First language acquisition

LING 200Spring 2006

Overview

• Questions about first language acquisition (L1)

• Characteristics of L1• Theories of L1• L1 and innateness hypothesis

First language acquisition

• How is it that by age 5 children (basically) know their language?

• What they do along the way and why?

•An example of what is so impressive about L1 (clip from Acquiring Language) (acquisition.mov)

Characteristics of L1

• Regular stages, or milestones– Babbling: 4-20 months– One-word stage: 12-18 months– Two-word stage: apx. 24 months

Babbling• 0-1 months: crying, coughing• 2-3 months: “cooing and gooing” (production of

velar consonants)• 4-6 months: produce greater variety of sounds,

sounds more like language• 7-9 months: CV syllables, often reduplicated; e.g.

[tata] canonical babbling• 12 months: relatively long sequences of gibberish,

possibly with intonation• (12-13 months: first words)• 18-20 months: babbling ceases

Characteristics of early babbling

• Largely independent of what sounds are heard in child’s lgs environment

• Everybody babbles– deaf children babble – hearing children of deaf parents babble

Characteristics of later babbling

• Language specific differences begin to emerge– Japanese babies: word final [/] common– Spanish babies produce longer words– French babies produce more nasals– ASL babies: produce ASL-like movement

One-word stage• Emerges around 12-18 months• Characteristics

– words used as sentences– incipient word meaning; typical communicative

functions:• naming• child's action• child’s desire for action• child’s emotion

– simple phonology: CV syllables; CVCV words

Words known by Eve at 15

months

• Mommy• Daddy• go• go?• gimme• baba ‘grandma’• dollie• cup• what?• wawa ‘water’• nana ‘blanket’

Production vs. comprehension

• At all(?) stages of L1, production lags behind comprehension– Recognition of polite forms precedes the ability

to produce them.• Puppets requesting candy used direct forms like:

‘Give me candy.’Or indirect forms like: ‘I would like some candy.’‘May I have some candy?’

Indirect forms were judged more polite.

Production vs. comprehension– Recognition of sounds precedes the ability to

produce them.• ‘One of us...spoke to a child who called his inflated

plastic fish a fis. In imitation of the child’s pronunciation, the observer said: “This is your fis?”“No,” said the child, “my fis”. He continued to reject the adult’s imitation until he was told, “That is your fish.” “Yes,” he said, “my fis.”

– Recognition of meaning conveyed by word order precedes ability to produce long sentences. Another clip from Acquiring Language(bigbird.mov)

2-word stage

• Emerges few months after 1-word stage• Characteristics

– short (2-word) sentences– no inflectional affixes (e.g. genitive, 3sS -s)– minimal use of syntactic function words (e.g.

determiners)– pronouns rare

Eve at 18 months

• more grape juice• drink juice• eating• no celery• Mommy soup• open toybox• Oh! Horsie stuck• write a paper• my pencil• What doing, Mommy?• Mommy head?

Beyond 2-word stage: Eve at 27 months

• Pronouns and other pro-forms– I go get a pencil ‘n write.– Put my pencil in there.– You make a blue one for me.– Just like Mommy has, and David has, and Sara has.

• Embedded sentences– I put them in the refrigerator to freeze.

• Determiners and auxiliaries– What is that on the table?– We’re going to make a blue house.

Eve at 27 months• Omission of be

– See, this one_better but this_not better.– There_some cream.

• Wrong form of pronoun– Put in you coffee.

• Wrong verb forms– They was in the refrigerator, cooking.– That why Jacky comed.

• Omission of determiner– How ‘bout another eggnog instead of_cheese

sandwich?

Some theories of L1

• Reinforcement hypothesis• Imitation hypothesis• Active construction of grammar hypothesis

Against Reinforcement hypothesis

• Children don't get a lot of corrections– some lexical/content corrections– not a lot of grammatical corrections

• Children don't absorb a lot of the corrections they do hear:

Oh...Nobody don’t LIKES me.Child:

Now listen carefully. Say ‘nobody LIKES me’.

