



Thank You!

THAT‟S ALL FOR TODAY!

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Language Acquisition for Psycholinguistics