First & Second Language Acquisition (Part I) Flashcards
1
Q
How do children learn a mother tongue?
A
- they don’t learn first language as math, literature, etc.
- they are not taught their language still they learn to speak, to communicate
- children learn their mother tongue by the time they are five or six years old
- learning first language it’s like learning how to walk: you do not have to be taught how to do it
- it’s not so easy to learn the second language. We need lots of time, years of practice and still it’s not perfect in comparison with the first one
2
Q
Theories of Learning: Behaviorism
A
- theory that human and animal behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning
- ‘conditioning’ is the most important concept in this framework
- a certain response is associated with a certain stimulus
3
Q
2 types of conditioning
A
- classical conditioning: the important factors in classical conditioning are:
- the unconditioned stimulus (ex. food)
- the unconditioned response (ex. salvation)
- the conditioned stimulus (ex. the bell)
- operant conditioning: animals learn behavior pattern as the result of trial-and-error in order to get a reward or avoid punishment
4
Q
Perception of speech in early infancy
A
- experiments show that children can distinguish voiced and voiceless sounds when they are 1 month old
- if these perceptual mechanisms are innate they should be universal for all babies
5
Q
Arguments in support of universality
A
- all languages are acquired with equal ease before the child turns 4 or 5
- experiments described by Peter D.Eimas believed that we are inborn with 2-3 categorizes of voicing whether or not the distinction is important in their home language
- Janet Walker found that at 6 months all children could distinguish sounds in all different languages. By 1 year or 10 months the babies are no longer universal phoneticians, they turn into their parents
- people who learn at least 2 languages in early childhood appear to retain a greater flexibility of the vocal musculature and are more likely to learn to speak an additional language in their adult years without the “accent of their native language”
CONCLUSION: between 6 months - 1 year, the effects of the environment overrode their innate ability to distinguish the sounds of all languages - the extremely early acquisition of pitch patterns may help to explain the difficulty adults have in learning intonation of a second language
- children are predisposed to perceive some acoustic differences and not others. The differences they can perceive are important to language learning
6
Q
Evidence against Behaviourism
A
- pigeons cannot be taught to jump for food
- children do not learn by imitation
- children do not learn language by operant conditioning (rewards)
7
Q
Evidence for templating learning
A
- bees only learn odour, colour, shape of a food source
- birds are innately preprogrammed with the tempo of their species’ birdsong
- infants are innately preprogrammed with various perceptual mechanisms specific to language
8
Q
By the age 5-8 a child:
A
- will have dissected the language into: its minimal separable units of sound and meaning
- will have discovered the rules of recombining sounds into words, the meaning of individual words, and the rules for recombining words into meaningful sentences
9
Q
What does it mean to acquire a language?
A
- the emergence of language in children results in a grammar
10
Q
Grammar
A
- the mental system that allows people to speak and understand a language
11
Q
2 Reasons for believing that the development of linguistic skills must involve the acquisition of a grammar
A
- mature language users are able to produce and understand a unlimited number of novel sentences. Made possible because of the grammar they acquired as children
- their speech errors provide valuable clues about how the acquisition process works. Children’ don’t just imitate, they create their own rules
12
Q
Grammar of a language includes:
A
- rules of phonology, describes how to put sounds together to form words
- rules of syntax, which describe how to put words together to form sentences
- rules of semantics, describe how to interpret the meanings of words and sentences
- rules of pragmatics, describe how to participate in a conversation, how to sequence sentences and how to anticipate the information needed
13
Q
The study methods of language acquisition
A
- Naturalistic = diary study for extended period of time to observe development as an ongoing process in individual children
- Experimental = linguistic knowledge of different children compared at a particular point in development
14
Q
Naturalistic
A
- investigators observe and record children’s spontaneous utterances
- is longitudinal (examine over a extended period of time)
- disadvantage: speech samples only capture a small portion of their utterances
15
Q
Experimental
A
- is cross sectional = investigates and compares the linguistic knowledge of different children at a particular point in time
- tasks that test children’s comprehension, production, or imitation skills
- disadvantage: children’s ability to comprehend is usually more advanced than their ability to produce sentences, their performance can be affected by extraneous factors
16
Q
Prerequisites for language: overgeneralize
A
- all children overgeneralize or overregularize a single rule before learning to apply it more narrowly and before constructing other less widely applicable rules
- children have to hear the adult form of an irregular verb before all overregularizations are eliminated
17
Q
Overgeneralizations/overregularizations
A
- errors that result from the overly broad application of a rule
- one of the best indications that children have mastered an inflection rule is from their ability to apply it to forms they have not heard before
18
Q
Meaning errors
A
- the meanings that children associate with their early words sometimes correspond closely to the meaning employed by adults
- the match is less than perfect
19
Q
Prerequisites for language: underextension/overextension
A
- children tend to have a different range of referents from adult usage
- underextension = children use a word to refer to an object in a very restricted context
ex. using a dog to refer to their own family dog ONLY - overextension = children use a word to refer not to just one specific object, but to a whole range of object
ex. the use of doggie to any four-legged animal - another reason for overextension it to compensate for a limited vocabulary
20
Q
prerequisites for language: sentences
A
- all children speak in one-word sentences before they speak in two-word sentences
21
Q
prerequisites for language
A
- overgeneralizations/overregularizations
- overextensions/ underextensions
- speak one word sentences before they speak two word sentences
- universal grammar
22
Q
the one word stage
A
- children began to produce one-word utterances between the ages of 12-18 months
- they are holophrases = one word utterances that expresses the meaning that is associated with an entire sentence in adult speech. Children choose the most informative word that applies to the situation at hand
- at this stage comprehension is more advanced than production
23
Q
the two word stage
A
- within a few months of their first one word utterances, children begin to produce two word mini sentences
- they almost always exhibit proper word order
24
Q
prerequisites for language: universal grammar
A
- the similarities in language learning for different children and different languages are so similar that many believe that the human brain is pre programmed for language learning
- children are born with prior knowledge of the type of categories, operations, and principles that are found in a grammar (universal grammar)
25
Q
parameters
A
- not every feature of a language’s grammar can be inborn
- part of the language acquisition process involves parameter setting = determining which of the options permitted by a particular parameter is appropriate for the language being learned
26
Q
caregiver speech
A
- IS NOT NECESSARY FOR LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
- differs from others in:
- its simplified vocabulary (more limited vocabulary use)
- systematic phonological simplification of some words
- higher pitch
- exaggerated intonation and stress
- short, simple sentences, which contain fewer function words, few incomplete sentences, more imperatives and questions
- higher proportion of questions (among mothers) or imperatives (among fathers)
- more repetitions, few utterances per conversational turn
- more restricted vocabulary
27
Q
baby talk
A
- speech with a simplified vocabulary and phonological simplification of some words
28
Q
caregiver speech: how does it help in language acquisition?
