IN THE NAME OF GOD
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 Chapter 1.
Learning a First Language
 Definitions of “first language”, “second language”, “foreign language”, and “target language”
 Patterns and sequences in L1 development
 Theoretical approaches to first language learning: Behaviorism, Innatism, and Interactionism
 Definitions of L1 & L2
 Definition of “first language” (L1):
 The language(s) that an individual learns first.
 Other terms for “first language”•
Native language or mother tongue
 Definition of “second language” (L2):
 Any language other than the first language learned (in a broader sense).
 A language learned after the first language in a context where the language is used widely in the speech
community (in a narrower sense).
•
e.g., For many people in Taiwan, their L1 is Taiwanese and L2 is Mandarin.
 Definitions of FL & TL
 Definition of “foreign language” (FL)
 A second (or third, or fourth) language learned in a context where the language is NOT widely used in
the speech community. This is often contrasted with second language learning in a narrower sense.
e.g., English or Japanese is a foreign language for people in Taiwan.
 Definition of “target language” (TL)
 A language which is being learned, where it is the first language or a second, third language.
e.g., English is a target language for you now.
 Patterns in L1 Development
Characteristics of the language of children:
 Their language development shows a high degree of similarity among children all over the world. There are
predicable patterns in the L1 development and their L1 developmental patterns are related to their cognitive
development (predictability).
 Their language reflects the word order of the language that they are hearing. The combination of the words has
a meaning relationship (learning through imitation).
 Their language also shows they are able to apply the rules of the language to make sentences which they have
never heard before (creativity).
 Patterns in L1 Development
Before First Words  The earliest vocalizations
 Involuntary crying (when they feel hungry or uncomfortable)
 Cooing and gurgling – showing satisfaction or happiness
 “Babbling”
 Babies use sounds to reflect the characteristics of the different language they are learning.
 Patterns in L1 Development
First Words –
 Around 12 months (“one-word” stage):
 Babies begin to produce one or two recognizable words (esp. content word); producing single-word
sentences.
 By the age of 2 (“two-word” stage):
 1) at least 50 different words
 2) “telegraphic” sentences
e.g., “Mommy juice”, “baby fall down”
 3) reflecting the order of the language
e.g., “kiss baby”, “baby kiss”
 4) creatively combining words
e.g., “more outside”, “all gone cookie”
 Patterns in L1 Development
 By the age of 3 and 1/2 or 4:
 Most children are able to ask questions, give commands, report real events, and create stories with
correct grammatical morphemes.
 By the age of 4
 They have mastered the basic structures of the language or languages that have been spoken to them.
e.g., “wug test” –
1) Here is a wug. Now there are two of them. There are two ______.
2) John knows how to bod. Yesterday he did the same thing. Yesterday, he_______.
Through the tests, children demonstrate that they know the rules for the formation of plural.
 Patterns in L1 Development
 Development of Metalinguistic Awareness
 Metalinguistic awareness refers to the ability to treat language as an object, separate from the meaning
it conveys.
 A dramatic development in metalinguistic awareness occurs when children begin to learn to read. They
see words represented by letters on a page and start to discover that words and sentences have
multiple meaning.
e.g., “drink the chair”
“cake the eat”
“Why is caterpillar longer than train?” (a riddle)
 Early childhood bilingualism
 “Simultaneous bilinguals”
 Children who hear more than one language from birth.
 “Sequential bilinguals”
 Children who begin to learn a second language after they have acquired the first language.
 Early childhood bilingualism
 Comparing the language development of bilingual children and of monolingual children:
1. Bilingual children progress in their development of both languages at a rate and in a manner which are similar to
those of monolingual children.
2. When they go on to have schooling in only one of those languages, there may be differences in the amount of
metalinguistic knowledge and in the type and extent of the vocabulary they acquire in the two languages.
3. There is little support for the myth that learning more than one language in early childhood slows down the
child’s linguistic development.
