Language acquisition
LING 200
Spring 2003
First language acquisition
(a.k.a. developmental psycholinguistics, L1)
• How is it that by age 5 children know their
language?
• What they do along the way and why?
Methods for studying L1
• Production studies
– Spontaneous productions (diary studies)
– Elicited productions
• “which doll should he pick up?”
– Introspection
• “Can you say ‘What did the hippo do?’”
Methods for studying L1
• Comprehension studies
– Perception tasks
• present, then change stimulus; measure pacifier
sucking rate, heart beat
– Judgement tasks
• "The hippo fell over. Is that right?"
– Act-out tasks
• "make the hippo jump over the rhino, then make
bullwinkle jump over him."
Production vs. comprehension
• 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.”
L1 milestones
• Babbling: 4-20 months
• One-word: 12-18 months
• Two-word: 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
Babbling
• 12 months:
– relatively long sequences of gibberish
– possibly with intonation
• (12-13 months: first words)
• 18-20 months: babbling ceases
Characteristics of babbling
• Early babbling is largely independent of
what sounds are heard
– deaf children babble
– hearing children of deaf parents babble
– sounds produced may not be those heard in
child's linguistic environment
Characteristics of canonical
babbling
• Simple syllable structure (CV)
• Simple consonants and vowels
– most common consonants:
• stops, /s/, /m n/, glides, /h/
– infrequent consonants:
• other fricatives, affricates, liquids, [N]
– voiceless aspirated stops common in input to
English babies, rare in 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
Later correlates of babble
• Greater amount and complexity of babble
correlates with
– vocabulary size, 18-24 months
– phonological development, 36 months
– age of onset of meaningful speech
• Lesser amount of babble often correlates
with
– later speech and language disorders
Functions of babble(?)
• Establishes an auditory feedback loop
• Provides motor practice
• Stimulates adult-infant interactions
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
Words known
by Eve at 15
months
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Mommy
Daddy
go
go?
gimme
baba ‘grandma’
dollie
cup
what?
wawa ‘water’
nana ‘blanket’
One-word stage
• Phonological properties of words
– 52 children, mean 15 months
• Syllable structure
– 37% CVCV
– 26% CV(V)
– 10% CVC
• C1 = C2 (85%)
• Frequency
– most common initial: /b d m/
– most common V__V: /d b m/
– most common final: /t s k/
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
Eve at 18
months
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
more grape juice
drink juice
eating
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
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Put my pencil in there.
I go get a pencil ‘n write.
Don’t stand on my ice cubes.
I put them in the refrigerator to freeze.
An’ I want to take off my hat.
You come help us.
Just like Mommy has, and David has, and Sara has.
What is that on the table?
We’re going to make a blue house.
You make a blue one for me.
Eve at 27 months
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
I have a fingernail.
And you have a fingernail.
This is not better.
See, this one better but this not better.
There some cream.
Put in you coffee.
They was in the refrigerator, cooking.
That why Jacky comed.
How ‘bout another eggnog instead of cheese
sandwich?
Theories of first language acquisition
• Imitation hypothesis: children learn solely by
imitating what they hear
• Reinforcement hypothesis: children learn by
being positively or negatively reinforced for
certain kinds of behavior
• Active construction of grammar hypothesis:
children are actively constructing and refining a
grammar of the language of their environment
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'
• ‘Don’t eat her yet. She’s smelly!’ (wants mother to
change sister’s diaper before feeding her)
• ‘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.’
‘Who growed it?’ (referring to potted plant)
Child:
Child:
My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we
patted them.
Did you say your teacher held the baby
rabbits?
Yes.
Adult:
What did you say she did?
Child:
Adult:
She holded the baby rabbits and we patted
them.
Did you say she held them tightly?
Child:
No, she holded them loosely.
Adult:
Grammar construction hypothesis
• Children make systematic, not random,
errors
– In phonology. Inventory of English consonants
(age 2):
pb
td
f
s
m
n
w
kg
h
Inventory of English consonants, age 4
pb
td
c  k g
fv
sz
š
m
n
N
l
w
r
h
j
• More systematic errors in phonology
child
target
rule
“[gu] here”
glue
no C clusters
“mummy
[gIb]”
“me [lIlI]”
give
“take
[mnæn]”
banana
syll-final Cs
are stops
only vowels
as syll peak
all Cs in word
must be oral
or nasal
little
• 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.