Mother:......Nobody don’t like me.Child:No. Say ‘nobody likes me’.Mother:Nobody don’t like me.Child:

Against Imitation hypothesis• Children produce novel utterances (not in

imitation of adult productions)– ‘other one spoon’– causatives:

• 'you're fedding me up'• ‘These flowers are sneezing me!’

– novel verbs• ‘Why you didn’t jam my bread?’• ‘I hate you and I’ll never unhate you or nothing!’• ‘Put me that broom. Let’s get brooming.’

No, she holded them loosely.Child:Did you say she held them tightly?Adult:

She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.

Child:What did you say she did?Adult:Yes.Child:

Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits?

Adult:

My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.

Child:

Grammar construction hypothesis• Children make systematic, not random,

“errors”– In phonology. Inventory of English consonants

(age 2):

w

nm

hsf

k gt dp b

Inventory of English consonants, age 4

l

y

š

č æ‡

rw

Nnm

hs zf v

k gt dp b

• More systematic errors in phonology

Cs in word must be all oral or allnasal

banana“take [m´næn´]”

no syllabic consonants

little“me [lIlI]”

syll-final Cs are stops

give“mummy [gIb]”

no C clustersglue“[gu] here”

child’s ruleadult targetchild

• Systematic errors in morphology– Regularization of plurals

• gooses

– Regularization of past tense forms of verbs• heared, hitted, goed, bringed, comed; • I tooked it smaller

– Regularization of comparative forms of adjectives:

• He hitted me. He’s a puncher he is. He’s beingbadder and badder.

• Systematic semantic errors– Underextension (narrowing, hyponymy)

family catmow-mow

child’s dishdish

family Pontiaccar

first referent (no extensions)child’s word

• Systematic semantic errors– Overextension (broadening, hypernymy)

toy dog, soft slippers, picture of old man in furs, all animals

dogwau-wau

piano, phonograph, tunes played on violin, accordian, all music, merry-go-round

rooster crowing

koko

specks of dirt, dust, all small insects, child’s own toes, crumbs, small toad

houseflyfly

extensionsfirst referent

child’s word

Syntactic errors• May resemble well-formed sentences in

other languages• A clip from Acquiring the human language,

childerror1.mov

L1 and Innateness hypothesis

• Innateness Hypothesis– Humans are equipped with Universal Grammar,

or are genetically programmed for language.– UG severely constrains the possible form that a

human language may take. – The actual form of language is determined by

environment/language experience. • UG and L1. Clip from Acquiring Language,

elgin.mov

Characteristics of innate behaviors

‘Poverty of stimulus’: Children exposed tomotherese, adult performance

Not triggered by (extraordinary) external events.

Needed for L1: immersion in lgc environ.

Not the result of a conscious decision.

Speed of learning L1 (≈age 5)

Emerges before needed.

cf. L1Innate behavior (e.g. walking)

critical age L1 cases: Genie, Chelsea, Maria Noname, etc.

‘Critical age’ for the acquisition of the behavior

cross-linguistic regularities in learning; uniformity of resulting grammars (UG); lgdevelopment independent of intelligence, other cognitive skills

Normal stages of achievement can be identified.

correction has no effectNot affected by explicit instruction.

L1innate behavior

Critical age: L1 vs. L2• Children are able to completely master a

first language, whereas adults rarely do:

no defined stagesregular stages

lack of uniformity of resulting grammars

uniformity of resulting grammars

slowness of learning

speed of learning

overt instructionlack of instructionL2L1

• Results of attempts to teach chimps English, ASL, manipulation of symbols– chimps are capable of learning some aspects of

human language– chimps show some spontaneity, creativity – don't get past 2-3 word stage; skills comparable to

1-2 year old child– limited syntax. Trouble with:

• word order• structure dependent operations (e.g. conjunction)

chimps are not predisposed to learn human language; lack latent capacity for human language

Chimp studies

Acquisition summary

• Characteristics of first language acquisition suggest that language is an innate behavior.

• There is a “Critical Period” for the acquisition of a first language (critical age cases, L1 vs. L2 differences)

• Children do not learn grammar solely by imitation or reinforcement; they learn by working out rules for themselves.