SUBJECT:
CHAPTER/UNIT:
LESSON TITLE:
Psychology of Language
1
Stages of Language Acquisition
Lesson Objectives:
1. Define ‘language acquisition’.
2. Name and explain the stages of language acquisition.
Stages of First Language Acquisition
There are roughly six stages of acquisition:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Prelinguistic Stage
Babbling Stage
First Words
Two-word Stage
Telegraphic Stage
Beyond Telegraphic Stage
1. The Prelinguistic Stage
The prelinguistic stage ranges from birth to approximately 6 months.
Noises in this stage include crying, whimpering, and cooing. These sounds
are not considered language because they are involuntary responses to
stimuli. Linguists consider human language creative – as free from internal
or external stimuli. Since these noises do not fit within the definition of
language, this stage occurs before language is produced by the child. It is,
therefore, the prelinguistic stage.
During this stage, babies’ vocal tracts are more like an animal’s than
an adult human’s. The larynx is high, there is no pharynx, and the
epiglottis and velum can be in contact with each other. Additionally, the
velum cannot firmly close off nasal cavity, so all sounds are nasalized. The
tongue fills the entire mouth and is controlled by external muscles.
Extrinsic muscle control of the tongue only allows the tongue to be
"shoved" in and out, up and down, as a whole. Some muscular
contractions of the tongue itself are possible, but tongue body constrictions
are the only ones that can be produced. This accounts for nature of (early
cooing).
Images from: http://www.unc.edu/~tofu/ling101/loggrab/vt-development.pdf
One development in the ability to produce sounds seems to occur in this stage. At
about two months, infants seem to be able to coo voluntarily, whereas previously they
were only able to make sounds involuntarily.
Even though infants can’t produce linguistic sounds, they can perceive them. This
stage might more appropriately be called the pre-production stage. Infants alter their
sucking patterns when presented with a phonetic distinction in sounds. The alteration
in sucking shows an awareness of the change in sound, but infants do not seem to
attach meaning to the changes in sounds. They only register that they notice them.
This awareness is exhibited as early as one month old.
Infants can differentiate between sounds that are allophones in a language that
adult speakers of that language have learned to ignore, such as [p] and [ph].
2. The Babbling Stage
The babbling stage begins at approximately 6 months of age and continues until a
child is about one year old. One key development leading to babbling occurs during
the prelinguistic stage; around 4 months of age, larynx starts to drop, creating
pharyngeal cavity. Once the larynx has dropped, more varied constrictions can be
formed, which leads to a new stage of vocal play or babbling.
The child is also more able to raise and lower the jaw. A lower jaw also lowers the
tongue, creating the possibility of more vowels. Raising the jaw allows for more lip
and tongue tip constrictions.
Source: http://sapir.ling.yale.edu/ling165/
2 Types of Babbling May Occur:
1. Repetitive babbling - same syllable in each successive cycle
2. Variegated babbling - variation in syllables in successive cycles
Text from http://sapir.ling.yale.edu/ling165/
Universality of the Babbling Inventory
Essentially, all children use the same sounds when they babble, no matter what
the language around them is. "The consonants that occur with substantial frequency
in the babbling of infants, regardless of language environment (Locke, 1983) are:
/b/ /d/ /g/ /p/ /t/ /k/ /m/ /n/ /w/ /j/ /h/
Vowels in babbled syllables tend to be low front:" /æ/ "or central:" /a/.
The universality of babbling makes sense when you realize that the easiest way to
make a sound is to simply open and close the mouth. It is not surprising that stops will
be highly prevalent in the inventory since they are produced by closing the oral cavity,
which happens when closing the mouth occurs. The rest of the difference between the
stops is where in the mouth the tongue contacts the other parts of the vocal tract. For
example, depending on whether a child rests the tongue on the bottom of the mouth
behind the lower teeth or whether it rests in the middle just behind the front teeth
accounts for the difference in the production of bilabial and alveolar sounds in
babbling. All the child has to do is open and close the mouth, and different sounds
will be made.
Think of the words (we'll use English here) that we use to refer to many baby items
and caretakers:





Baba (bottle)
Mama (mother)
Nana (grandmother)
Papa (father)
Dada (daddy)
These utterances show repetitive babbling of the low central vowel with stop
consonants. Now add the high back round vowel:





