1 The Study of Language Acquisition
A. The naturalistic approach l
Diary study
B. The experimental approach l
Cross-sectional

2 Phonological Development
2.1 Babbling
2.2 The Developmental Order l As a group, vowels are generally acquired before consonants.
l
Stops tend to be acquired before other consonants.
l
Labials are often acquired first followed by alveolars, velars, and alveopalatals. Interdentals are acquired last.
l
New phonemic contrasts manifest themselves first in word-initial position. Thus the /p/-/b/ contrast will be manifested in pairs such as pat-bat before mop-mob .

Table 1 Typical consonant inventory at age two
Stops Fricatives Other
p b m f w
t d n s
k g
Table 2 Typical consonant inventory at age four
Stops Fricatives Affricates Other
p b m f v t

d
 
t d n s z l r
k g
 

2.3 Early Phonetic Processes l
Syllable simplification
Ex: stop

[t
 p], try

[ta
 
[d

] l
Substitution
Table 3 Substitution in early speech
Process Example Change
Stopping sing

[t

] s

t
thing

[t

]
 
t
Fronting ship

[s
  
s
go

[dou] g

d
Gliding lion

[
 n] l

look

[w
 k] l

w
Denasalization spoon

[buwd] n

d
room

[wuwb] m
 b

l
Assimilation
Ex: tell [d
 l], pig [b
 g], push [b
 s]
2.4 Production Versus Perception
Children’s perceptual abilities are more advanced than their articulatory skills.

3 Morphological Development l
Overgeneralization/overregularization
3.1 A Developmental Sequence
Table 4 Typical developmental sequence for
non-lexical morphemes
1. –ing
2. plural –s
3. possessive
–’s
4. the , a
5. past tense –ed
6. third person singular
–s
7. auxiliary be

Table 5 Typical relative frequency of morphemes in parental speech
1. the , a
2.
–ing
3. plural
–s
4. auxiliary be
5. possessive
–’s
6. third person singular –s
7. past tense -ed

Determining factors:
1. Frequent occurrence in utterance-final position
2. Syllabicity
3. A straightforward relation between form and meaning
4. Few or no exceptions in the way it is used
5. Allomorphic invariance
6. Clearly discernable semantic function

3.2Allomorphic Rules
Table 6 Percentage of correct responses on wug test
Allomorph Nonsense word Preschoolers(%) First graders(%)
/s/ heafs 79 80
/z/ wugs 76 97
luns 68 92
tors 73 90
/

gutches 28 38
nizzes 14 33

3.3 Word Formation Rules
Table 7 Percentage correct for made-up roots
Construction Preschool(%) Early school(%) Middle school(%)
Agentive –er 7 63 80
Compound 47 50 65
Adjectival –y 0 30 55
Instrumental –er 7 35 45
Adverbal –ly 0 13 20

4 Syntactic Development l The One-word Stage (Holophrases)
Table 8
Semantic relations in children’s one-word utterances
Semantic relation Utterance Situation
Agent of an action dada as father enters the room
Action or state down as child sits down
Theme door as father closes the door
Location here as child points
Recipient mama as child gives mother something
Recurrence again as child watches lighting of a match

l
The Two-word Stage
Table 9
Some patterns in children’s two-word speech
Utterance Intended meaning Semantic-relation
Baby chair
‘The baby is sitting on a chair.’ Agent-location
Doggie bark
‘The dog is barking.’ Agent-action
Ken water
‘Ken is drinking water.’ Agent-theme
Hit doggie
‘I hit the doggie.’ Action-theme
Daddy hat
‘Daddy’s hat’ Possessor-possessed

l
The Telegraphic Stage
Chair broken.
Daddy like book.
What her name?
Man ride bus today.
Car make noise.

l
Later Development
Inversion
(1) See hole?
I ride train?
Ball go?
Sit chair?
(2) Can he can look?
What shall we shall have?
Did you did came home?

Wh questions
Stage 1
(3) Where that?
What me think?
Why you smiling?
Why not me drink it?

Stage 2
(4) Yes-no questions (with Inversion):
Did Mommy pinch her finger?
Can’t you fix it?
Do I have it?
Is Mommy talking to Robin’s grandmother?
(5) Wh questions (no Inversion):
What I did yesterday?
Why Kitty can’t stand up?
Where I should put it?
Why you are smiling?

Stage 3
(1) Where did my mitten go?
Where should I sleep?
Why are you smiling?
(2)
Why you can’t sit down?
Why Kitty can’t stand up?

