First Language Acquisition

First language acquisition LING 200 Spring 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 •Mommy Words known • Daddy •go by Eve at 15 •go? months •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 • more grape juice • drink juice Eve at 18 • eating months • 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 –Igo 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: 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 æ‡ k g f v s z š h m n N l w r y • More systematic errors in phonology child adult target child’s rule “[gu] here” glue no C clusters “mummy [gIb]” give syll-final Cs are stops “me [lIlI]” little no syllabic consonants “take banana Cs in word must [m´næn´]” be all oral or all 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 – Underextension (narrowing, hyponymy) child’s word first referent (no extensions) car family Pontiac dish child’s dish mow-mow family cat • Systematic semantic errors – Overextension (broadening, hypernymy) child’s first extensions word referent fly housefly specks of dirt, dust, all small insects, child’s own toes, crumbs, small toad koko rooster piano, phonograph, tunes played on crowing violin, accordian, all music, merry- go-round wau- dog toy dog, soft slippers, picture of old wau man in furs, all animals 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 Innate behavior (e.g. cf. L1 walking) Emerges before needed. Speed of learning L1 (≈age 5) Not the result of a Needed for L1: conscious decision. immersion in lgc environ. Not triggered by ‘Poverty of stimulus’: (extraordinary) external Children exposed to events. motherese, adult performance innate behavior L1 Not affected by explicit correction has no effect instruction. Normal stages of cross-linguistic regularities in achievement can be learning; uniformity of identified. resulting grammars (UG); lg development independent of intelligence, other cognitive skills ‘Critical age’ for the critical age L1 cases: Genie, acquisition of the Chelsea, Maria Noname, etc. behavior 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 lack of uniformity resulting grammars of resulting grammars regular stages no defined stages Chimp studies • 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) ¾chimps are not predisposed to learn human language; lack latent capacity for human language 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. .

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