 Early childhood bilingualism
 Language attrition for bilinguals -
“Subtractive bilingualism”

When children are “submerged” in a second language for long periods in early schooling, they may begin
to lose their native language (L1) before they have developed an age-appropriate mastery of the L2.

It can have serious negative consequences for children from minority groups.

In some cases, children continue to be caught between two languages; not having mastered the L2, but
not having continued the L1.
 Early childhood bilingualism
 Solution for “subtractive bilingualism”
 Parents should continue speaking the L1 to their children.
 Most minority language children do eventually master the majority language, but L2 acquisition takes
time.
 No evidence shows that a child’s brain has a limited capacity for languages such that their knowledge of
one language must shrink if their knowledge of the other one grows.
 L1 Developmental Sequences
 Acquisition of Grammatical morphemes
 Acquisition of Negation (to deny, reject, disagree with, and refuse something)
 Acquisition of Questions
 Acquisition of
Grammatical morphemes
Roger Brown’s study (1973):
- approximate order of acquiring grammatical morphemes
 Present progressive –ing (running)
 Plural –s (books)
 Irregular past forms (went)
 Possessive -’s (daddy’s hat)
 Copula (am/is/are)
 Articles (a/an/the)
 Regular past –ed (walked)
 Third person singular simple present –s (he runs)
 Auxiliary ‘be’ (He is coming)
 Acquisition of Negation
Lois Bloom’s study (1978) – four stages
 Stage 1: ‘no’ – e.g., “No go”. “No cookie.”
 Stage 2: subject + no – e.g., “Daddy no comb hair.”
 Stage 3: auxiliary or modal verbs (do/can) + not
(Yet no variations for different persons or tenses)
e.g., “I can’t do it “, “He don’t want it.”
 Stage 4: correct form of auxiliary verbs (did/doesn’t/is/are) + not
e.g., He didn’t go. She doesn’t want it.
But sometimes double negatives are used
e.g., I don’t have no more candies.
 Acquisition of Questions
Lois Bloom’s study (1978):
Order of the occurrence of wh- question words
1. “What” - Whatsat? Whatsit?
2. “Where” and “who”
3. “Why” (emerging at the end of the 2nd year and becomes a favorite at the age of 3 or 4)
4. “How” and “When” (yet children do not fully understand the meaning of adults’ responses)
e.g.,
Child:
When can we go outside?
Mother: In about 5 minutes.
Child:
1-2-3-4-5! Can we go now?
 Acquisition of Questions
Lois Bloom’s study (1978):
Six stages of children’s question-making
 Stage 1: using single words or single two- or three-word sentences with rising intonation
(“Mommy book?” “Where’s Daddy?”)
 Stage 2: using the word order of the declarative sentence (“You like this?” “Why you catch it?”)
 Stage 3: “fronting” - putting a verb at the beginning of a sentence
(“Is the teddy is tired?” “Do I can have a cookie?”)
 Acquisition of Questions
Lois Bloom’s study (1978) – six stages (II)
 Stage 4: subject-auxiliary inversion in yes/no questions but not in wh-questions
(“Do you like ice cream?” “Where I can draw?”)
 Stage 5: subject-auxiliary inversion in wh-questions, but not in negative wh-questions
(“Why can he go out?” “Why he can’t go out?”)
 Stage 6: overgeneralizing the inverted form in embedded questions
(“I don’t know why can’t he go out.”)
 Conclusion of L1 development
 By the age of 4, most children have passed through the developmental stages and are able to produce
grammatically correct and appropriate sentences. However, children sometimes slip back to an earlier stage in
their language production.
 These research findings show what children learn in their early language development , but they do not explain
how this remarkable development takes place. We need theories to provide explanations for the L1
development.
 Theoretical Approaches to
L1 Learning
 Behaviorism: Say what I say
 Innatism (or the Nativist Approach): It’s all in your mind
 The Interactionist Position: A little help from my friends
 Behaviorism: Say what I say
 Skinner: language behavior is the production of correct responses to stimuli through reinforcement.