Acquisition summary thus far
• Regular stages of L1 can be identified
• Theories of L1
– only imitation
– only reinforcement
– grammar construction
• errors are systematic
• evidence of evolving grammar
– phonology
– morphology
• Systematic semantic errors
– Overextension (broadening, hypernymy)
child’s first referent
word
fly
housefly
koko
rooster crowing
wauwau
dog
extensions
specks of dirt, dust, all small
insects, child’s own toes, crumbs,
small toad
piano, phonograph, tunes played
on violin, accordian, all music,
merry-go-round
toy dog, soft slippers, picture of
old man in furs, all animals
• Systematic semantic errors
– Underextension (narrowing, hyponymy)
child’s word
first referent (no extensions)
car
family Pontiac
plant
fern in kitchen
dish
child’s dish
mow-mow
family cat
• Systematic syntactic errors: acquisition of negation
stage
productions
rule
1
No a boy bed.
More...no.
Don’t bite me yet.
That no Mommy.
No square is...clown.
Touch the snow no.
I didn’t did it.
I am not a doctor.
no/not: sentence edge.
2
3
no/not/can’t/don’t:
after subject, before V
no/not: sentence edge.
no/not/can’t/don’t/won
’t/isn’t: after subject,
before V
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.
Innateness hypothesis
• Noam Chomsky (1988) Language and
Problems of Knowledge:
...language appears to be a true species
property, unique to the human species in its
essentials and a common part of our shared
biological endowment, with little variation
among humans apart from rather serious
pathology. (p. 2)
Do only humans have language?
• Noam Chomsky:
...the language faculty does appear to be a unique human possession. Other
organisms have their own systems of communication, but these have properties
radically different from human language...In the past years there have been
numerous efforts to teach other organisms (forexample, chimpanzees and gorillas)
some of the rudiments of human language, but it is now widely recognized that these
efforts have failed, a fact that will hardly surprise anyone who gives some thought to
the matter. The language faculty confers enormous advantages on a species that
possesses it. It is hardly likely that some species has this capacity but has never
thought to use it until instructed by humans. That is about as likely as the discovery
that on some remote island there is a species of bird that is perfectly capable of flight
but has never thought to fly until instructed by humans in this skill. Although not a
logical impossibility, this would be a biological miracle, and there is no reason to
suppose that it has taken place. Rather, as we should have expected all along, the
evidence suggests that the most rudimentary features of human language are far
beyond the capacity of otherwise intelligent apes, just as the capacity to fly or the
homing instinct of pigeons lie beyond the capacity of humans.
Chimp studies
• Summary of attempts to teach chimps English,
ASL, manipulation of symbols
• Chimps show some spontaneity, creativity
• Skills comparable to 1-2 year old child
• Don't get past 2-3 word stage
• Limited syntax. Trouble with:
– word order
– structure dependent operations (e.g. conjunction)
Language as a species-specific
property
• Chimps:
– are capable of learning some aspects of human
language
– are not predisposed to learn human language
– lack latent capacity for human language
Innate behaviors
innate
not innate
walking
skating, playing football
speaking or signing a
language
reading or writing a
language
Characteristics of innate behaviors
innate behavior
L1
Emerges before needed.
Speed of learning L1 (age 5)
Not the result of a
conscious decision.
Needed for L1:
immersion in lgc environ.
Not triggered by
(extraordinary) external
events.
‘Poverty of stimulus’:
Children exposed to
motherese, adult
performance
innate behavior
L1
Not affected by explicit
instruction.
correction has no effect
Normal stages of achievement cross-linguistic regularities in
can be identified.
learning; uniformity of
resulting grammars (UG); lg
development independent of
intelligence, other cognitive
skills
‘Critical age’ for the
critical age L1 cases: Genie,
acquisition of the behavior
Chelsea, Maria Noname, etc.
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
Creoles and L1
• Pidgin
–
–
–
–
No native speakers
Derived from two or more languages in contact
Lexicon typically relatively small
Variable and relatively simple grammar
• E.g. Chinook Jargon
Creole
• Pidgin that has undergone L1 for some
speech community
• Examples
– Hawaiian Creole
– Jamaican Creole
Claimed characteristics of creoles
• Relatively uniform (in contrast to great
variability of pidgins)
• Fully expressive
• substantial lexicons
• grammar not ‘simple’
Hawaiian Creole marking of
tense/aspect
• past/perfect bin or wen; bin get ‘there
was’:
• Bin get one wahine she get three daughter.
‘There was a woman who had three
daughters.’
• habitual/present stay:
• John them stay cockroach the kaukau. ‘John
and his friends are stealing the food.’
Implications of creoles for
Innateness Hypothesis
• Derek Bickerton (U. Hawaii):
– ‘since creoles must have been invented in
isolation, it is likely that some general ability,
common to all people, is responsible for the
linguistic similarities’
– i.e., creoles owe their uniform complexity to L1
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.