First Language Acquisition

Question 1

When do people acquire first language?

Answer 1

~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

Question 2

What is the naturalistic approach?

Answer 2

observation and recording spontaneous speech
tape session of childs interactions with caregivers
longitudinal (with development)
barriers: misses some structures, transcribing is time consuming

Question 3

What are experimental studies?

Answer 3

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

Question 4

When does phonology develop?

Answer 4

6 months: reduplicated babbling (same c and v combo)
9-14 months: non-reduplicated babling and invented words)
all children babble (asl or oral)

Question 5

What is the typical phonological development order for english?

Answer 5

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)

Question 6

What are the early phonetic processes?

Answer 6

syllable deletion, syllable simplification, substitution, assimilation

Question 7

What is syllable deletion?

Answer 7

unstressed syllables are deleted
stressed syllables are noticeable and maintained
unstressed syllables in final position are maintained

Question 8

What is syllable simplification?

Answer 8

deletion of sounds to simplify pronunciation
can affect consonants

Question 9

What is fronting substitution?

Answer 9

replacing a sound with an easier articulate
fronting (sounds moves forward) (g>d, ʃ>s)

Question 10

What is gliding substitution?

Answer 10

Replacing a sound with another one easier to articulate
A liquid becomes a glide
r → w ex. Room [wub]
l → j

Question 11

What is denasalization substitution?

Answer 11

Replacing a sound with another one easier to articulate
A nasal becomes a non-nasal
n → d
m → b

Question 12

What is stopping substitution

Answer 12

replacing a sound with an easier articulate
stopping (continuant to stop, s>t, z>d)

Question 13

What is assimilation?

Answer 13

a sounds modified by influence of neighbouring osunds
place of articulation or voicing (voiceless to voices)

Question 14

When does vocabulary develop?

Answer 14

12 months: intelligible words
18 months: 50 words, mostly nouns, pronunciation patterns are regular
2-6 years: fast mapping, 10 words per day

Question 15

What is social strategy

Answer 15

How children learn word meaning
importance of contextualized input and interactions (must be w a person)

Question 16

What are the types of meaning errors?

Answer 16

overextension: giving a word a more general meaning
under extension: giving a word a more restrictive meaning

Question 17

What are the types of morphological development?

Answer 17

over generalization (errors from applying rule broadly)
developmental sequence

Question 18

What is the typical developmental sequences of non-lexicon morphemes?

Answer 18

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)

Question 19

Why are the explanations for the developmental sequence?

Answer 19

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

Question 20

What are the early suffixes of the word formation process?

Question 21

What are the stages of syntactic development?

Answer 21

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

Question 22

What are the external factors to language acquisition?

Answer 22

input and exposure
feedback and recasts:

Question 23

What is input and exposure?

Answer 23

meaningful language use: more exposer, faster acquisition
child-directed speech: not essential

Question 24

What is feedback and recast?

Answer 24

error correction has little effect on acqusition
feedback: correction on grammer
recast: responding with rephrasing

Question 25

What are the internal factors to language acquisition?

Answer 25

innate hypothesis
critical period

Question 26

What is the innate hypothesis?

Answer 26

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

Question 27

What is the critical period?

Answer 27

period where universal grammar can be molded to learn a language
afterward unlikely to acquire L1 sucessfully
til puberty