 Language learning is the result of 1) imitation (word-for-word repetition), 2) practice (repetitive
manipulation of form), 3) feedback on success (positive reinforcement), and 4) habit formation.
 The quality and quantity of the language that the child hears, as well as the consistency of the
reinforcement offered by others in the environment, should have an effect on the child’s success in
language learning.
(*Do the activity on p. 10 – imitation and practice)
 Behaviorism: Say what I say
 Children’s imitations are not random:
Their imitation is selective and based on what they are currently learning. They choose to imitate something
they have already begun to understand, rather than simply imitating what is available in the environment.
(see example on p. 11, Cindy’s case)
 Children’s practice of new language forms
 The way they practice new forms is very similar to the way foreign language students do substitution
drills.
 Their practice of language forms is also selective and reflects what they would like to learn. They are
often in charge of the conversation with adults.
(see example on p. 12, Kathryn’s case)
 Behaviorism: Say what I say
 However, imitation and practice alone cannot explain some of the forms created by children. Children do pick
out patterns/rules and then generalize or overgeneralize them to new contexts. (see examples on pp. 13-14)
 “frossed”: showing the understanding of the prefix ‘de-’
 “So he can doc my little bump?”: showing the understanding of the suffix ‘er/or’
 “I’m hiccing up”: showing the understanding of two-word verbs such as ‘standing up’ and ‘picking up’
 Getting undressed – getting on dressed – getting off dressed: showing the understanding of ‘on’ and
‘off’
 Father: I’d like to propose a toast.
Child: I’d like to propose a piece of bread.
 Mother:
I love you to pieces.
Child: I love you three pieces.
 Are dogs can wiggle their tails?
 Innatism: It’s all in your mind
 Chomsky: Language acquisition is innately determined; that is, children are biologically programmed for
language (just like walking). Children develop language in quite similar ways and on a similar schedule.
 Children are born with a special ability (i.e. linguistic competence) to discover for themselves the underlying
rules of a language system. This special ability is referred to as a language acquisition device (LAD).
 Environmental differences may be associated with some variation in the rate of language acquisition, but
linguistic competence is very similar for all speakers of the same language.
 Innatism: It’s all in your mind
 Chomsky argues that behaviorism cannot provide sufficient explanations for children’s language acquisition for
the following reasons:
 The language the child is exposed to in the environment is full of confusing information and does not
provide all the information which the child needs.
 Children are by no means systematically corrected or instructed on language by parents.
 When parents correct, they tend to focus on meaning rather than form, and children often ignore the
correction and continue to use their own ways of saying things.
 Innatism: It’s all in your mind
 LAD (an imaginary “black box” existing somewhere in the brain):
 LAD contains all and only the principles which are universal to all human languages (i.e.. Universal
Grammar – UG).
 For the LAD to work, children need access only to samples of a natural language, which serve as a trigger
to activate the device.
 Once the LAD is activated, children are able to discover the structure of the language to be learned by
matching the innate knowledge of basic grammatical principles (UG) to the structures of the particular
language in the environment.
 Innatism: It’s all in your mind
 Evidence used to support Chomsky’s innatist position:
 Virtually all children successfully learn their native language at a time in life when they would not be
expected to learn anything else so complicated (i.e. biologically programmed).
 Language is separate from other aspects of cognitive developments (e.g., creativity and social grace) and
may be located in a different “module" of the brain.
 The language children are exposed to does not contain examples of all the linguistic rules and patterns.
 Animals cannot learn to manipulate a symbol system as complicated as the natural language of a 3- or 4year-old child.
 Children acquire grammatical rules without getting explicit instruction. Therefore, children’s acquisition
of grammatical rules is probably guided by principle of an innate UG which could apply to all languages.
 Innatism: It’s all in your mind
 The biological basis for the innatist position:
 The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) –
Lenneberg: There is a specific and limited time period (i.e., “critical period”) for the LAD to work successfully.
The best evidence for the CPH is that virtually every child learns language on a similar schedule in spite of
different environments.