Bubu (hurt)
Mumu
Nunu
Pupu (poopoo)
Dudu (doodoo)
These utterances also show repetitive babbling, but with a different vowel sound. The
two different syllables can be mixed together:



Mami (mommy)
Papi (Poppy, often used for grandfather)
Pupi (poopy)
These utterances show variegated babbling.
And we’re back to Baby Talk. Baby talk has two different meanings:
1. It is the way that babies themselves talk, and when baby talk is used with this
meaning, it refers in particular to the babbling stage and the first words stage of
language acquisition, universal stages for all infants in all languages.
2. It is the way that adults talk when they talk to babies. When baby talk is used
with this meaning, it captures the fact that adults accommodate their speaking
style to that of the child. They help the child attach meaning to their utterances
by using the same utterances with the meaning attached.
Even deaf children babble.The hand gestures of deaf children occur in repetitive
patterns the way that the babbling of hearing children repeats. Deaf children babble in
sounds, too, but it seems different than the babbling of hearing children.
In other words, deaf children babble in sign language and just make noises with
their mouths. Hearing children babble with their mouths, and just make gestures with
their hands. For hearing children, language is produced with the mouth, and
extralinguistic communication with the hands. For deaf children, language is produced
with the hands and extralinguistic communication with the mouth.
The Perception of Language
During the Babbling Stage infants begin to ignore/lose the ability to distinguish
between the sounds of their parents’ (caretakers’) language and other sounds.
They respond only to sounds that are the language distinctions of their parents’
(caretakers’) language.
In other words, prelinguistic Korean infants respond to the difference between [l]
and [r]; children in Arabic environments do the same with [p] and [b]; children in
Spanish environments the same with [i] and [I]. But in the babbling stage, they no
longer respond to the difference, treating both sounds the same.
Remember that this starts at about 6 months of age; the early disappearance of
awareness of phonetic distinctions has great implications for second language learning
and pronunciation and lends support to the critical period hypothesis for first language
acquisition.
3. The First Words Stage
Stage 3, the First Words Stage, starts at about one year and continues for
approximately 6 to 12 months (up to approximately age 1-1/2 or 2 years old).
This stage is also referred to as the Holophrastic Stage because a "one word =
one sentence" pattern seems to exist in the utterances produced by the child. Babbling
may overlap with the production of the first words, and indeed the first words often
exhibit the same structure as babbled syllables, with a CV (consonant-vowel) syllable
used as a word. However, at this stage, meaning is attached to the syllables produced
by a child, and this characteristic distinguishes a babble from a word.
Examples of some first words include:
1.
2.
3.
4.
[no]
[da] (dog)
[ma] (mom)
[dæ] (dad).
The words produced are primarily noun-like (e.g. [da] (dog), [ma] (mom)) with
verbs second (e.g. [go]) and adjectives [ha] (hot)) third. Words also include
displeasure/rejection words (e.g. [no]). Words include social interaction words (e.g
[bai bai] (bye-bye) [nai nai] (night-night)).
As children begin to produce utterances that count as words, they continue to
develop their abilities to produce more and more individual sound segments. The
sounds they produce are typically sounds in the language of their environment, and
they add to their repertoire in a systematic way.
Developmental order of sounds articulated:
1. The full range of vowels in the native language is produced before the full range of
consonants
2. Consonants are typically added in the following sequence of manner (exampls of
sounds in each category come from English): Nasals [m] [n] [ŋ], Glides [w] [j], Stops
[p] [b] [t] [d] [k] [g], Liquids [l] [ɹ], Fricatives [f] [v] [s] [z], Affricates[tʃ] [dʒ]
3. Consonants are typically added in a front to back order of place, with certain front
sounds being delayed: labials (sounds produced with the lips) come first, then
alveolars (sounds produced just behind the teeth), then velars (sounds prodcued near
the back of the roof of the mouth), then alveopalatals (sounds produced behind the
teeth and a little further back). Interdentals (sounds produced by placing the tongue
between the teeth) come last.
4. New contrasts generally show up in the initial position first. That is, when a child
adds a new sound segment to his/her repertoire, he/she uses it as the first sound in a
word, then puts it in other positions later (i.e., in the middle or at the end of a word).
Children can perceive more sound segments than they can produce. As a result,
they will often substitute one sound for another in their own utterances. The
substitutions or alterations they make are systematic in nature; they will always use
the same sound as a substitute for their intended sound, such as always using [w] for
[l], producing [wajk] instead of [lajk] for like. The substitutions and alterations make
articulation easier until they can develop more control over the vocal tract. As control
develops, more sounds are added and a vocabulary is constructed.
Stage 4: The Two Word Stage
The Two Word stage normally begins at around 18-24 months (1½ or 2 years)
and continues for several months, perhaps shifting into the next stage at about 2½
years old.
During this stage children continue to increase the repertoire of sounds and
vocabulary they can produce according to the order of development that was begun in
earlier stages. Some notable benchmarks and features in the production of language in
this stage include:


