1. Draw a chart showing phonological and morphological development in Language Acquisition.

Before children can begin to acquire language, they must first separate nonspeech noise from speech
sounds. In a matter of weeks newborns can recognize their mother’s voice. From around month of age,
children can perceive the difference between 2 syllables, for instance (ba) and (pa). Children under 18
months cannot distinguish between meaningful words. For instance, they are not able to distinguish
between two toys called “Bok” and “Pok”.
The emergence of articulatory skills begin around 6 months of age, with the onset of babbling. Babbling
provides children with the opportunity to experiment with and begin to gain control over their vocal
apparatus (a prerequisite to later speech) Babbling increases in frequency until the age of about 12 months,
at which time they start to produce their first understandable words. By the time children have acquired 50
words or so, they begin to adopt regular patterns of pronunciation.
Cross-linguistic similarities in babbling: frequent found consonants: p – b – m – t – d – n – k – g – s – h
–w–j
The developmental order in which speech sounds are mastered in production and perception:
- Vowel are acquired before consonants (by age 3)
- Stop are acquired before other consonants.
- Labials are acquired first, followed by alveolars and alveopalatals. Interdentals (…) are acquired
last.
- Phonemic contrasts manifest first in word-initial position. For instance, pat – bat.
Early phonetic processes: the sound patterns found in children are very different from those used by
adults. The differences are due to a limited number of phonetic processes that replace certain sounds
with others that children find easier to produce/perceive.
a. Syllable simplification: is a process in children’s speech that involves the systematic deletion
of certain words in order to simplify syllable structure. Example: small/ma – bring/biŋ.
Another common deletion process in early child language involves the elimination of final
consonants. E.g. dog/do
b. Substitution: is a process in children’s speech that involves the systematic replacement of one
word by an alternative that the child find easier to articulate. E.g.
- Stopping: sing – tiŋ (change s - t)
- Fronting: ship – sip (change ʃ - s)
- Gliding: look - wʊk (change – w)
- Denasalization: room - wʊwb (change m – b)
c. Assimilation: is another phonetic process that involves the modification of one or more
features of a segment under the influence of neighboring sounds. E.g. tell/del
Production vs perception: children perceptual abilities emerge first than articulatory skills. According to
one study, a child who cannot produce a distinction in his own speech between two similar words is able
to point the correct object in a comprehension task.

Initially, the words of children lack any internal morphological structure. Affixes are absent and most words consists of a
single roof morpheme. Gradually, inflectional and derivational morpheme appear, marking an increased capacity for
word formation. In cases of irregular inflection of the English language (e.g. men as the plural of man) children often
begin by memorizing forms on a case – by – case basis without regard for general patterns or rules. Children may initially
produce the correct form of the words. But, when subsequently observe the generality of ‘-s’ as the plural marker or ‘-
ed’ as the past tense marker - around age 2, 6 - they sometimes incorrectly use the suffixes for the irregular forms,
producing words such as “mans” or “runed”. Errors that result from the overly broad application of a rule are called
overgeneralizations or overregularizations.

Typical developmental sequence for nonlexical morphemes:

1) –ing
2) Plural – s
3) Possessive –‘s
4) The/a
5) Past tense –ed
6) Third person sing. –s
7) Aux. be
-Factors that determine the order of acquisition of nonlexical categories and bound morphemes:
- Frequent occurrence in utterance-final position: children find it easier to remember.
- Syllabicity: morphemes such as – ing which can constitute syllables on their own seems to be easier to be noticed.
- Words with a single function are easier for children to acquire. For example, the word “the” functions only as a
determiner. Suffix – s represents 3 linguistic categories: person (third), number (singular), and tense.
- The exceptions of grammar rules hinder the language acquisition process. For example, not all the verb use –ed to
mark past tense.
- Allomorphic invariance: for example, the affix – ing is easier to acquire because it has the same form for all verbs. But,
allomorphic variations, such as the past tense endings -ed which has 3 major allomorphs (t - d – id) slows morphological
development.
Allomorphic variation: As children’s productive and perceptual abilities improve, they start to follow the rules of
allomorphic variations associated with the plural (s – z – iz) and the past tense (t – d – id)
Word formation rules: Derivational affixes and compounding appear to be acquired in a more or less fixed order.
1) Agentive – er
2) Compound
3) Adjectival –y
4) Adverbial –ly

¾ years old children often make word errors in compounds, producing forms such as “breaker bottle”. However, errors
like that, typically disappear by age 5.

2. Define Interlanguage.
Interlanguage/ “Interlanguage (IL) grammar”: Is the term for a language system produced by learners of a
second language, which has features of the person’s first language mixed with those of the language they are
learning.

3. Explain transfer and developmental errors. Provide examples.

Transfer errors and developmental errors are the two types of error in the IL grammar.
a. Transfer errors: is the term used to describe the process whereby a feature or rule from a learner’s first
language is carried over to the IL grammar.
Example: (Morphological transfer)
Spanish 1L ---------- English L2
I Espeak Espanish (Spanish doesn’t allow s + consonant sequences word-initially)
b. Developmental errors: are mistakes that children commonly commit when first learning language.
For example, children learning English as a first language sometimes produce forms like “hitted” or
“goed”, apparently overgeneralizing the regular rule for past tense formation. A similar
developmental error occur in second language learners, who also regularize rules as they acquire a
grammar. Obviously, the kinds of errors made by second language learners will be dependent on their
level of proficiently.
Example: (error type: lexical)
Spanish 1L----------English L2
My wife is embarrassed. (Meaning “pregnant”)

 Communicative competence: refers to a learne r's ability to use language to communicate successfully. Both
grammatical accuracy and communicative ability are part of the communicative competence.
Grammatical competence: has to do with the knowledge of the core component s of the grammar:
phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.
Textual competence: involves the knowledge of the rules that string sentences together to make a
well-formed text in the spoken or writing language. Links such as like, for example, and however. To
be proficient, second language learners have to acquire the ability to organize and link sentences.
Illocutionary competence: refers to the ability to comprehend a speaker’s intent, and to produce a
variety of syntactic structures to convey a particular intent in various circumstances.
Sociolinguistic competence: refers to the ability to comprehend and produce a variety of social
dialect appropriately.