First Language Acquisition
 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.
We don t find any serious difference in children
growing up in congested urban slums, in
isolated mountain villages, or in privileged
suburban villas
Dan Slobin, The Human Language Series 2 (1994)
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First Language Acquisition
Every language is complex.
Before the age of 5, the child knows most of
the intricate system of grammar.
Use the syntactic, phonological, morphological
and semantic rules of the language
Join sentences
Ask questions
Use appropriate pronouns
Negate sentences
Form relative clauses
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First Language Acquisition
Learning to speak and understand a
language is different than learning to read
and write.
 We are designed to walk.. That we are
taught to walk is impossible. And pretty
much the same is true of language.
Nobody is taught language. In fact you
can t prevent a child from learning it
Chomsky 1994
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Issues in first language
acquisition
How do children acquire such a complex system
so quickly and effortlessly?
Does a child decide to consciously pursue certain
skills? (e.g., walking)
Do babies make a conscious decision to start
learning a language?
We correct children s errors sometimes. Does it
help?
 Nobody don t like me
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Noisy data
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Theories of language acquisition
Nature vs. Nurture
Behaviorism (1950s)
Children learn language through imitation,
reinforcement and analogy
He go out.
A my pencil
What the boy hit?
Nobody don t like me
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Theories of language
acquisition
Innateness hypothesis
Children are equipped with an innate
template for language (Language
Acquisition Device and Universal
Grammar)
Evidence: we end up knowing more about
language than what we hear around us.
The same stages in all cultures and
languages
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Basic requirements
Environment and interaction to bring
this capacity into operation- E.g. Genie
 cultural transmission
The child must be physically capable
(being able to hear)
Interaction.
All these requirements are related.
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The acquisition schedule
In spite of different backgrounds, different
locations, and different upbringings, most
children follow the very same milestones in
acquiring language.
The biological schedule is related to the
maturation of the infant s brain to cope with
the linguistic input
Young children acquire the language by
identifying the regularities in what is heard
and applying those regularities in what they
say
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Caretaker Speech (motherese)
A type of simplified speech adopts by
someone who spends time with the child
characterized by:
Frequent use of questions
Simplified lexicon
Phonological reduction
Higher pitch- extra loudness
Stressed intonation
Simple sentences
A lot of repetition
Oh, goody! Now Daddy will push choo choo!
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Caretaker Speech (motherese)
Assign interactive roles to young children
MOTHER: Look!
CHILD: (touches picture)
MOTHER: what are those?
CHILD: (vocalizes a babble string and smiles)
MOTHER: yes, there are rabbits
CHILD: Vocalizes and smiles
MOTHER: (laughs) yes, rabbit
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L1 acquisition
Stage Typical description
age
3-5 Vowel-like sounds
cooing
months
6-10 Repetitive CV patterns
babbling
months
12-18 Single open-class words or
One-word stage
months
word stems
18-20 "mini-sentences" with
Two-word stage
months
simple semantic relations
sentence structures of lexical
24-30
Telegraphic stage
words no functional or
months
grammatical morphemes
Later multiword stage 30+ Grammatical or functional
months structures emerge
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Cooing
Few weeks: cooing and gurgling, playing with
sounds. Their abilities are constrained by
physiological limitations
They seem to be discovering phonemes at this point.
Producing sequences of vowel-like sounds- high
vowels [i] and [u].
4 months- sounds similar to velar consonants [k] &
[g]
5 months: distinguish between [a] and [i] and the
syllables [ba] and [ga], so their perception skills are
good.
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Babbling
Different vowels and consonants ba-ba-ba and ga-ga-
ga
9-10 months- intonation patterns and combination of
ba-ba-ba-da-da
Nasal sounds also appear ma-ma-ma
10-11- use of vocalization to express emotions
Late stage- complex syllable combination (ma-da-ga-
ba)
Even deaf children babble
The most common cross-linguistic sounds and patterns
babbled the most, but later on they babble less
common sounds
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The word stage (holophrastic)
Single terms are uttered for everyday objects
 milk ,  cookie ,  cat
Produce utterance such as  Sara bed but not
yet capable of producing a phrase.
Differ from adult language
[da] dog
[sa] sock
[aj] light
[daw] down
Convey a more complex message
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Two-word stage
Vocabulary moves beyond 50 words
By 2 years old, children produce
utterances  baby chair ,  mommy eat
Interpretation depends on context
Adults behave as if communication is
taking place.
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Telegraphic stage
By 2 years & a half, they produce
multiple-word speech.
Developing sentence building capacity.
E.g.  this shoe all wet ,  cat drink milk ,
 daddy go bye-bye
Vocabulary continues to grow
Better pronunciation
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The acquisition process
The child does not acquire the language by imitating
adults- trying out constructions and testing them.
CHILD: my teacher holded the baby rabbit and we
patted them
MOTHER: did you say your teacher held the baby
rabbit?
CHILD: yes. she holded the baby rabbit and we
patted them
MOTHER: Did you say she held them tightly?
CHILD: no, she holded them loosely
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Developing Morphology
By 2-and-a-half years old- use of some
inflectional morphemes to indicate the
grammatical function of nouns and verbs.
The first inflection to appear is  ing after it
comes the  s for plural.
Overgeneralization: the child applies  s to
words like  foots  mans and later  feets
 mens
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Developing Morphology
The use of possessive  s appears  mommy s
bag
Forms of verb to be appear  is and  are
The  ed for past tense appears and it is also
overgeneralized as in  goed or holded
Finally  s marker for 3rd person singular
preset tense appears with full verbs first
then with auxiliaries (does-has)
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Developing syntax
A child was asked to say the owl who
eats candy runs fast and she said the
owl eat candy and he run fast.
The development of two syntactic
structures- three stages
Forming questions
Forming negatives
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Forming questions
1st stage:
Insert where and who to the beginning of an
expression with rising intonation
E.g. sit chair? Where horse go?
2nd stage:
More complex expression
E.g. why you smiling? You want eat?
3rd stage:
Inversion of subject and verb
E.g. will you help me? What did I do?
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Forming negative
Stage 1:
Putting not and no at the beginning
e.g. not teddy bear, no sit here
Stage 2:
Don t and can t appear but still use no and not
before VERBS
e.g. he no bite you, I don t want it
Stage 3:
didn t and won t appear
e.g. I didn t caught it, she won t go
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Developing Semantics
During the two-word stage children use their limited
vocabulary to refer to a large number of unrelated
objects.
Overextension: overextend the meaning of a word on
the basis of similarities of shape, sound, and size.
e.g. use ball to refer to an apple, and egg, a grape
and a ball.
This is followed by a gradual process of narrowing
down.
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Developing Semantics
Antonymous relations are acquired
late
The distinction between more/less,
before/after seem to be later
acquisition.
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Thank you
See you next class
Read chapter 15
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