Theories of L1 Acq.

Dr. D. Anderson, U. of Camb. 1

Li2: Language Variation

Theories of First Language Acquisition

Dr. Deborah Anderson

Michaelmas Term 2007

http://www.ling.cam.ac.uk/Li2

Generative vs. non-generative theories

The above terms are preferred to nativistvs. non-nativist theories, which are also used in the literature.

One reason is that it is perfectly possible for a researcher to reject the claim that children have innate linguistic ability, but nevertheless maintain that children have some innate non-linguistic ability (or abilities) that facilitate language acquisition.

Philosophical tradition

� Empiricism (Locke & Hume)

All knowledge is the product of experience.

� Rationalism (Plato & Descartes)

Some knowledge is innate.

Corresponding theoretical divide in developmental psychology:

Behaviourism (e.g. Skinner) – All behaviour, including linguistic, can be explained in terms of stimulus and response.

Nativism (e.g. Chomsky)

Experience as well as innate knowledge play a role in language acquisition.

It is generally accepted that pure empiricism, as espoused by Skinner, was effectively debunked as a credible theory of language acquisition by Chomsky in an influential paper published in 1959 (see references at end of handout).

A more contemporary divide is that which holds between:

� generative theories

most notably, principles and parameters theory

� non-generative theories

including distributive, constructivist, functionalist, or usage-based theories

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Dr. D. Anderson, U. of Camb. 2

One reasonably reliable means of distinguishing the two theoretical camps is according to whether language acquisition is viewed as involving the use of language-specific and innately-given knowledge, which is standardly termed universal grammar (UG).

As a rule, generative theories acknowledge the role of UG, while non-generative theories do not.

Theoretical preliminaries

Two defining characteristics of L1 acquisition, which any theory of language acquisition must take into account(Crain & Lillo-Martin 1999)

Universality: Every normal child acquires a natural language.

Uniformity: Every language is learned with equal ease.

The generative approach

Two core tenets of generative (ornativist) theory:

� No negative evidence

� Poverty of the stimulus

The poverty of the stimulus (P.O.S.)

“These, then, are the salient facts about language acquisition or, more properly, language growth. The child masters a rich system of knowledge

without significant instruction and despite a …deficiency of experiential data. The process involves only a narrow range of “errors” or false hypotheses and takes place rapidly, even explosively, between two and three years of age. The main question is how children acquire so much more than they experience.” (italics mine)

Lightfoot (1999:64)

The P.O.S. incorporates two separate contentions:

1) Language acquisition is achieved despite a deficiency of data/limited evidence. The input to the child is not uniformly grammatical, but contains speech errors, incomplete sentences, and other examples of ill-formed expressions.

2) Certain linguistic knowledge is acquired despite a lack of instruction or explicit evidence for the same.

Example of grammatical knowledge the child acquires which is not taught and which requires an understanding of non-obvious phrase structure relations:

(1) a. Who do you wanna invite?

b. Who do you want to invite?

(2) a. When do you wanna go out?

b. When do you want to go out?

(3) a. *Who do you wanna come?

b. Who do you want to come?

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Why is (3a) is grammatically ill-formed as compared to the rest of the sentences? (See Guasti 2002:9)

In generative theory, the focus is thus not only on the data that can be observed (e.g. the child’s production of well-formed sentences), but also on aspects of the child’s knowledge that are not directly observable (e.g. the child’s failure to produce grammatically ill-formed questions, which suggests conformance to certain syntactic rules of English).

(See Pinker 1994:271-3 or Anderson & Lightfoot 2002, Chapter 2, for further examples.)

(Fromkin et al. 2003)

No negative evidenceNegative evidence is neither reliably nor systematically supplied in the speech to which the child is exposed (i.e. the PLDor primary linguistic data)

Furthermore, even when children are provided with negative evidence, they often disregard it.

Child: Want other one spoon, Daddy.Father: You mean you want THE OTHER SPOON?Child: Yes, I want other one spoon, please,

Daddy.Father: Can you say ‘the other spoon’?

Child: Other… one … spoonFather: Say ‘other.’Child: OtherFather: SpoonChild: Spoon

Father: Other… spoonChild: Other… spoon. Now give me the other one

spoon. (Braine 1971)

Examples from Pinker (1995:119)

Parent: Where’s Mommy?

Child: Mommy goed to the store.

Parent: Mommy goed to the store?

Child: No! (annoyed) Daddy, I say it that way, not you.

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Child: (a different one): You readed some of it too … she readed all the rest.

Parent: She read the whole thing to you, huh?

Child: Nu-uh, you read some.Parent: No, that’s right. I readed the

beginning of it.Child: Readed? (annoyed surprise) Read!

