Language acquisition

LING 200

Spring 2003Reading: Files 9.2-9.4

First language acquisition

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

• What they do along the way and why?

(a.k.a. developmental psycholinguistics, L1)

Overview

• Characteristics of L1

• Theories of L1

• L1 and innateness hypothesis

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 babbling

• Early babbling is largely independent of what sounds are heard– deaf children babble – hearing children of deaf parents babble– sounds produced may not be those heard in

child's linguistic environment

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’

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?

Theories of L1

• Reinforcement hypothesis: children learn by being positively or negatively reinforced for certain kinds of behavior

• Imitation hypothesis: children learn solely by imitating what they hear

• Active construction of grammar hypothesis: children are actively constructing and refining a grammar of the language of their environment

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:

Child: Nobody don’t like me.

Mother: No. Say ‘nobody likes me’.

Child: Nobody don’t like me.

... ...

Mother: Now listen carefully. Say ‘nobody LIKES me’.

Child: Oh...Nobody don’t LIKES me.

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.’

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.

Grammar construction hypothesis• Children make systematic, not random,

errors – In phonology. Inventory of English consonants

(age 2):

p b t d k g

f s h

m n

w

Inventory of English consonants, age 4

p b t d č k g

f v s z š h

m n

l

w r y

• More systematic errors in phonology

child adult target child’s rule

“[gu] here” glue no C clusters

“mummy [gb]”

give syll-final Cs are stops

“me [ll]” little only vowels as syll peak

“take [mnæn]”

banana all Cs in word must be oral or nasal

• 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 being badder and badder.

• Systematic semantic errors – Overextension (broadening, hypernymy)

child’s word

first referent extensions

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

koko rooster crowing

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

wau-wau

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

• Systematic semantic errors– Underextension (narrowing, hyponymy)

child’s word first referent (no extensions)

car family Pontiac

dish child’s dish

mow-mow family cat

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.

Innate behaviors

innate not innate

walking skating, playing football

speaking or signing a language

reading or writing a language

Characteristics of innate behaviors

Innate behavior L1

Emerges before needed. Speed of learning L1 (age 5)

Not the result of a conscious decision.

Needed for L1: immersion in lgc environ.

Not triggered by (extraordinary) external events.

‘Poverty of stimulus’: Children exposed to motherese, adult performance

innate behavior L1

Not affected by explicit instruction.

correction has no effect

Normal stages of achievement can be identified.

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

‘Critical age’ for the acquisition of the behavior

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

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

first language, whereas adults rarely do:

L1 L2

lack of instruction overt instruction

speed of learning slowness of learning

uniformity of resulting grammars

lack of uniformity of resulting grammars

regular stages no defined stages

Language as a species-specific trait

• Noam Chomsky (1988) Language and Problems of Knowledge:

...language appears to be a true species property, unique to the human species in its essentials and a common part of our shared biological endowment, with little variation among humans apart from rather serious pathology. (p. 2)

• 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)

– 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.