11 consonant sounds are typically included, the specific sounds depending on
the native language being acquired.
A vocabulary of 50 or more words marks the beginning of this stage, with more


words being added.
Clear syntactic and semantic relations begin to appear, but not syntactic or
morphological markers.
There are no inflectional affixes and pronouns are rare.
Since the linguistic nature of the child's utterances is now unmistakeable, it is
interesting to note how meaning is attached to the utterances, for although they are
clearly linguistic in nature with meaning attached, they are still unlike the utterances
of adult native speakers. The utterances are different because they lack full syntactic
markings and because the limited vocabulary size is insufficient to capture an adult
perspective of the world. What is uncertain, however, is whether the child's
perspective is constrained by the lack of vocabulary or whether the size of the
vocabulary is constrained by the childish perspective. (Note the interrelationship of
language and thought in this conundrum; you should be able to see both the SapirWhorf Hypothesis and Vygotsky's theory here.)
The pictures and captions below capture some of the details and provide examples of
the thought/language conundrums present during this stage.
An utterance can carry more than
one meaning because of the absence
of syntactic and morphological
markings. The word order of the two
words matches the word order an
adult might use, but for the child, the
same two words in the same order
could have more than one meaning.
The full meaning must be derived
from the context in which the words
are uttered.
Example: Mommy sock can
mean Mommy is putting my sock on
my foot, or There is mommy’s sock.
Words are associated with meaning in
several ways, and each way displays a
limited vocabulary/perspective:
a) Whole Object: A word refers to the
whole object, not to any of its parts or
to any of its attributes. Does this mean
that a child doesn't break down objects
into individual parts at this stage of
cognitive development? Very possibly.
Example: sheep will not
mean white or woolly or leg.
b) Type: A word may be used to
refer to the type of thing, not a
particular thing. This could be a kind
of overgeneralization or
overextension. That is, the child
might misunderstand the meaning of
the word sheep and think it refers to
all animals. It could also be that the
child doesn't perceive the individual
variations betwen two types of
animals and conceptually lumps
them all together. Or it could be that
a child simply doesn't know the
words for all the different kinds of
animals and makes do with the name
of another one.
Example: A child may take sheep to
mean any animal, not just that
particular kind of animal.
Overextensions may not be a misunderstanding of a word on a child's part, but
may be a compensatory technique to overcome vocabulary limitations. The
process of overextending a word's meaning plugs a hole until the child can learn
the proper word.
Example: If it's alive, and non-human, it's a sheep!
Sheep!
Sheep!
Sheep!
Sheep!
Sheep!
Underextension may also occur. In underextension, a child doesn't use a word for
enough particular cases. It's the opposite of overextension where a child uses a word
for too many different cases.
Example of underextension: Kitty might mean the family cat, but not other cats.
Underextensions may occur because a general word (like kitty) is almost taken as a
name, not as a word. It could also be related to the prototype concept of word
meaning. The prototype theory suggests that people have mental concepts of a word's
meaning and attach a word to the concept. The concept is developed through
interaction with the world. If the family pet is what a child interacts with, but it is
unusual, then a child might not see the word for the family cat as appropriate to
another cat that lacks the unusual features of the source of the concept.
Example: If this is what kitty means in your house,
what would you use to call the animal in the picture on
the right?
Image from:
http://arnoldzwicky.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/dialect
-dangerous-to-cats/
c) Basic level assumption: a word
refers to types of objects that are
alike in basic ways. Adults will
recognize a child's meaning even
when an incorrect word is used
(from the adult's perspective)
because the word used by the child
will share the same basic features
as the word an adult would use. If a
child doesn't know the word for an
animal, he/she will likely choose
the word for soemthing else that is
alive and moves around.
Example: sheep might be taken to
mean any animal, but probably
won’t be taken to
mean rose or flower.
Thus, Disney's Bambi is
a bad example of first
language acquisition!
Copyright © : Walt Disney
Contextual clues are extrememly important for attaching meaning in this stage. An
adult may need to follow a child's gaze or their pointing in order to determine the
exact meaning of an utterance. Or an adult might need to observe what the child is
doing in order to determine the meaning of the utterance. Likewise, a child in this
stage needs to use the context to make sense of what an adult is saying.
5. The Telegraphic Stage
The Telegraphic stage occurs around the age of 2 1/2 years.
In this stage, children begin stringing more than two words together, perhaps
three or four or five at a time. However, the style of speaking children use in this stage
resembles the way of writing that used to be used in telegrams. That’s why this stage
is called telegraphic. In the past, every word in a telegram cost money, so people used
to write the shortest possible messages to save money. For example, to send the
message "We arrived in Paris on Monday," someone might write "Arrived Paris
Monday." Function words (pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions) and even
grammatical morphemes (-ed) are typically absent.
Articulation of sounds continues to develop in order described in earlier
stages. 20 consonants are articulated, and all vowels are articulated by approximately
3 years of age. All vocabulary development processes continue, and more words are
added. Utterances exhibit phrase structure, that is, they tend to follow the grammatical
rules of the language.
6. Beyond The Telegraphic Stage
The Beyond Telegraphic stage begins around the age of 3 years and continues
into fully developed language skills.
Vocabulary development continues, including its strategies of overextension. In
fact, a similar pattern of overgeneralization is used for morpheme development: -ed,
meaning past, shows up in such utterances as goed, or putted. Derivational affixes and
compounding show up early in this stage: age 3 or 4. Inversion in questions comes in
later.
To conclude, children go through approximately six different stages in learning
their native language.
The next question is, "When are they finished?" That is, "When can we say that a
child has learned language?"
The End of the Acquisition Process
One answer to the question is that a child has acquired language by six years of
age.
This makes sense if you think about it. One reason we traditionally send kids off
to school at age six is because they now have enough language to manage on their
own. There are, of course, other developmental milestones that have also been reached
(such as toilet training), allowing a child of six to manage away from regular
caretakers, but an important benchmark is the language level that they have reached.
And what do we teach kids about language at school?
Think of the three Rs:



