First Language Acquisition

Question 1

Stages of first language acquisition

Phonology

Answer 1

•	0-8w biological noises
•	8-20w cooing and laughing
•	20-30w vocal play
•	25-50w babbling
first: articulation of sounds and syllables
(modulation of volume and duration)
later: syllables with intonation (modulation of volume, duration, pitch), adaptation to sounds of the language(s) of the surrounding environment
•	age 1y unanalysed chunks
•	age 1-4y simplified pronunciation
•	age 4-8y refined target phonology

Question 2

acquisition of phonology - perception:
- research methods

and problems?

Answer 2

• high amplitude sucking
• preferential head turn technique
• conditioned head turn technique
• attentian span experiments
• low pass filter experiments
• categorical perception

Problems:

• segmentation problem
• invariance problem
• • context-induced
• • due to speech conditions (speech rate, etc.)
• • diff. speaker identity (male, female, child, etc.)

Question 3

First Language Acquisition of phonology - production

Answer 3

babbling, variegated babbling, proto-words, schemas and templates,

simplification processes: deletions, substitutions (gliding, fronting, stopping, nasalization voicing/devoicing),

assimilations

templates, canonical forms; progressive idioms, regressions;

bottom up versus top down, similar paths, variation, practice patterns, preference and avoidance

stages of development: babbling, variegated babbling; pre-representational chunks, representational child phonology;

Question 4

first language acquisition - vocabulary

Answer 4

fast mapping, word spurt and its explanations:
- semantic feature hypothesis:
overextension, underextension

• semantic constraint hypothesis:
  taxonomic, whole object, mutual exclusivity, basic level and equal detail assumption

–> other explanations: conceptual bias, pragmatic inference, syntactic bootstrapping;

characteristics of child-directed speech which help, biological and environmental influences

Question 5

first language grammatical development

Answer 5

transitional phenomena:

• vertical constructions,
• unanalyzed chunks;
• two-word combinations;
• hierarchical structures without grammatical morphemes;
• development sequence of grammatical morphemes;

three steps: rote → over-generalized rule → correct forms;

• measures of progress: vocabulary size, MLU, Ipsyn
  comprehension strategies: order of mention, probably event, word order

early grammar: item-based, verb island hypothesis (Tomasello), semantically-based or truly syntactic

Question 6

verb island hypothesis

Answer 6

(Tomasello),

Question 7

general issues concerning First Language Acquistion

• approaches?

Answer 7

nature vs. nurture debate,
universal grammar debate

approaches:
- behaviorism,
- nativist approach,
- Piaget´s motor development (cognitive) approach,
- cognitive approaches:
– socio-pragmatic approach (Bruner, Snow),
– processing approaches (Bates/MacWhinney, Slobin),
- connectionism,
emergent systems;

sensitive period hypothesis

Question 8

sensitive period hypothesis

Answer 8

.

Question 9

Morpheme developmental sequence in First Language Acquisition?

Answer 9

1. -ing
2. plural -s
3. possessive -‘s
4. the, a
5. past tense -ed
6. third person singular -s
7. auxiliary be

–> research in 70s showed that the development of bound morphemes and functional categories (e.g. determiners and auxiliaries) take place in an orderly fashion that is quite similar across children.

–> also: frequency alone cannot explain the developmental order, bc for example the articles ‘the, a’ are most frequent in parental speech

–> instead determining factors are:

• frequent occurrence, especially in utterance-final position
• syllabicity
  (morphemes that can constitute syllables on their own)
• absence of homophony
  (‘the’ only functions as determiner, but suffix -s can mark three possible things so the resulting complication between form and meaning may impede acquisition)
• few or no exceptions in the way it is used
• allomorphic invariance
  (affix -ing Same form for all verbs, past -ed has three major allomorphs /t/; /d/ and /ed/ (mit Schwa)
• clearly discernible semantic function
  (e. g. third p. -s makes no obvious contribution to meaning of sentence)

Question 10

What are determining factors in morphological development in FLA?

Answer 10

determining factors are:

• frequent occurrence, especially in utterance-final position
• syllabicity
  (morphemes that can constitute syllables on their own)
• absence of homophony
  (‘the’ only functions as determiner, but suffix -s can mark three possible things so the resulting complication between form and meaning may impede acquisition)
• few or no exceptions in the way it is used
• allomorphic invariance
  (affix -ing Same form for all verbs, past -ed has three major allomorphs /t/; /d/ and /ed/ (mit Schwa)
• clearly discernible semantic function
  (e. g. third p. -s makes no obvious contribution to meaning of sentence)

Question 11

Word formation processes in FLA?

Answer 11

Major word formation processes in English (derivation and compounding) also at early stage of lg learning.

The ones most common in adult lg are also in children’s speech.

E.g

• er (‘doer’ –> walker)
• ie (‘Diminutive’ –> doggie)
• ing (‘activity’ –> running)
• ness (‘state’ –> happiness)

Children very creative when it comes to Compounding. Seem to learn even subtlest rules quite early, e.g. that the inflectional suffix cannot occur in a compound. Therefore when asked what you call someone who eats cookies, the answer is ‘cookie eater’ rather than *‘cookies eater’

Question 12

acquisition vocabulary in FLA

- fast mapping, word spurt and its explanations

Answer 12

o semantic feature hypothesis: overextension, underextension

o semantic constraint hypothesis: taxonomic, whole object, mutual exclusivity, basic level and equal detail assumption

o other explanations: conceptual bias, pragmatic inference, syntactic bootstrapping; characteristics of child-directed speech which help, biological and environmental influences