First Language Acquisition Flashcards
When do people acquire first language?
~6 years of life
humans wired for language, complex process
perception procedes production
newborns distinguish between human and non-human sounds, language from parents vs others
What is the naturalistic approach?
observation and recording spontaneous speech
tape session of childs interactions with caregivers
longitudinal (with development)
barriers: misses some structures, transcribing is time consuming
What are experimental studies?
test production or respone to linguistic structures and phenomena in lab
Production: comprehension test (y/n), acting out meaning of sentence, limitation of model setences
response: heart rate, sucking rate, visual fixations, head turns
cross-sectional: compare linguistic knowledge of diff children at one point in time
barriers: some structures hard to elicit, children comprehend more than producing
When does phonology develop?
6 months: reduplicated babbling (same c and v combo)
9-14 months: non-reduplicated babling and invented words)
all children babble (asl or oral)
What is the typical phonological development order for english?
vowels before consonants
stops first
labials first, interdental and palatal fricatives last
new phonemic contrasts in first word initial position (pat/bat not cap/cab)
What are the early phonetic processes?
syllable deletion, syllable simplification, substitution, assimilation
What is syllable deletion?
unstressed syllables are deleted
stressed syllables are noticeable and maintained
unstressed syllables in final position are maintained
What is syllable simplification?
deletion of sounds to simplify pronunciation
can affect consonants
What is fronting substitution?
replacing a sound with an easier articulate
fronting (sounds moves forward) (g>d, ʃ>s)
What is gliding substitution?
Replacing a sound with another one easier to articulate
A liquid becomes a glide
r → w ex. Room [wub]
l → j
What is denasalization substitution?
Replacing a sound with another one easier to articulate
A nasal becomes a non-nasal
n → d
m → b
What is stopping substitution
replacing a sound with an easier articulate
stopping (continuant to stop, s>t, z>d)
What is assimilation?
a sounds modified by influence of neighbouring osunds
place of articulation or voicing (voiceless to voices)
When does vocabulary develop?
12 months: intelligible words
18 months: 50 words, mostly nouns, pronunciation patterns are regular
2-6 years: fast mapping, 10 words per day
What is social strategy
How children learn word meaning
importance of contextualized input and interactions (must be w a person)
What are the types of meaning errors?
overextension: giving a word a more general meaning
under extension: giving a word a more restrictive meaning
What are the types of morphological development?
over generalization (errors from applying rule broadly)
developmental sequence
What is the typical developmental sequences of non-lexicon morphemes?
bound morphemes (-ing, plural, possessive, past tense)
Functional cateogies (hard to define meaning but have grammatical function, the, a, auxiliary be)
word formation process (deviation and compounding before 4yo, n-n is most common, continues into school years, car-smoke for exhaust)
Why are the explanations for the developmental sequence?
homophones are slower to acquire
Allomorphs are any variants of a morpheme (one variant is easy to acquire -ing, several are harder -ed)
note: plural marker in nouns has different pronunciations but is acquired early
What are the early suffixes of the word formation process?
What are the stages of syntactic development?
one word stage: 12-18 months, holophrases (dada)
two word stage: 1.5-2yrs, generally correct order (baby chair)
telegraphic stage: 2-2.5 yrs, head + complement and modifier (want milk), no bound morphemes (daddy like book)
later development: 2.5yrs Wh questions, uses inontation, what & where first, inversion is hard for some
What are the external factors to language acquisition?
input and exposure
feedback and recasts:
What is input and exposure?
meaningful language use: more exposer, faster acquisition
child-directed speech: not essential
What is feedback and recast?
error correction has little effect on acqusition
feedback: correction on grammer
recast: responding with rephrasing
What are the internal factors to language acquisition?
innate hypothesis
critical period
What is the innate hypothesis?
universal grammar
general rules underlying all languages, children have exposure and make sense of rules, input from adults allows children to adopt rules and develop language
What is the critical period?
period where universal grammar can be molded to learn a language
afterward unlikely to acquire L1 sucessfully
til puberty
