FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

First Language Acquisition

First language acquisition

is the process by which humans

acquire the capacity to perceive

and comprehend language, as

well as to produce and use

words and sentences to

communicate.

Children go through a

number of different stages

as language acquirers, from

the earliest stage of

producing cooing sounds

until being able to produce

complex, multi-word

sentences.

Pre-language stage

Babbling Stage: typically

lasts from the age of three to

nine months, when children

begin to develop their

articulatory movements needed

to produce the speech sounds of

their native language.

One-word or holophase stage

Holophrasis is the prelinguistic use of a single word to express a complex idea.

Around the age of 10 to 13

months, children will begin to produce

their first real words. It is important to

realize that they are able to understand

more than what they are capable to

produce. Infants begin to comprehend

language about twice as fast as they are

able to produce it.

Telegraphic speech

Two words: It begins around the age of 18

months, when children begin to use two word

sentences. These sentences usually consist of just

nouns and verbs, such as "Where daddy?" and "Puppy

big!"

Note: in this stage since utterances are so reduced,

context & situation are determinant for

understanding the message.

Multi-word sentences

As children age, they continue to learn more new words every day. By the time they enter school around the age of five, children typically have a

vocabulary of 10,000 words or more

Around the age of two,

children begin to produce

short, multi-word

sentences that have a

subject and predicate.

Negation

Even though children

understand the functions of

negation and express them

with single words and

gestures, it takes some time

before they can express them

in sentences, using the

appropriate words and word

order. The following stages in

the development of negation

have been observed in the

acquisition of English.

Negation is usually expressed by the word ‘no’, either all alone or as the first word in the utterance.

Stage one Stage two

No. No cookie. No comb hair.

The negative word appears just before the verb. Sentences expressing rejection or prohibition often use don’t.

Daddy no comb hair. Don’t touch that!

Children may add forms of negative other than ‘no’ including words like can’t and don’t. However, children do not yet vary these forms for different persons or tenses.

Stage three Stage four

I can’t do it. He don’t want it.

Children begin to attach the negative element to the correct form of auxiliary verbs such as ‘do’ and ‘be’:You didn’t have supper.

She doesn’t want it.

They may still have difficulty with some other features related to negatives.I don’t have no more candies.

Questions

There is a remarkable

consistency in the way children

learn to form questions in English.

For one thing, there is a

predictable order in which the

'wh- words emerge. “What” is

generally the first wh- question to

be used. Then they use “Where”

and “Who”, after that around the

end of the second year “Why”

emerges, and finally “When” and

“How”.

Children use single words or simple two- or three-word sentences with rising intonation.

Stage one Stage two

Cookie? Mummy, book?

Children begin to use declarative sentence with 'yes/no' questions, with rising intonation.

You like this? I have some?

Gradually, children notice that the structure of questions is different and begin to produce questions such as:

Stage three Stage four

Can I go? Are you happy?

Children begin to use subject-auxiliary inversion and can even add 'do'.

Do dogs like ice-cream?

However, children tend to generalize that all questions are formed by putting a verb at the beginning of a sentence.

Is the teddy is tired? Do I can have a

cookie?Why you don’t have

one? Why you watched it?

Children eventually combine inversion in yes/no question and wh-questions.

Stage five Stage six

Are these your boots? Why did you do that?

Does daddy have a car?

Finally, wh- words appear in subordinate clauses or embedded questions.

Do you know where the ball is?

Why the teddy bear can’t go outside?

Negative question may still be a bit too difficult.