5 Semantic Development
Table 10 Common items in the first fifty words
Entities
Names for people: dady, mommy, etc.
Words referring to
Humans: baby
Food/drink: juice, milk, cookie, water, toast, apple, cake
Animals: dog, cat, duck, horse
Clothes: shoes, hat
Toys: ball, blocks
Vehicles: cars, boat, truck
Other: bottle, key, book
Properties hot, allgone, more, dirty, cold, here, there
Actions up, sit, see, eat, go, down
Personal-social hi, bye, no, yes, please, thank-you

5.1 The Acquisition of Word Meaning l
Overextension
Table 11 Examples of overextension
Word First referent Subsequent extensions
Tick tock watch clocks, gas-meter, fire hose on a spool
Fly fly specks of dirt, small insects, child’s toes
Candy candy cherries, anything sweet
Apple apples balls, tomatoes, onions, biscuits
Turtle turtles fish, seals

l
Underextension a.
Kitty might be used to refer to the family pet, but not to any other cats.
b.
Dog might be used for collies, spaniels, and beagles, but not for chihuahuas.

5.2 Spatial and Dimensional Terms
Table 12 Order of acquisition for words expressing spatial relations
Step Words Description
1 in, on, under, beside
independent of speaker’s perspective
2 behind, in front of used with objects with inherent fronts
and backs
3 behind, in front of used with objects without inherent
fronts or backs

Table 13 Order of acquisition for dimensional adjectives
Step Words What they describe
1 big-small any aspect of size
2 tall-short, long-short, high-low a single dimension
3 thick-thin, wide-narrow, deep-shallow a secondary dimension

5.3 The Interpretation of Sentence Structure l
Thematic roles
(8)
Passive sentence: The car was bumped by the truck.
Theme agent
Active sentence: The truck bumped the car.
Agent theme l
Pronominals and reflexives
(1) Sam said that [ s wrist].
Gary slapped himself on the
(2) Sam said that [ s
Gary slapped him on the wrist].

1 Determinants of Language Acquisition
1.1 The Role of Imitation and Correction
(1) a. What can you see? (model) b.What you can see? (child’s imitation)
Child: Nobody don’t like me.
Mother: No, say “Nobody likes me.”
Child: Nobody don’t like me.
[Exchange is repeated eight times.]
Mother: No, now listen carefully; say “Nobody likes me.”
Child: Oh! Nobody don’t LIKES me.

1.2The Role of Adult Speech l
Motherese/caregiver speech
Table 14 Some features of English motherese
Phonetic
Slower speech
Higher pitch
Exaggerated intonation and stress
Longer pauses
Lexical and semantic
More restricted vocabulary
Concrete reference to here and now
Syntactic
Few incomplete sentences
Short sentences
More imperatives and questions
Conversational
More repetitions
Few utterances per conversational turn

1.3 The Role of Cognitive Development l
Cognitive development l
Object permanence
1.4 The Role of Inborn Knowledge l
Nativism
Principle A:
NP a c-commands NP b above NP a if the first category contains NP b
.

Principle A:
A reflexive pronoun must have an antecedent that c-commands it.
S
NP1 Infl VP
NP2 N Past V NP3
The boy’s father hurt himself
Figure 1 The reflexive pronoun takes the c-commanding
NP1 as its antecendent
1.5 Is There A Critical Period?

Language Acquisition
Language
Acquisition

A normal human being can go through life without learning lt read or write. The study of the nature of human language itself has revealed the following conclusions:
1.Children do not learn a language by storing all the words and all the sentences in some giant mental dictionary .
2.Children learn to construct sentences.
3.Children learn to understand sentences they have never heard before.
4.Children must construct the “rules” that permit them to use language creatively.
5.No one teaches them these rules.

Stages in Language Acquisition
Linguistic knowledge develops by stages.
Observations of children in different languages areas of the world reveal that the stages are similar, possibly universal.
The First Sounds
The stage of language acquisition can be divided into prelinguistic and linguistic stages.
The neonate is born with a mind that appears to receive only certain kinds of information.

Babbling
In the first few months, usually around the sixth month, the infant begins to babble.
During the babbling stage of hearing infants, the pitch, or intonation contours produced by them being to resemble the intonation contours of sentences spoken by adults.

Fist Words
Sometimes after one year, children begin to use the same string of sounds repeatedly to mean the same thing. These one-word sentences are called holophrastic sentences which to serve three major functions.
1.They are liked with a child’s own action or desire for action.
2.They are used to convey emotion.
3.They serve a naming function.

The Two-Word Stage
Children begin to produce tow-word utterances around at the age of two. During this stage there are no syntactic or morphological markets.
From Telegraph to Infinity the mean length of utterances: children produce utterances that average 2.3 to 3.5 morphemes
This stage has a special characteristic. The
“function” words are missing ; only the
“content” words occur. And these utterances are sometimes called telegraphic speech.

