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Language Acquisition Assignment

This document summarizes Monika Apriliana's language acquisition assignment responses. It addresses questions about the definition of first and second language acquisition, whether children learn language through imitation, correction/reinforcement, structured input, analogy, or an innate language acquisition device. Monika explains that while imitation, correction, and input play some role, children are not simply parroting language but rather use linguistic rules to creatively produce novel utterances.

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943 views3 pages

Language Acquisition Assignment

This document summarizes Monika Apriliana's language acquisition assignment responses. It addresses questions about the definition of first and second language acquisition, whether children learn language through imitation, correction/reinforcement, structured input, analogy, or an innate language acquisition device. Monika explains that while imitation, correction, and input play some role, children are not simply parroting language but rather use linguistic rules to creatively produce novel utterances.

Uploaded by

Monika
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Language Acquisition Assignment

Name : Monika Apriliana


Class : 405-406
NIM : 2201417127

1. What is language acquisition?


Answer : 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. Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human traits because
nonhumans do not communicate by using language.

2. Define the concept of 1st language acquisition!


Answer : Language acquisition usually refers to first language acquisition which studies
infants of their native language.

3. Define the concept of 2nd language acquisition!


Answer : Second language acquisition which deals with the acquisition in both children
and adult of additional languages in addition to speech reading and writing. A language
with an entirely different script compounds the complexities of true foreign language
literacy linguists who are interested in child language acquisition for many years.

4. Do children learn language through imitation? Elaborate your answer!


Answer : Imitation is involved to some extent. But the early words and sentences that
chikdren produce show that they are not simply imitating adult speech. Even when children
are trying what they hear, they are unable to produce sentences outside of the rules of their
developing grammar. Imitation also fails to account for the fact that children who are
unable to speak for neurological or psysiological reasons are able to learn the language
spoken to them and understand it.
The role of imitation in language acquisition is examined, including data from the
psycholinguistic, operant, and social learning areas. From psycholinguistic data, four
empirical statements have been extracted :
1. There is no evidence that spontaneous imitations of adult speech influence grammatical
development.
2. Imitation of speech does not appear to occur with frequency beyond age 3 years.
3. Speech and hence imitation are not necessary for the comprehension of linguistic
structures.
4. Most utterances of a child are novel and therefore could not have been exactly modeled.

Children are not hearing children, they are not only picking up the sounds of the language
that they use but they are also picking up what’s called prosody and this is the melody of
language.

5. Do children learn language through correction and reinforcement? Elaborate your


answer!
Answer : Children learn to produce correct (grammatical) because they are positively
reinforced when they say something grammatical and negatively reinforced (corrected)
when they say something ungrammatical. Correction seldom occurs, and when it does, it
is usually for mispronounciations or incorrect reporting of fact and not for “bad grammar”.
Children do not know what they are doing wrong and are unable to make corrections even
when they are pointed out.

6. Do children learn language through structured input? Elaborate your answer!


Answer :In our culture adults do typically talk to young children in a special way. We tend
to speak more slowly and more clearly, we may speak in a higher pitch and exaggerate our
intonation, and sentences are generally grammatical. Although infants prefer to listen to
motherese over normal adult speech, studies show that using motherese does not
significantly affect the child’s language development. Analogy, imitation, and
reinforcement cannot account for language developmentbecause they are based on the
(implicit or explicit) assumption that what the child acquires is a set of sentences or forms
rather than a set of grammatical rules.
7. Do children learn language through analogy? Elaborate your answer!
Answer : Children put words together to form phrases and sentences by analogy, by hearing
a sentence and using it as a model to form other sentences. But this is also problematic, as
Lila Gleitman, an expert on developmental psycholinguistics, point out :
Suppose the child has heard the sentence “I painted a red barn.” So now, by analogy, the
child can say “I painted a blue barn.” That’s exactly the kind of theory that we want. You
hear a sample and you extend it to all of the new cases by similarity. In addition to “I
panited a red barn” you might also hear the sentence “I painted a barn red.” So it looks as
if you take those last two words and switch their order. So now you want to extend this to
the case of seeing, because you want to look at barns instead of paint them. So you have
heard, “I saw a red barn.” Now you try (by analogy) a… new sentence “I saw a red barn”
something’s gone wrong. This is an analogy, but the analogy didn’t work. It’s not a
sentence of English.

8. Explain the concept of The Innateness Hypothesis! See introduction to language p.330
Answer : According to the innateness hypothesis, the child extracts from the linguistic
environment those rules. It provides an answer to the logical problem of language
acquisition posed by Chomsky : what account for the ease, rapidity, and uninformity of
language acquisition in the face of impoverished data? The answer is that children acquire
a complex grammar quickly and easily without any particular help beyond axposure to the
language because they do not start from scratch.
The innateness hypothesis also predicts that all languages will confirm to the principles of
UG.

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