A
- clear pronunciation, clear pauses help the children to understand the beginning and the end of the utterances
- a simplified vocabulary helps to make the most important words active among children
- stress is exaggerated, it helps the kids to learn the appropriate word stress
- syntactic simplification has a clear function: children construct their initial grammar on the basis of the short, simple, grammatical sentences that are addressed to them in the first year or two
29
Q
Correcting language
A
- “mistakes” made by children are actually positive signs that children are discovering the patterns of language, an essential aspect of the language acquisition process
- speech errors can tell us a lot about how language works
- it is virtually impossible to speed up the language-learning process by correcting children
- children benefit less from frequent adult correction of their errors than from true conversational interaction
30
Q
Stages and step of first language acquisition
A
- the stages are universal, every child goes through the same stages of language acquisition
- there is no specific age at which a child enters any of the following stages
- there is no correlation between intelligence and speed of acquisition
1. cooing
2. babbling
3. one-word stage
4. two-word stage
5. telegraphic speech
31
Q
cooing
A
- under 1 month or 2 months
- non-linguistic sounds
32
Q
babbling
A
- 6-8 months
- linguistic sounds that are independent of the particular language to which children are exposed to
- indicates universality
- even deaf children babble
- children from different linguistic communities exhibit significant similarities in their babbling
- variations in pitch, loudness, length (suprasegmental phenomena)
- at the end of this stage the vocalization possess all characteristics of adult speech
33
Q
suprasegmental phenomena
A
- variations in pitch, loudness, length
34
Q
one-word stage
A
- 1-2 years
- comprehension comes before production
- by age 6 most children have mastered about 13,000 - 14,000 words
- early words are concrete nouns, verbs
- out of the first 50 words produced by children, 2/3 are nouns
- each one word utterance is associated with an entire sentence in adult speech
- children learn not just meaning, but also syntax
35
Q
two-word stage
A
- 2-3 years
- increase in child’s vocabulary
- gradual onset of multi-word utterances
- many binary syntactic-semantic relations are expressed: agent-action, action-theme, agent-location, possessor-possessed, action-locative, entity-locative, entity-attrivute, demonstrative-entity
36
Q
telegraphic speech
A
- acquisition of grammar
- 3-5 years
- short and simple sentences, usually words rich in semantic content: these words are informative, have stress
- lacks function words, tense endings, plural endings, prepositions, conjunctions, articles
- fixed word order
- telegraphic = speech resembling to the clipped style of language found in the telegram
37
Q
the acquisition of function words and grammatical morphemes
A
- grammatical morphemes are acquired in a certain order. No one factors can be considered of primary importance in determining the acquisition of the morphemes
- children overregularization/overgeneralization
- each child discovers the patterns of language afresh
- order:
- s (plural), -‘s, s’ (possessive), -s (third person singular)
38
Q
the acquisition of negative sentences
A
- negative sentences are also acquired in an orderly rule-governed way (universal for all children)
1. attach “no” to the beginning of the sentence (external negation)
2. the same rule + more complex rules. The negatives appear after the subject and before the verb but inside the negated phrase
3. the use of pronouns in negative sentences
39
Q
the acquisition of semantics
A
- overgeneralization based on similarities of movement, texture, size, and shape
- narrowing-down until eventually the words more or less coincided with the meanings accepted by adult speakers of the language
40
Q
acquisition of the sound system
A
- children overgeneralize also sounds
- vowels are acquired before consonants (by age 2-3)
- stops are acquired before other consonants
- stressed syllables are more likely to be retained in children’s pronunciation than are unstressed
- substitution is involved in early language acquisition
41
Q
is there a critical period for acquiring a language?
A
- Yes!!
- the ability to require a first language in an effortless and ultimately successful way begins to decline from age 6
- there is a critical age beyond which children are not able to acquire a language natively