(pronounced ‘red’) Parent: Oh, yeah. Read.Child: Will you stop that, Papa?

For the aforementioned reasons, then, it is claimed in the generative literature that provision of negative evidence is neither required nor sufficient for the successful acquisition of a first language.

Principle and parameters (P&P) theory(Chomsky 1981;1986)

In the P&P model of language acquisition, universal principles constrain the basic form of any grammar, while parametersspecify limited and pre-determined ways in which the grammars of individual languages may vary.

According to the theory, both types of information are specified as part of universal grammar (UG), an innate, biologically-specified mental faculty that strongly directs the course of language acquisition.

Examples of UG principles (Pinker 1994;1995)

Children are born with innate knowledge of the existence of:

(1) syntactic categories (e.g. noun, sentence)

(2) grammatical functions (e.g. subject,object)

(3) grammatical features (e.g.tense, number)

(4) case features (e.g. nominative, absolutive)

(5) phrase structure configurations (i.e. X-bar theory or phrase tree structures)

The child’s task therefore is simply to identify how these grammatical elements are expressed in the particular language he/she is learning, (e.g. English, Turkish, Chinese, etc.)

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Example of a UG parameter

Head/directionality parameter, which specifies that languages may vary in terms of whether the heads of phrases (e.g. verbs) take their complements to the left or to the right (cf. John hit the girl vs. John the girl hit).

Children acquiring English must adopt the [+ initial] value of this parameter, while children acquiring Japanese, in which heads take their complements to the left, must adopt the negative value,

[- initial]. (see Goodluck 1991)

Supportive evidence for P&P Theory

A. Children’s early sensitivity to the syntactic properties of speech

Preferential Looking Paradigm (Hirsh-Pasek & Golinkoff 1996)

Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff (1996)

14-month-old infants hear the sentence Hey! She’s kissing the keys! Subjects looked longer at the screen depicting a woman kissing some keys while holding a ball, than at the screen depicting a woman kissing a ball while holding some keys.

This would seem to demonstrate, at the very least, that infants are sensitive to the grouping of basic sentential constituents.

(But see Tomasello 2003:127-32 for an dissenting view).

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More supportive evidence

B. Creoles

Kegl et al. (1999) – Creolization of a sign-language pidgin by deaf Nicaraguan children, who were raised by non-signing parents.

Bickerton (1988) – The BioprogramHypothesis. Advanced to explain striking similarities in the grammatical properties of creoles throughout the world.

See also Newport’s (1999) discussion of children acquiring sign languages (e.g. Simon).

C. Cases of dissociation between general cognitive ability and linguistic performance

• Laura (Yamada 1990)

• Christopher (Smith and Tsimpli 1995)

• William’s syndrome

• SLI (Specific Language Impairment)

The non-generative approach

As earlier noted, non-generative theories are inaccurately described as purely empiricist since even non-generative researchers accept that certain biological factors influence cognitive – and, therefore, linguistic –development.

All such researchers, however, reject the generative notion of an innately specified, language-specific module/faculty that guides language acquisition.

“In usage-based approaches,contentless rules, principles, parameters, constraints, features, and so forth are the formal devices of professional linguists; they simply do not exist in the minds of speakers of a natural language.”

Tomasello (2003:100)

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Core tenets of non-generative theory

� Language is acquired through the application of general learning strategies and not language-specific ones.

� The communicative function of language is central, as it is language use that dictates the form of the knowledge that the learner acquires.

� The developmental course of language acquisition is subject to variation according to differences in individual ability/individual experience/grammatical properties of various languages.

Cognitive Functional Approach(Tomasello 2000, 2001, 2003)

Two fundamental abilities underlie acquisition of a first language:

1. intention-reading (i.e. theory of mind)

incorporates shared attention, direction of attention and imitation

2. pattern-finding

incorporates categorisation, distributional analysis, and making analogies

Central claim: Children’s early linguistic competence is item-based: abstract syntactic categories and ‘schemas’ emerge gradually and in piecemeal fashion.

Tomasello’s (1992) diary study of his own daughter’s linguistic development during her second year revealed that her use of verbs was considerably restricted compared to adult-like use of the same items.

At the same stage of development, his daughter used semantically similar verbs in very distinct ways:

cut (X) – Sole usage of this verb

vs.

wider use of the verb draw:

draw (W) ; draw (W) on (X); draw (W) for (Y); draw on (Z)

For draw:

“draw-er” (vs. subject)

“thing drawn” (vs. object)

“thing drawn with” (vs. instrument)

For cut:

“thing cut” (vs. object)

No evidence that argument structure of cut includes a subject or an instrument, so no evidence yet for generalization of these notions.

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Additionally:

• Morphological marking (e.g. past tense) was uneven across individual verbs.

