LI 2023 NATHALIE F. MARTIN L ANGUAGE A CQUISITION

LI 2023 NATHALIE F. MARTIN

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

References

References:Language files (7th ed). Cipollone, Keiser & Vasishth

Contemporary Linguistic Analysis (5th ed) O’Grady & Archibald

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/ling001/acquisition.html

Introduction

Language acquisition is the process by which the language capability _________ in a human.

First language acquisition concerns the development of language in _________ , while second language acquisition focuses on language development in _________ as well

IntroductionOpinion

According to you, what does a child need to learn in order to “know” his or her language?

1. Innateness Theory2. Imitation Theory3. Reinforcement Theory4. Interactionist Theory (or Constructivism)

Three general theories of language acquisition:

IntroductionOpinion

According to you, how does a child learn a language?

Theories of language acquisitionINNATENESS THEORY

Children have the _________ _____ to differentiate phonemes, extract words from the stream of language, and process grammar.

Rowe & Levine (2012). A Concise Introduction to Linguistics, p .237.

Theories of language acquisitionIMITATION THEORY

Children learn grammar by _________ the words and sentences of their language

Problems with this theory: Children produce many things that are not found in

_________ _________ Children make consistent ______that cannot be

attributed to mispronunciation and which still are not ever heard in the adult grammar.

Children can produce and understand _________ _____

Theories of language acquisitionREINFORCEMENT THEORY

Children learn to speak like adults because they are taught to do so: Through _________ and _________ when speaking

“correctly”. Through _________ when making “mistakes”

Problems with this theory: Adults don't seem to correct children's grammar as

much as we might think, neither do they praise them for using proper adult grammatical constructions.

There is little evidence that reinforcement has any great effect on the language development of the child

Theories of language acquisitionINTERACTIONIST THEORY

Children "invent" the rules of grammar for themselves Though it is based on the _________ _________ Innate ability to _________ _________

Only approach that explains how children Produce _________ _________

Ex: Past tense - goed* or hitted* Generate _________ ______that they have never heard Seem almost impervious to correction from adults

Theories of language acquisition INTERACTIONIST THEORY

Irregular verbs acquisition - Past tense:Children acquire some irregular past tense

forms quite early through memorizationThen the child starts to notice a general

“rule” for past tense formationThis results in ______________(ex: goed*)Finally the child realizes that “went” is an

_________

Phonetic developmentPhonological developmentMorphological developmentSyntactic developmentSemantic development

Aspects of Language Acquisition

She Sure Knows a Lot About Language !!!

http://vimeo.com/16404771

IntroductionQuestions

What does one need to learn in order to learn a language?

When do you think an individual begins learning language?

Acquisition:PHONETICS

Aspects of Language AcquisitionPhonetic Acquisition

Beginning to learn language involves: Learning how to _________ the necessary

speech sounds Learning to _________ make sense of the

speech sounds Ex: Figuring out what are the phones &

_________ of one's language

Aspects of Language AcquisitionPhonetic Production


In the womb: Perception of ________ ________ ________(rhythm and intonation)

From birth: Perception ________

Six months of age: ________ stage

Vocalization (Cooing)

For an example of a baby vocalization/cooing:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKu_rUsIP

HM&feature=related


Babbling is a stage when babies: Produce ________ sequences of ________

________ Practices the difficult sequences of ________

gestures (jaw and tongue and velum movement, along with voicing control)

Example: Repeating CV syllables (mama, papa)

* At this stage there is no clear association between babbling and meaning

Contemporary Linguistics:

p.313

Babbling

For an example of babbling: Vowels:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DDZbQ_OJWw

Syllables: http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=7RqUTJAfy48&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZw2

NsqkFBo&feature=related


Difficult soundsAnalysis

Why do you think certain sounds are easier to produce for children?

What makes a sound hard to pronounce?

What about allophones?


Handout



Developmental order in babbling: Generally ________ before ________ ________ before other consonants _______before alveolar, velar and

alveopalatals Lastly ________

Perception of phonemic contrast begins in word-initial position


p.314 ...

Acquisition:PHONOLOGY

Experiments on Babies

Research on how infants acquire language in a video featuring Toby Mintz, associate professor of psychology and linguistics at the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences, and USC College undergraduate Ashlee Welday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZAuZ--Yeqo

Aspects of Language AcquisitionPhonological Acquisition

18 months: Link between sound and _________ Memorizes single words as chunks and not

pay much attention to _________ differences Ex: doesn’t necessarily understand

that /b/ and /d/ are different phonemes in English

Aspects of Language AcquisitionPhonological Acquisition

Later phonological acquisition: Perception of phonemic _________ Perception of CV & _____________ structure Understanding of _________

Babies naturally delete unstressed syllables in words. For example: “nana” [nAny] for

“banana” [benAny]

1. SYLLABLE DELETION:2. SYLLABLE SIMPLIFICATION:3. SUBSTITUTION:4. ASSIMILATION:5. MAINTENANCE OF THE SAME

CONSONANT/VOWEL

Acquisition:Early Phonetic Processes

Aspects of Language Acquisition Early Phonetic Processes

Syllable deletion:Telephone /ˈtɛləˌfoʊn/ - /foʊ/Helicopter /ˈhɛlɪˌkɒptər/ - /ɛlkɒt/

