Language Acquisition

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General

Language acquisition

Language learning

First language (L1) learning instead of Second language (L2) or Foreign language learning

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Innateness Language learning is gifted

Nobody is taught language.

Before children can add 2+2 they learn a grammar of a language

You can’t prevent the child from learning it. (Chomsky 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. (Slobin 1994)

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In learning a language

What a child does not do:

Storing all the words and all the sentences in the mental dictionary The number of words is finite

The number of sentences is infinite

What a child does:

Constructing the rules themselves from very “noisy” data

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Mechanisms of Language Acquisition

Based on behaviorism Focusing on people’s behaviors which

are directly observable

Language verbal behavior

Children learn through Imitation, Reinforcement, and Analogy.

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Imitation Children just listen to what is said around

them and imitate the speech they hear.

However: Children produce utterances they never hear

holded, tooths, two foot, a my pencil

see more on P.344

Children unable to speak for neurological or physiological reasons learn the language spoken to them and understand it. When they overcome their speech impairment, they immediately use the language for speaking.

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Reinforcement Children learn through positive/negative

reinforcement Correction of “bad grammar” and reward for

“good grammar” However:

Reinforcement seldom occurs, and when it does, it’s usually for correcting pronunciation or incorrect reporting of facts. (Brown 1973)

examples) (see more on P.345) “Her curl my hair” uncorrected

“Walt Disney comes on Tuesday” corrected

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Analogy Learning by hearing a sentence and using

it as a sample to form other sentences example

hearing) I painted a red barn

analogy) I painted a blue barn

However, consider false analogy example)

also hearing) I painted a barn red

analogy) two words switching possible

application) * I saw a barn red

But this sentence is not produced.

Connectionism

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Structured Input Learning through simplified language

eg) motherese, child directed speech (CDS), babytalk

However: Motherese is not syntactically simpler.

examples

question) Do you want your juice now?

embedded) Mommy thinks you should sleep now.

imperative) Pat the dogs gently.

negative tag Q) We don’t want to hurt him, do we?

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Therefore Analogy, imitation, and reinforcement

cannot account for language development.

These are based on the assumption that what the child acquires Is a set of sentences of forms rather than a set of grammatical rules.

“Structured input” theory also places too much emphasis on the environment

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Rules & Grammar Theory Language learning is not really something

that the child does; it is something that happens to the child placed in an appropriate environment. (Chomsky 1988)

Language acquisition is a creative process; they must extract rules of the grammar from the language they hear around them.

Innateness Hypothesis

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Innateness Hypothesis We end up knowing far more about

language than is exemplified in the language we hear around us Poverty of the stimulus

An answer to the logical problem of language acquisition by Chomsky: What accounts for the ease, rapidity, and

uniformity of language acquisition in the face of impoverished data? easy: they need not be taught.

rapid: major part of grammar learned at around 3.

uniform: children of all languages go through the same stages.

Impoverished data: the language they heard is incomplete, noisy & unstructured.

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(cntd.) Example of impoverished data

The rules children construct are structure dependent

(1) *Is the boy who ___ sleeping is dreaming of a new car(2) Is the boy who is sleeping ___ dreaming of a new car. They do not produce questions by moving the

1st auxiliary as in (1). Instead, they correctly invert the auxiliary of the main clause, as in (2)

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Stages in Language Acquisition Linguistic competence develops by stages

Language acquisition is fast but not instantaneous

Those stages are universal In different languages

In spoken languages or in sign languages

Scientific studies of child language acquisition earlier: diaries kept by parents

recent: various techniques

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Stages (cntd.)

Stages First Sounds

Babbling stage

First words

The two-word stage

Telegraphic stage

Infinity

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The First Sounds

Newborn ~ 6 months

Prelinguistics stage:

earliest cries, whimpers, of newborn, or neonate

The sounds produced are noises

involuntary responses to stimuli

eg) hunger, discomfort

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(cntd.) Infants are highly sensitive to certain subtle

distinctions in their environment Newborn infants respond to phonetic contrasts

Sucking rate experiment [pa] [pa] [pa] [pa]…[ba]

They can learn contrasts of any language Japanese(Korean) children distinguish between [r] & [l]

But they don’t respond to sounds that never signal phonemic contrasts Eg) intermediate sounds between [pa] & [ba]

They ignore non-linguistic aspects Eg) gender differences

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(cntd.)

Children can learn any human language natural ability

After 6 months, they begin to lose the ability Eg) Japanese infants no longer can

distinguish bet [r] & [l]

They begin to lern the sounds of the language of their parents

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Babbling Around 6 months old Learn to distinguish bet right & wrong sounds of their

language Is this stage necessary?

Earlier: not required for lg. acq. Recently: the earliest stage in lg. acq.

Babbling is not linguistic chaos The 12 most frequent consonants in the world’s languages

make up 95 % of the consonants of babbling

Earlier babbles: repeated Cs and Vs sequences Eg) mama, gaga, dada

Deaf infants produce babbling sounds different from babbling sounds produced by hearing children.

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First Words Sometime after 1 year

Begin to use the same string of sounds repeatedly to mean the same thing

Realize that sounds are related to meanings

Discover where one word begins and another word ends

Produce their 1st true words

Reviving Sonus 21

(cntd.) Called holophrastic stage

One-word utterances convey a more complex message.