 Innatism: It’s all in your mind
 Three case studies of abnormal language development - evidence of the CPH
(Read the case studies on pp. 19-21).
1. Victor – a boy of about 12 years old (1799)
2. Genie – a girl of 13 years old (1970)
3. Deaf signers (native signers, early learners, vs. late learners)
 Innatism: It’s all in your mind
 Summary of Innatism:
 Review all the important terms related to the innatist position – LAD, UG, and CPH.
 The innatists placed more emphasis on the linguistic competence of adult native speakers, but not
enough on the developmental aspects of language acquisition.
 A recent view of language acquisition which attracts much attention in cognitive science is
connectionism. Connectionism views language as a complex system of units which become
interconnected in the mind as they are encountered together. The more often units are heard or seen
together, the more likely it is that the presence of one will lead to the activation of the other.
 Innatism vs. Connectionism
 Though both innatism and connectionism look at the cognitive aspect of language acquisition, yet they
differ in the following:
•
Connectionists hypothesize that language acquisition dose not require a separate “module of
the mind” but can be explained in terms of learning in general.
•
Connectionists argue that what children need to know is essentially available in the language
they are exposed to. They attribute greater importance to the role of the environment than to
any innate knowledge in the learner.
 The Interactionist Position
 This position views that language develops as a result of the complex interplay between the human innate
capacities of the child and the linguistic environment in which the child develops.
 They emphasize the importance of child-directed speech: the language which is not only addressed to children
but adjusted (or modified) in ways that make it easier for them to understand.
 They are inclined to see language acquisition as similar to and influenced by the acquisition of other kinds of skill
and knowledge, rather than as something which is largely independent of the child’s experience and cognitive
development.
 The Interactionist Position
 Piaget: Language is dependent upon and springs from cognitive development. That is, children’s cognitive
development determines their language development.
(e.g., the use of words as “bigger” or “more” depends on children’s understanding of the concepts they
represent.)
 He argued that the developing cognitive understanding is built on the interaction between the child and the
things which can be observed, touched, and manipulated.
 For him, language was one of a number of symbol systems developed in childhood, rather than a separate
module of the mind. Language can be used to represent knowledge that children have acquired through physical
interaction with the environment.
 The Interactionist Position
 Vygotsky: sociocultural theory of human mental processing. He argued that language develops entirely
from social interaction.
 Zone of proximal development (ZPD): a level that a child is able to do when there is support from
interaction with a more advanced interlocutor. That is, a supportive interactive environment enables
children to advance to a higher level of knowledge and performance than s/he would be able to do
independently.
 He observed the importance of conversations which children have with adults and with other children
and saw in these conversations the origins of both language and thought.
 The Interactionist Position
 How Piaget’s view differs from Vygotsky’s:
 Piaget hypothesized that language developed as a symbol system to express knowledge acquired
through interaction with the physical world.
 Vygotsky hypothesized that thought was essentially internalized speech, and speech emerged in social
interaction.
 The Interactionist Position
 Child-directed Speech (modified language interaction):
 Phonological modification: a slower rate of delivery, higher pitch, more varied intonation
 Syntactical modification: shorter, simpler sentence patterns, frequent repetition, and paraphrase.
 Limited conversation topics: e.g., the ‘here and now’ and topics related to the child’s experiences.
 More important than modification is the conversational give-and-take. One-to-one interaction gives
the child access to language which is adjusted to his/her level of comprehension
(Read the case study: Jim – the hearing boy of deaf parents).
Conclusion: Exposure to impersonal sources of language such as television or radio alone is insufficient for
children to learn the structure of a particular language.
 The Interactionist Position
 Watch the video clip “Baby Talk” from the Interactionist position. Read the following questions first:
1. According to Bruner, in what ways do children learn syntax, semantics, and pragmatics?
2. Why do many researchers think Chomsky’s innatism is not sufficient?
3. According to Berko-Gleason, how do parents or caretakers help children with their verbal development?
4. What is the purpose for parents to play the ‘thank-you’ game with children?
5. Interactionists stress that language use is not only referential but it can be used for social purposes. Can you
give examples for these two types of purposes?
