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
 • Mommy
• Daddy
Words known • go
by Eve at 15 • go?
months • 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
 • more grape juice
• drink juice
Eve at 18 • eating
• no celery
months • 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):

pb td kg
f s h
m n
w
 Inventory of English consonants, age 4

pb td č æ‡ kg
fv sz š h
m n N

l
w r y
• More systematic errors in phonology
child adult target child’s rule
“[gu] here” glue no C clusters
“mummy [gIb]” give syll-final Cs are
stops
“me [lIlI]” little no syllabic
consonants
“take banana Cs in word must
[m´næn´]” 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 first extensions

word referent
fly housefly specks of dirt, dust, all small
insects, child’s own toes, crumbs,
small toad
koko rooster piano, phonograph, tunes played on
crowing violin, accordian, all music, merry-
go-round
wau- dog toy dog, soft slippers, picture of old
wau 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. cf. L1
walking)
Emerges before needed. Speed of learning L1
(≈age 5)
Not the result of a Needed for L1:
conscious decision. immersion in lgc environ.

Not triggered by ‘Poverty of stimulus’:

(extraordinary) external Children exposed to
events. motherese, adult
performance
innate behavior L1

Not affected by explicit correction has no effect

instruction.
Normal stages of cross-linguistic regularities in
achievement can be learning; uniformity of
identified. resulting grammars (UG); lg
development independent of
intelligence, other cognitive
skills
‘Critical age’ for the critical age L1 cases: Genie,
acquisition of the Chelsea, Maria Noname, etc.
behavior
 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 lack of uniformity
resulting grammars of resulting
grammars
regular stages no defined stages
 Chimp studies
• 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)
¾chimps are not predisposed to learn human
language; lack latent capacity for human language
 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.