Eg) Say “down” to mean “put down” “the toy has fallen down from the shelf”

Developing use of language for social purposes

Naming function and meaning extension “Cheerios” can mean

The box of cereal in front of him

Asking for some Cheerios

They use universal sounds first [b, m, d, k] [a]

Reviving Sonus 22

Two words Around 2 years old Begin to put two words together

Two-word sentences

Acquisition of syntax begins Examples

Byebye boat, allgone sticky, sweater chair, (see p.364)

Grammatical characteristics No grammatical inflections Rare use of pronouns (except “me”) Ambiguity

Eg) “Mommy Sock” to mean A. subj+obj relation: mom is putting the sock on the child B. possessive: Mommy’s sock

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From telegraph to infinity No 3-word sentence stage

Mean Length of Utterances (MLU) Frequently used for comparing children’s progress

Biological age is not indicative anymore, as it varies

Eg) Grammatical acquisition stage

MLU 2.3-3.5 morphemes length

Characteristics of telegraphic speech Function words/morphemes missing

Sounds as if reading a Western Union message

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Development of Grammar (Linguistic Knowledge)

Acquisition of phonology

Acquisition of word meaning

Acquisition of morphology

Acquisition of syntax

Acquisition of pragmatics

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Acquisition of phonology Children first acquire the small set of sounds

common to all languages of the world Eg) [p, s, b, m, d, k] but not []

Order of acquisition Manner:

nasals>glides>stops>liquids>fricatives>affricates

Place: labials>velars>alveolars>palatals

Voicing

In early stages children may not distinguish voicing of consonants

If they distinguish bet p/b, they also distinguish others like t/d, s/z

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(cntd.)

Errors are rule governed, not random

Children perceive or comprehend many more phonological contrasts than they can produce Eg) they hear “light[lait]” although

they say “yight[jait]”

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Acquisition of Word Meaning Children learn approximately 14 words a day

until 6 years old 5000 words/year

Frequent meaning extension Eg) Up (get up), dog (animals), papa (all men)

Syntactic bootstrapping Syntax helps the child acquire meaning

A child shown a picture of a funny animal jumping up and down hearing “see the blicking”or “see the blick” Will jump up and down when asked to show a blicking

Will point to the funny animal when asked to show a blick

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Acquisition of Morphology Morphological errors in morphology:

another evidence of rules Eg) overgeneralization: bringed, goed, singed,

foots, sheeps

Later they learn exceptions to the rules

Plural formation” experiments (Berko-Gleason 1958) Children applied the regular plural-formation

rule to words never heard before a wug two wugs

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Acquisition of Syntax In the holophrastic stage, children have

knowledge of some syntactic rules. 17-month-old children distinguish between

“Ernie is tickling Bert” and “Bert is tickling Ernie.”

relying on word order rules (syntax)

Age 2;0 Begin to put words together

Age 3;0 consistent use of function morphemes

complex sentence structures such as coordinated sentences and embedded sentences of various kinds

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Acquisition of Pragmatics

Pragmatic aspects (knowing contexts) are acquired relatively late

Wrong use of pronouns (3 or 4-yr-olds) “He hit me” when mommy doesn’t know who “he”

is.

Difficulty in shifting reference “You want to take a walk” meaning “I”

Wrong use of articles Use of the definite article as the indefinite article

for introducing a new referent

They assume that his listener knows who he is talking about

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Parameter Setting Two aspects of Language

principles: language universal components

parameters: language particular components Examples

Head parameter (order of VP)

VO in English / OV in Korean

Verb movement

Moving Verb in Dutch & Italian but moving Aux in English

Parameters are set early in development and cannot be undone

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Knowing more than one Language

Second language (L2) acquisition

The acquisition of a second language by someone who (child or adult) has already acquired a first language

Bilingual language acquisition

The simultaneous acquisition of two languages beginning in infancy (before the age of 3 years)

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Bilingualism Bilingual children sometimes “mix” the two

languages in the same sentences Eg) English words & French syntax

His nose is perdu (His noise is lost)

A house pink (A pink house)

That’s to me (That’s mine)

Some amount of language mixing Is a normal part of the early bilingual acquisition process, and not necessarily an indication of any language problem.

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Theories of Bilingual Development Unitary system hypothesis

A bilingual child initially constructs only one lexicon and one grammar

Evidence: mixing of words

However, there is enough overlap of vocabulary

Separate systems hypothesis A bilingual child builds a distinct lexicon and

grammar for each language

Evidence using different word order for each language,

Setting up two distinct sets of phonemes and phonological rules

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Second Language Acquisition

Fundamental difference hypothesis

L2 acquisition is something different from L1 acquisition

9 differences

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(cntd.) Interlanguage grammars

The intermediate grammars that L2ers creat on their way to the target

Native language influence in L2 acq. Transfer of grammatical rules

Example)

Korean L2ers’ confusion of [l] and [r]

French L2ers’ confusion of [z] and

German L2ers’ saying [haf] for have

English L2ers’ confusion of Italian ano and anno

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Critical period for L2 acquisition? Age is an important factor in achieving

nativelike L2 competence

Sensitive period instead of critical period There is a gradual decline in L2 acquisition abilities

with age

The sensitive period for phonology is the shortest To achieve nativelike pronunciation of an L2 generally requires exposure during childhood.

Other aspects of languages, such as syntax, may have a larger window.

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L2 teaching methods Grammar-translation

Students memorize words, inflected words, syntactic rules, and use them to translate from L1 to L2 and vice versa

Direct method Simulating L1 acquisition

Abandoning memorization

L1 is never used in class

Comparison & difference is not discussed

Audio-lingual method Based on imitation, repetition & reinforcement

Combination of many methods is required

Reviving Sonus 39

Can Chimps Learn Human Language? Recently, much effort has been expended

to determine whether nonhuman primates can learn human language.

Limitations Highly stereotyped limited number of

messages

Vocabularies occur primarily as emotional responses to particular situations

It is still controversial whether they have the capacity to acquire complex linguistic systems similar to human language