Syllable simplification:Stop /stɒp/ - /tɒp/ Small /smɔl/ - /mɔ/


Substitution:Sing / sɪŋ / - / tɪŋ /Shoes / ʃuz / - / tud /Ship / ʃɪp / - / sɪp /Look / lʊk / - / wʊk /Jam / dʒæm / - / dæb /


Assimilation:Tell / tɛl / - / dɛl /Pig / pɪg / - / bɪg /

Maintenance of the same consonant/vowelDoggy / ˈdɒgi / - / ˈdɒdi / or / ˈgɒgi / Baby / ˈbeɪbi / - / ˈbibi /


Charlie / ˈtʃɑrli / - / ˈtʃɑ:li /

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OBlgSz8sSM


All / ɔl / - / ɔ /The / ðə / - / ə /Time / taɪm /

http:// http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8aprCNnecU


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=E8aprCNnecU

Thought / θɔt / - / tɔt / Saw/ sɔ / - / tɔ /Pussy / ˈpʊsi / - / ˈpʊdi /Cat / kæt / - / tæt /

Acquisition:VOCABULARY &

SEMANTICS

Aspects of Language AcquisitionSemantic Acquisition

Semantic acquisition is how children acquire _________ & _________

Children need to learn: Nouns (Concrete vs. abstract) Verbs Adjectives Pronouns Articles Etc.


p.317 ...


To learn word meaning children basically have to make guesses about what words mean

Example …


For example: A child is exposed, for example, to a poodle in the street and sees mommy or daddy point to it and say "doggie". Even if the kid associates "doggie" with that object, there are a number of routes that the child can logically take. The child might see a squirrel and say, "doggie", clearly having taken the word "doggie" to mean something more general that it does in the adult grammar. Or, the child might see a dog, say a “labrador”, and not say anything, failing to associate the word "doggie" with anything beyond poodle-ness. This trial and error process seems to be how children acquire word meanings.


Overgeneralizations (or overextensions):Overgeneralizations are cases in

which a child gives a word a ____________ ____________ that it has in the adult grammar

E.g. Using the word "fly" to include specks of dirt, dust, small insects, and bread crumbs


p.320


Underextensions:Underextensions have the opposite

effect. In this case, it might help to think of them as cases in which the child is being ____ ________

E.g. A child who calls “a ball” “a ball” only when it is under the sofa

E.g. Underextended the word "fruit" as to exclude olives


p.320

KIDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS !!!

My cousin's daughter looked at my feet the other day and saw the state of my torn shoes.

She looked over to her mother and said: "Mommy, look. She had broken feet!“

Classic example of overextension of “feet” :)

Language AcquisitionVovabulary Acquisition

Acquisition:MORPHOLOGY

IntroductionExample of Child’s Speech

• CHILD: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.

• ADULT: 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.

Aspects of Language AcquisitionMorphological Acquisition

Plurals:Plural suffix is acquired __Then there is overgeneralization as

the child is building a grammar (Ex: sheeps, foots)


Suffixes

Example: Church kids


Acquisition:SYNTAX

Aspects of Language AcquisitionSyntactic Acquisition

Holophrastic stage (12 to 18 months):The stage where children use a

________ to express a whole ____________ (i.e. one-word sentences) They will use sentence intonation to show that they are asking a question or expressing surprise

Two-word stage (18-24 months): This stage tends to combine important words with

crucial semantic relationships Examples:

agent + action = baby sleep action + agent = kick ball action + locative = sit chair (locative means something

that locates an action or entity) entity + locative = teddy bed possessor + possession = Mommy book entity + attribute = block red demonstrative + entity = this shoe


After the two word stage: There isn't really a three word stage

The child then: Gradually starts to move beyond just

using ____________ (like nouns and adjective and verbs without the inflected endings)

Begin to acquire ____________ like inflectional affixes



Telegraphic stage (24-30 months) Is called telegraphic because has the

same format as a telegraph

The stage in a child’s language acquisition in which children’s utterances are ____________ than two words but lack bound morphemes and most functional categories


Examples of telegraphic stage: "I can see a cow" repeated as "See cow" (Eve at 25

months) "The doggy will bite" repeated as "Doggy bite" (Adam at

28 months) Kathryn no like celery (Kathryn at 22 months) Baby doll ride truck (Allison at 22 months) Pig say oink (Claire at 25 months) Want lady get chocolate (Daniel at 23 months) "Where does Daddy go?" repeated as "Daddy go?"

(Daniel at 23 months) "Car going?" to mean "Where is the car going?" (Jem at

21 months)

Order of acquisition of negatives Negating a sentence with “no” in front

E.g. “No I drink juice“ Inserting negative words in their sentences

E.g. "baby no sleep" or "baby can't drink“ Consciousness of the fact that words like

"don't“, "can't" and "won't“ morphologically complex (ex: don’t = do not)

Use of words like "anybody" and "anything" "I don't want anything" instead of "I don't want

something"


Order of acquisition of interrogatives : Using of rising intonation

E.g. more milk?, Mommy go? Using auxiliaries in yes-no questions

E.g. “Can I have more?" Using “Wh-questions” & inversion

E.g. "Mommy, why you are mad?" instead of "Mommy, why are you mad?"


Aspects of Language Acquisition Syntactic Acquisition

http:// http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8aprCNnecU

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LI 2023 NATHALIE F. MARTIN L ANGUAGE A CQUISITION