6. Why is it too simplistic to think children either memorize or analyze things they hear and then they produce
language? What example did Berko-Gleason give to support her points?
7. How do children learn ‘routinized’ phrases?
 Summary
 Each of the three theoretical approaches explains a different aspect of first language acquisition.
1. Behaviorists (learning through imitation, practice, reinforcement, habit-formation) – the acquisition of
vocabulary and grammatical morphemes.
2. Innatists (LAD/UG/CPH) – the acquisition of complex grammar (structure of the language).
3. Interactionists (social interaction) – the acquisition of how form and meaning are related, how
communicative functions are carried out, and how language is used appropriately.
 Chapter 2 First Language Acquisition
 Preliminaries:
Do children learn their L1 only through imitation? Give examples to support your point.
Why a young child is more sensitive for words like ‘apple, dog, doll’ than words like ‘atomic bomb, clone, embassy’?
(1) Theories in L1A
1. behaviorist learning theory
(popular in the 1950s and 60s)
2. the nativist approach
3. the cognitive approach
4. the functional approach
1)behaviorist learning theory (popular in the 1950s and 60s)
1. B.F. Skinner
2. Viewpoint: LL is a kind of behavior similar to other human behavior. Language is learnt in much the same way as
anything else is learnt. 都是经过刺激一反应而逐渐形成习惯的结果
stimulus → organism → response
↓
lg input
the learner
↓
↓
imitation
e.g. ‘This is a pencil → ‘This is a pencil’.
3. four steps for a child to acquire his/her L1:
imitation→reinforcement→repetition→habituation
模仿
强化
重复
成形
positive negative
good habit
positive reinforcement: praise or reward
negative reinforcement: corrections
good habit: correct performance
bad habit: errors
bad habit
4. criticisms of behaviorist learning theory
① overemphasize the external factors
② ignore the internal factor, i.e. the role of learner himself
③ overemphasize the role of imitation
case study:
5. relations with FLT (Audiolingual Method)
pattern drills
2) The nativist approach
1. viewpoint:
Children’s ability to learn a language is innate.
2. innate hypothesis: ↑
3. Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
characteristics of LAD:
Universal grammar (UG):
Chomsky’s term for the abstract principles that comprise a child’s innate knowledge of language and that guide LA
5. Behaviorist learning theory (A)
vs.
The nativist approach (B)
① A holds the view that LL is similar to the learning of other things;
B holds the view that LL is different from the learning of other things; We’re born with a kind of faculty which is unique
to LL.
② A attaches great importance to the role of language input;
B holds that input is needed, but only to ‘trigger’ the operation of the LAD
6.Weakness of the nativist approach:
·hard to find out the nature of LAD
·difficult to observe LAD
7. Contributions of the nativist approach:
It regards children’s language as a reasonable system rather than something full of errors.
3) The cognitive approach
1. viewpoint:
Children’s language development relies on their
understanding of the world or cognition.
2. its difference from the nativist approach
3. Case study
4) The functional approach
1. to probe LA not from the angle of language structure, but from the angle of language communication.
2. viewpoint:
Children can learn a language successfully for the reason that they realize language could help do things.
case study:
3. seven language functions (by Halliday)
a. instrumental function
b. regulatory function
c. interactional function
d. personal function
e. heuristic function
f. imaginative function
g. representative function
4. Communicative approach in LT
(2) L1A vs FLL
1) physiological aspect
2) cognitive aspect
3) affective aspect
4) sociocultural aspect
5) learning condition
additional comparisons between L1A and FLL:
differences:
subconsciously
① manner
consciously
meaning
② focus
structure
natural
③ envi..
formal
④ learning speed
universal success
⑤ achievement
universal failure
similarities：
① follow the same route
② similar learning strategies
e.g. overgeneralization ( *goed; *comed; *foots; *sheeps)
Assignment:
Ques. 3, 6, 7, 8