From Telegraph to Infinity
I. MLU (Mean Length of Utterances): As to stage of language acquisition, it's MLU, rather than chronological age, that can make a comparison across children.
II. Telegraphic Speech: The small "function" words ( like to, the, can, is, etc.) are missing.
III. Sentence-like Utterances: The25-28 months old children's utterances appear to have hierarchical, constituent structures, which are similar to the syntactic structures found in the sentences produced by the adult grammar.

Theories of Child Language Acquisition
I. Do Children Learn by Imitation? Not really.
II. Do Children Learn by Reinforcement?
Reinforcement seldom occurs, and when it does, it is usually incorrect pronunciation or incorrect reporting of facts that is corrected.

Children Form Rules and construct a Grammar
I. Neither of these views (imitation and reinforcement) accounts for the nonrandom mistakes children make: the speed, the ability to learn language, and the regularity of the acquisition process.
II. The Neural Prerequisites: The child appears to be equipped from birth with the neural prerequisites for the acquisition and use of human language just as birds are biologically "prewired" to learn the songs of their species.
III. The different syntactic rules at any stage in acquisition govern the construction of the child's sentences at that period of development.
A. Negative sentences
B. Question sentences

Errors or Rules?
I. Inflectional Errors
II. Phonological Morphological Rule Acquisition
Universal Grammar :
The investigation of the kinds of errors children make in forming their grammars shows that the mistakes are all in keeping with what we have called Universal Grammar. That is, the principles constrain all grammars.

The Acquisition of Syntax
There are two ideas about the way which children construct the complex syntactic rules of their grammar-- one is based on semantics, and the other is based on syntactic categories and relations(Noun, Noun Phrase, Verb, Verb
Phrase, subject, object, and so on), e.g.,
Russian, Polish, and Turkish and modifier— noun agreement.

Italian English
E mia gonna. It is my skirt.
Questo mio bimbo This is my baby.
Guarda questi gialli Look at these roosters.
According to the example above, we can see that children own the ability of “discovering” the structures of their language. However, now, more studies on child language prove that it is
“two in one.”

Learning the Meaning of Words
Preface: Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought.
-Helen Keller
Children often experience the processes of learning the meaning of words through two steps as follows.
A.Undergeneralize-- to put a principle into a narrower form
B. Overgeneralize—to draw general conclusions from inadequate data e.g. (overgeneralize) bring
 bringed go
 goed foot
 foots child
 childs

: Just as birds have wings, man has language.-- George Henry Lewes
Under normal condition, children were born to be equipped with special abilities to know what generalization to look for and what to ignore, and how to discover the regularities of language. We may say that though people do not have any written language, they all have language. In other words, children learn language the way they learn to walk.

The theory underlines the child must be neurologically capable of utilizing the sound
(or sign language gestures) for language acquisition. Moreover, not only is the human species genetically “prewired” to acquire language, but that the kind of languages is also determined. The principles that determine the class of human languages that can be acquired unconsciously, without instruction, in the early years of life has been referred as to Universal
Grammar (or UG).

It has been suggested that there is a
“critical age” for language acquisition, or at least for language acquisition without special teaching and without the need for special learning. During this period, language learning proceeds easily, swiftly, and without external intervention. After this period, the acquisition of the grammar is difficult and for some individuals, never fully achieved.

The Acquisition of Bird Songs
The notion of a critical age for acquisition of cognitive knowledge pretains to other species as shown by studies of the development species as shown by studies of the development of bird songs and calls. If these birds are not exposed to the songs of their species during certain fixed periods after their birth (the period differs from species to species). Song acquisition does not occur. Apparently the basic nature of the song of some bird species is biologically determined, but the details are learned.

Sign Languages—Evidence for the
Biology of Language
Preface : Men, who, being born deaf and mute, are destitute of the organs which serve the others for talking, are in the habit of themselves inventing certain signs by which they make themselves understood.
Hand and body gestures are the forms used to represent morphemes or words.. Hence, we know that language acquisition and use do not depend on the ability to produce or hear sound, but on a much more abstract cognitive ability, biologically.

1.Deaf children of deaf parents who are exposed to sign language learn sign languages in stages parallel to language acquisition by hearing children learning oral languages.
2.It is nearly impossible for those unable to hear language to learn to speak naturally.

3.Although deaf persons can be taught to speak a language intelligibly, they never understand speech as well as a hearing person.
4.Non sopken languages have developed as a substitute for spoken languages among non hearing individuals.
5.Language acquisition and use are dependent on a much more abstract cognitive ability, biologically determined, which therefore accounts for the similarities between spoken and sign languages.

1.The major language used by the deaf in the
United States.
2.ASL is an independent, bully developed language that historically is an out growth of the sign language used in France.
3.ASL has its own morphological, syntactic, and semantic systems. Its formal units, corresponding to the phonological elements of spoken language, wee originally called cheremes, now more often referred to as primes.

