Week 6:

Language
Acquisition

The object of study

Language acquisition is the study of the

processes through which humans acquire
language.
By itself, language acquisition refers to
first language acquisition, which
studies infants' acquisition of their native
language, whereas second language
acquisition deals with acquisition of
additional languages in both children and
adults.

Language and
communication
It is a commonly held view that language
evolved as a tool for communication.
1. Human language can be seen primarily
as a socially, or culturally determined
tool for communication.
2. Alternatively, language can be seen
primarily as a cognitive mechanism for
structuring utterances and perhaps also
thoughts.

Acquiring language
One of the complexities of acquiring
language is that it is learned by
infants from what appears to be very
little input.
This has led to the long-standing
debate between the two different
groups of scholars:

Nativist theories Chomky is the

preeminent name hereplace the
distinctiveness of language in specific
genetic endowment for a specifically
genetically instructed language module.
Under that view, there is minimal learning
involved in acquiring a language.
Empiricists like Hobbes and Locke argued
that knowledge emerge ultimately from
abstracted sense impressions.

The precise form of language must

be acquired through exposure to a
speech community. Words are
definitely not inbron, but the
capacity to acquire language and
use it creatively seems to be inborn.
N. Chomsky calls this ability the LAD
(Language Acquisition Device).

Co-evolutionary theory

There are also co-evolutionary proposals:

Language is not an instinct and there is
no genetically installed linguistic black
box in our brains. Language arose slowly
through cognitive and cultural
inventiveness.
Language began as a cognitive
adaptation and genetic assimilation.
Cognitive effort and genetic assimilation
interacted as language and brain coevolved.

Human language is made possible by

special adaptations of the human
mind and body that occurred in the
course of human evolution, and
which are put to use by children in
acquiring their mother tongue

A Critical Period for

Language Acquisition
Critical Period Hypothesis: Exposure to language
before puberty is necessary for language
acquisition.
Children with delayed exposure to language:The
Wild Boy of Aveyron. Genie
Sample utterances by Genie:
Mike paint.
Applesauce buy store.
Small two cup.
I like hear music ice cream truck.
Think about Mama love Genie.

Milestones in
Language Development

Language Stage
Beginning Age
Crying!
Cooing!
Babbling!
Intonation patterns!
One-word utterances!
Two-word utterances!
Word inflections!
Questions, negations!
Rare and complex constructions!
Mature speech!

Birth
6 weeks
6 months
8 months
1 year
18 months
2 years
2 1/4 years
5 years
10 years

Pre-Verbal Language
Development

Crying: Non-linguistic Though some language

specific elements.

Cooing: Non-linguistic. Exercising the articulatory

apparatus. Imitation and the beginning of turn-taking.

Babbling: here infants are clearly producing

syllable like sounds. No meaning attached to the

babble. Syllables are often found in repetitive sequences

(babababa). Children clearly utilise their babling to tune
their vocalisation to the sounds of the local language.
Babbling as part of the biologically determined
maturation of language abilities.
Babbling drift: Around 9-14 months infants restrict their
babbling to native language sounds.

First words

Shortly before their first birthday, babies begin

to understand words, and around that birthday,
they start to produce them. Words are usually
produced in isolation; this one-word stage can
last from two months to a year.
Children's first words are similar all over the
planet. About half the words are for objects:
food (juice, cookie), body parts (eye, nose),
clothing (diaper, sock), vehicles (car, boat), toys
(doll, block), household items (bottle, light),
animals (doggie, kitty), and people (mama,
dada, baby).
There are words for actions, motions, and
routines, like (up, off, open, peekaboo, eat, and
go, and modifiers, like hot, all gone, more, dirty,
and cold.

The Influence of Experience

on Phonological Processing

Lexical Development
Children start producing their first words around 12
months.
Words are used holophrastically: A word stands for
an entire sentence.
By 24 months they have an expressive vocabulary of
between 50 to 600 words.
Experience matters for vocabulary growth.
Privileged children hear about 2,100 words/hour.
Disadvantaged children hear only about 600
words/hour.

Syntactic Development

18-24 Months: Two-word utterances

95% of utterances: Correct word
order.
Telegraphic speech (few function
words).

Syntactic Development
How do children fit long thoughts into two word
utterances?
Children appear to use vertical constructions of
utterances (Moskowitz, 1991).
Breaking thoughts down into two-word
utterances.
Child: Tape corder. Use it. Use it.
Adult: Use it for what?
Child: Talk. Corder talk. Brenda talk.
Adults use horizontal constructions.
- Complete word-by-word specification of
thoughts.

24-48 Months: Complexity and length of

utterances increase rapidly. > normal
conversation.
How do children achieve this rapid
increase in sentence complexity and
length?

Childish creativity
Despite the obvious impact the environment has on
the
choice and general direction of mother-tongue
learning,
children are prone to come up with all kinds of words
and expressions which they have never heard in their
environment.
Daughter: Somebodys at the door.
Mother: There is nobody at the door.
Daughter: There is yesbody at the door.