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
• 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.