4.The signs of the language that correspond to morphemes or words of spoken language can be specified by primes of three sets: hand configuration , the motion of the hands toward or away from the today, and the place of articulation or the locus of the sign’s movement.
5.Just as spoken language has sequences of sounds that are not permitted in the language, so sign languages have forbidden combinations of features.
6.Siglish, the other sign language used in the United
States, consists in the replacement of each spoken
English word by a sign. They systax and semantics of
Signed English are thus approximately the same as those of ordinary English.

7.If there is no sign in ASL, signers utilize another mechanism, the system of finger spelling.
8.An accomplished signer can “speak” at a normal rate, even when there is a lot of finger spelling.
9.Language arts are not lost to the deaf.
They can also do poetry, stage play and…etc..

1.Deaf children of deaf signing parents parallel the stages of spoken language acquisition.(single signs, telegraphic stage, their acquisition of the negative morphemes.)
2.Hearing children of deaf parents acquire both sign language and spoken language when exposed to both.

3.Deaf children of hearing parents who are not exposed to manual sign language form birth, suffering from a great handicap in acquiring language, develop their own manual gestures to express their thoughts and desires.
4.Sign languages are as grammatical and systematic as are spoken languages.(different languages, signing themselves to sleep, signing to their dolls and stuffed animals, finger fumblers, slip of the hand, and….)

1 .Language is more easily acquired at the age of two or three than at the age off thirteen or twenty.
2.Young children who are exposed to more than one language before the age of puberty seem to acquire all the languages equally well.
3.Many adults who are self-conscious about making mistakes, often find learning L2 very difficult.
But this is not a problem who children who are unaware that they are making mistakes.
4.The stages in second language acquisition are similar to those in first language acquisition.

1.Stephen Krashen has proposed a distinction between acquisition-the process by which children unconsciously acquire their native language—and learning, which he defines as
“conscious knowledge of a second language, knowing the rules, being aware of them, and being able to talk about them. The principles of UG hold only during the critical period , after which general learning mechanisms operate in learningL2.

2.Another theory proposed that L2 is acquired on the same universal innate principles that govern L1 acquisition, which is why one finds the same stages of development even if the complete L2 grammar is not acquired due to nonlinguistic factors at work.

Recently, much effort has been expended to determined human language acquisition ability.
However, they have no way of expressing the anger they felt yesterday or the anticipation of tomorrow.

Gua :
She understood about one hundred words at sixteen months, more words than a boy (child) at that age, but she never went beyond that.
Viki :
She learned a number of individual words, even learning to “articulate” with great difficulty the words “ mama, papa, cup, and up.” That was the extent of her language production..

Washoe :
She was brought up in much the same way as a human child in a deaf community, in the presence of people who used ASL(American
Sign Language). She was taught to sign, whereas children raised by deaf signers acquire sign. Language without teaching.

Sarah : to be taught an artificial language designed to resemble human lanuguages in some aspects.
Sarah was taught to associate particular symbols with particular meanings; the formmeaning relationship of the ” morphemes” or
“words” was arbitrary. She was not allowed to
“ talk” spontaneously, but only in response to her trainers.

Yerkish : a different kind of artificial language.
The words, called lexigrams, are geometric symbols display on a computer keyboard.
(The computer records every button pressed; certain fixed orders of those lexigrams constitute grammatical sentences in Yerkish.
Koko :
She has learned several hundred signs.
She is able to put signs together to make
“sentences”, and is capable of making linguistic jokes and puns, composing rhymes, and inventing metaphors.

Nim Chimpsky :
She was taught ASL by an experienced teacher. Most of Nim’s signing occurred only in response to promoting by his trainers and was related to eating, drinking and playing, that is, it was “stimulus-controlled.”
Moreover, the lack of spontaneity and excessive’ noncreative imitative nature of
Nim’s signing led to the conclusion that
Nim’s acquisition is qualitatively different from a child’s

Clever Hans : a horse, became famous because of his apparent ability to do arithmetic, read and spell and even solve problems of musical harmony.
He answered the questions posed by his interogators by stamping out numbers with his hoof.

Kauzi : using the same plastic lexigrams and computer keyboard, This concluded that
Kauzi has not only learned, but also invented grammatical rules that may well be as complex as those used by 2-year-old children.
Kauzi’s acquisition of “ grammatical skills” was much slower than that of the kinds of linguistic knowledge of a complexity equivalent to a three or four year old’s knowledge of structure.

The linguistic experiments with primates have led to many advances in our understanding of primate cognitive ability.
These studies also point out how remarkable it is that human children, by the age of three and four, without explicit teaching, and without over reinforcement, create new and complex sentences never spoken and never heard before.