Week 6:
Language Acquisition
The object of study
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Language acquisition is the study of the
processes through which humans acquire
language.
By itself, language acquisition refers to first
language acquisition, which studies infants'
acquisition of their native language, whereas
second language acquisition deals with acquisition of
additional languages in both children and adults.
Language and communication
It is a commonly held view that language
evolved as a tool for communication.
1. Human language can be seen primarily as a
socially, or culturally determined tool for
communication.
2. Alternatively, language can be seen primarily as a
cognitive mechanism for structuring utterances
and perhaps also thoughts.
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Acquiring language
One of the complexities of acquiring language
is that it is learned by infants from what appears
to be very little input.
This has led to the long-standing debate between
the two different groups of scholars:
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Nativist theories —Chomky is the preeminent
name here—place the distinctiveness of
language in specific genetic endowment for a
specifically genetically instructed language
module. Under that view, there is minimal
learning involved in acquiring a language.
Empiricists like Hobbes and Locke argued that
knowledge emerge ultimately from abstracted
sense impressions.
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The precise form of language must be acquired
through exposure to a speech community.
Words are definitely not inbron, but the capacity
to acquire language and use it creatively seems to
be inborn. N. Chomsky calls this ability the
LAD (Language Acquisition Device).
Co-evolutionary theory
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There are also co-evolutionary proposals:
Language is not an instinct and there is no
genetically installed linguistic black box in our
brains. Language arose slowly through cognitive
and cultural inventiveness.
Language began as a cognitive adaptation and
genetic assimilation. Cognitive effort and genetic
assimilation interacted as language and brain coevolved.
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Human language is made possible by special
adaptations of the human mind and body that
occurred in the course of human evolution, and
which are put to use by children in acquiring
their mother tongue
A Critical Period for
Language Acquisition
Critical Period Hypothesis: Exposure to language
before puberty is necessary for language acquisition.
Children with delayed exposure to language:“The Wild
Boy of Aveyron”. Genie
 Sample utterances by Genie:
 Mike paint.
 Applesauce buy store.
 Small two cup.
 I like hear music ice cream truck.
 Think about Mama love Genie.
Milestones in
Language Development
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Language Stage
Crying!
Cooing!
Babbling!
Intonation patterns!
One-word utterances!
Two-word utterances!
Word inflections!
Questions, negations!
Rare and complex constructions!
Mature speech!
Beginning Age
Birth
6 weeks
6 months
8 months
1 year
18 months
2 years
2 1/4 years
5 years
10 years
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Pre-Verbal Language
Development
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Crying: Non-linguistic Though some language specific
elements.
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Cooing: Non-linguistic. Exercising the articulatory apparatus.
Imitation and the beginning of turn-taking.
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Babbling: here infants are clearly producing syllable like
sounds. No meaning attached to the babble. Syllables are often
found in repetitive sequences (babababa). Children clearly utilise
their babling to tune their vocalisation to the sounds of the local
language.
Babbling as part of the biologically determined maturation of
language abilities.
Babbling drift: Around 9-14 months infants restrict their
babbling to native language sounds.
First words
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Shortly before their first birthday, babies begin to
understand words, and around that birthday, they start
to produce them. Words are usually produced in
isolation; this one-word stage can last from two months
to a year.
Children's first words are similar all over the planet.
About half the words are for objects: food (juice, cookie),
body parts (eye, nose), clothing (diaper, sock), vehicles (car, boat),
toys (doll, block), household items (bottle, light), animals (doggie,
kitty), and people (mama, dada, baby).
There are words for actions, motions, and routines, like
(up, off, open, peekaboo, eat, and go, and modifiers, like hot, all
gone, more, dirty, and cold.
The Influence of Experience
on Phonological Processing
Lexical Development
Children start producing their first words around 12
months.
 Words are used holophrastically: A word stands for
an entire sentence.
 By 24 months they have an expressive vocabulary of
between 50 to 600 words.
 Experience matters for vocabulary growth.
 Privileged children hear about 2,100 words/hour.
 Disadvantaged children hear only about 600 words/hour.
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Syntactic Development
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18-24 Months: Two-word utterances
95% of utterances: Correct word order.
Telegraphic speech (few function words).
Syntactic Development
How do children fit long thoughts into two word
utterances?
Children appear to use vertical constructions of
utterances (Moskowitz, 1991).
Breaking thoughts down into two-word utterances.
 • Child: Tape corder. Use it. Use it.
 • Adult: Use it for what?
 • Child: Talk. Corder talk. Brenda talk.
Adults use horizontal constructions.
- Complete word-by-word specification of thoughts.
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24-48 Months: Complexity and length of
utterances increase rapidly. > “normal”
conversation.
How do children achieve this rapid increase in
sentence complexity and length?
Childish creativity
Despite the obvious impact the environment has on the
choice and general direction of mother-tongue learning,
children are prone to come up with all kinds of words
and expressions which they have never heard in their
environment.
 Daughter: Somebody’s at the door.
 Mother: There is nobody at the door.
 Daughter: There is yesbody at the door.