• The best predictor of her verb usage the next day was not her use of other verbs but rather her use of the same verb. Changes were conservative, typically involving only a small addition or modification. Some item-based schemas of a 24-month-old child

(Tomasello 2003:120)

Other item-based patterns in linguistic development:

Rubino & Pine (1998) – Studied 3-yr-old child learning Brazilian Portuguese. Child produced adult-like subject-verb agreement only for those verbs that occurred with high frequency in the adult language (e.g. 1st person singular).

Berman & Armon-Lotem (1995) –Studied children acquiring Hebrew. First 20 verb forms were nearly all morphologically unanalyzed, suggesting rote-learning alone.

Notably, the cognitive-functional account strongly predicts individual variation in language development, in contrast to generative theories which typically emphasize developmental uniformity across individuals.

Reading Recommendations

Generative (or nativist) theories of first language acquisition

Crain, S. and D. Lillo Martin. 1999. An Introduction to Linguistic Theory and Language Acquisition. Blackwell. (Part I, pp. 1-70, is highly recommended.)

Anderson, S. and D. Lightfoot. 2002. The Language Organ: Linguistics as Cognitive Physiology. CUP. (Chapter 2 offers examples of potential violations of UG constraints that are not attested in child language.)

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Pinker, S. 1995. ‘Language acquisition’ in L.Gleitman, L. & M. Liberman (eds.) Language: An Invitation to Cognitive Science. 2nd ed. Vol. 1: 135-182.

Gleitman, L. & E. Newport, 1995. ‘The invention of language by children’ in L. Gleitman & M. Liberman

(eds.) Language: An Invitation to Cognitive Science. 2nd ed. Vol. 1: 1-24. MIT Press. (Contains a discussion of blind children’s acquisition of language.)

Guasti, M.T. 2002. Language Acquisition: The Growth of Grammar. MIT Press. (An advanced source)

Jackendoff, R. 2002. Foundations of Language:Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution. OUP. (See especially Chapter 4, Universal Grammar, where standard arguments against generative theory are reviewed and refuted.)

Lust, B. and C. Foley. 2004. First Language Acquisition: The Essential Readings. Blackwell. (Contains reprints of important papers, including Chomsky 1959, Lenneberg 1967 and Brown 1973.)

Russell, J. 2004. What is Language Development?: Rationalist, Empiricist and Pragmatist Approaches to the Acquisition of Syntax. OUP.

Non-generative (or non-nativist) theories of language acquisition

Tomasello, M. 2003. Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition.Harvard University Press. (Chapter 4, ‘Early syntactic constructions’, is highly recommended.)

Clark, E. 2002. First Language Acquisition. CUP. (Chapter 7, ‘First combinations, first constructions’)

Tomasello, M. 2001. ‘The item-based nature of children’s early syntactic development.’ In M.

Tomasello and E. Bates (eds.) Language Development: Essential Readings. Blackwell.

Slobin, D. 2001. ‘Form/function relations: How do children find out what they are?’ In M.Tomasello and E. Bates (eds.) Language Development: Essential Readings. Blackwell.

Snow, C.E. 1999. ‘Social perspectives on the emergence of language’ in MacWhinney, B (ed.) The Emergence of Language. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Elman, J. 2001. ‘Connectionism and language

acquisition.’ In M. Tomasello and E. Bates (eds.) Language Development: Essential Readings. Blackwell. (A short introductory level paper.)

Elman, J. 1999. ‘The emergence of language: Aconsipiracy theory’ in B. MacWhinney (ed.) The Emergence of Language. Lawrence Erlbaum.(Examines the issue of innateness from aneurophysiological perspective.)

Tomasello, M. 2000. ‘Do young children have adult syntactic competence?’ Cognition 74: 209-53.

Other sources

Bickerton, D. 1988. ‘Creole languages and thebioprogram.’ In Newmeyer, F.J. (ed.) Linguistics: the Cambridge Survey. Vol. 2: Linguistic Theory, Extensions and Implications. CUP.

Kegl, J., A. Senghas, and M. Coppola. 1999. ‘Creation through contact’ in M. DeGraff (ed.) Language Creation and Language Change: Creolization, Diachrony and Development. MIT Press.

Yamada, J. 1990. Laura: A Case Study for the Modularity of Language. MIT Press.

Smith, N. & I. Tsimpli. 1995. The Mind of a Savant: Language Learning and Modularity. Blackwell. (Discussion of the linguistic savant Christopher.)

Newport, E. 1999. ‘Reduced input in the acquisition of signed languages’ in M. DeGraff (ed.) Language Creation and Language Change: Creolization, Diachrony and Development. MIT Press. (Discussion of Simon.)