Language acquisition
Reading: Files 9.2-9.4
LING 200
Spring 2003
First language acquisition
(a.k.a. developmental psycholinguistics, L1)
• How is it that by age 5 children (basically)
know their language?
• What they do along the way and why?
Overview
• Characteristics of L1
• Theories of L1
• L1 and innateness hypothesis
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 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 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
Words known
by Eve at 15
months
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Mommy
Daddy
go
go?
gimme
baba ‘grandma’
dollie
cup
what?
wawa ‘water’
nana ‘blanket’
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
• Pronouns and other pro-forms
–
–
–
–
I go 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?
Theories of L1
• Reinforcement hypothesis: children learn
by being positively or negatively reinforced
for certain kinds of behavior
• Imitation hypothesis: children learn solely
by imitating what they hear
• 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'
• ‘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:
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
č 
fv
sz
š
m
n
r
h
N
l
w
kg
y
• More systematic errors in phonology
child
adult target
child’s 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.
• Systematic semantic errors
– Overextension (broadening, hypernymy)
child’s
word
first referent
extensions
fly
housefly
specks of dirt, dust, all small
insects, child’s own toes,
crumbs, small toad
koko
rooster
crowing
piano, phonograph, tunes
played on violin, accordian, all
music, merry-go-round
wauwau
dog
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
dish
child’s dish
mow-mow
family cat
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.
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)
Needed for L1:
immersion in lgc environ.
Not the result of a
conscious decision.
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 can be
identified.
cross-linguistic regularities
in learning; uniformity of
resulting grammars (UG); lg
development independent of
intelligence, other cognitive
skills
critical age L1 cases: Genie,
Chelsea, Maria Noname, etc.
‘Critical age’ for the
acquisition of the 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
Language as a species-specific trait
• 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)
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)
– 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.