First language acquisition

LING 200

Spring 2006

Overview

• Questions about first language acquisition (L1)

• Characteristics of L1

• Theories of L1

• L1 and innateness hypothesis

First language acquisition

• How is it that by age 5 children (basically) know their language?

• What they do along the way and why?

•An example of what is so impressive about L1 (clip from Acquiring Language) (acquisition.mov)

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 early babbling

• Largely independent of what sounds are heard in child’s lgs environment

• Everybody babbles– deaf children babble – hearing children of deaf parents 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

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’

Production vs. comprehension

• At all(?) stages of L1, 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.”

– Recognition of meaning conveyed by word order precedes ability to produce long sentences. Another clip from Acquiring Language (bigbird.mov)

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?

Some theories of L1

• Reinforcement hypothesis• Imitation hypothesis• Active construction of grammar hypothesis

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: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.

Adult: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits?

Child: Yes.

Adult: What did you say she did?

Child: She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.

Adult: Did you say she held them tightly?

Child: No, she holded them loosely.

Grammar construction hypothesis• Children make systematic, not random,

“errors” – In phonology. Inventory of English consonants

(age 2):

p b t d k g

f s h

m n

w

Inventory of English consonants, age 4

p b t d č k g

f v s z š h

m n

l

w r y

• More systematic errors in phonology

child adult target child’s rule

“[gu] here” glue no C clusters

“mummy [gb]”

give syll-final Cs are stops

“me [ll]” little no syllabic consonants

“take [mnæn]”

banana Cs in word must be all oral or all nasal

• 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– Underextension (narrowing, hyponymy)

child’s word first referent (no extensions)

car family Pontiac

dish child’s dish

mow-mow family cat

• 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

wau-wau

dog toy dog, soft slippers, picture of old man in furs, all animals

Syntactic errors

• May resemble well-formed sentences in other languages

• A clip from Acquiring the human language, childerror1.mov

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.

• UG and L1. Clip from Acquiring Language, elgin.mov

Characteristics of innate behaviors

Innate behavior (e.g. walking)

cf. 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 can be identified.

cross-linguistic regularities in learning; uniformity of resulting grammars (UG); lg development independent of intelligence, other cognitive skills

‘Critical age’ for the acquisition of the behavior

critical age L1 cases: Genie, Chelsea, Maria Noname, etc.

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 resulting grammars

lack of uniformity of resulting grammars

regular stages no defined stages

• 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)

chimps are not predisposed to learn human language; lack latent capacity for human language

Chimp studies

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.