Reading
'Riting
‘Rithmetic
Children learn to read and write: to correlate the sounds and words of the
language to the written symbols for them. That means they already have the sound
system and know the essential words of the language. They already have all the
language skills that can be learned through the natural process of first language
acquisition.
A second answer is never.
Consider the following point of the argument for this answer:
Even adults keep adding to their vocabularies. One of the hallmarks of the college
years is a tremendous increase in vocabulary. Of course, if a person doesn’t attend
college, the increase is not as significant. So the vocabulary increase may not be tied
to age so much as to the college experience.
Nevertheless, the human brain continues to develop until about age 25, and if
Vygotsky is correct in describing a codevelopment of thought and language, why
wouldn't we expect continued development of language until age 25? Of course,
Vygotsky describes the situation as more of the intertwining of language and thought,
which is a rather different from ongoing development.
Still, we should also consider that language is a system comprising phonology,
morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. In the discussions of the stages given
so far, focus has been given to these categories except pragmatics. Dr. John Madden
(personal communication) has suggested that further language acquisition stages deal
more with pragmatics than with some of the other linguistic areas.
And so the debate continues. However, for the moment, the age of six can be
taken as a key age in the attainment of language skills. A child of six can fairly readily
be said to be able to speak, something that is not as clear for young children, whose
language use is often described with mitigating terms such as "She's just starting to
talk." or "He knows some words." Rarely would one look at a six-year-old and ask the
parent, "Can he talk yet?" It's not even a question that comes to one's mind, since most
children of this age can not only talk but can also talk just fine.
Teaching Language
The fact that there is a relationship between age and language development
suggests that the age of the learner is an important factor in language teaching.
The fact that language development begins as early as birth suggests that even
preschool environments shouldn’t ignore language, especially spoken language.


The question arises whether learning a second language is the same as or
different than learning a first.
The question also arises whether learning two languages at the same time
follows the same developmental patterns in the same time frame.
These issues and questions form the basis of methods of teaching language and
differentiate L2 teaching from L1 teaching.
Source:
English Structures
First Language Acquisition
http://web.mnstate.edu/houtsli/tesl551/LangAcq/page1.htm