Language Acquisition Flashcards
Innateness Hypothesis
Ability to acquire language is innate, not from human cognitive abilities or language acquisition devices
Universal Grammar
Set of structural characteristics shared by all languages
Imitation Theory
Children imitate what they hear in order to acquire language
Reinforcement Theory
Children learn language through positive and negative reinforcement
Active Construction of a Grammar
The ability to create grammar rules is innate
Connectionist Theory
Claims that exposure to language develops and strengthens neural connections
Critical Period
period in development during which a language can be acquired like a native speaker
Prelinguistic Stage
Babies make noise but not yet babble, sensitive to native and non-native sound distinctions
Babbling Stage
starts at about 6 months of age
* not linked to biological needs
* pitch and intonation resemble language spoken around them
One-word Stage
begins around age 1
speaks one-word sentences (called ‘holophrastic’)
usually 1-syllable words, with CV structure
consonant clusters reduced
words learned as a whole, rather than a sequence of sounds
‘easier’ sounds produced earlier
Two-word Stage
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* *
* *
starts at about 1.5-2 years of age
vocabulary of +/- 50 words
sentences consist of two words (telegraphic) e.g. allgone sock
those two words could have a number of relations e.g. Daddy car
usually lacks function words
usually lacks inflectional morphology
Beyond Two-word Stage
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* * *
sentences with 3+ words (no 3-word stage)
begins using function words
have already learned some aspects of grammar: word order (e.g. SVO in English, SOV in Japanese) position of determiners
etc.
grammar resembles adult grammar by about age 5
Children’s acquisition of language occurs:
- quickly
- adult-like grammar after about 5-6 years
- without explicit instruction
- uniformly
- uniform stages of acquisition
- uniform results
What must a child learn while acquiring language?
- The sounds of a language (phonetics)
- The sound patterns of a language (phonology)
- Rules of word-formation (morphology)
- How words combine into phrases/sentences (syntax)
- How to derive meaning from a sentence (semantics)
- How to properly use language in context (pragmatics)
- Lexical items (words, morphemes, idioms, etc)
In what ways is sign language like spoken language?
- have gesture system (cf. phonology) * havemorphologyrules
- have syntactic rules
- have semantic rules
- have dictionary of arbitrary signs
Problems with imitation theory
Childrenproducethingsnotsaidbyadults.
* Children’s ‘mistakes’ are predictable and consistent.
* Children often fail to accurately mimic adult utterances.
* Children produce and understand novel sentences.
* Children may invent a new language in the right circumstances.
Problems with Reinforcement Theory
- ignoreshowchildreninitiallylearntoproduceutterances * rarely occurs
- fails when it does occur
- fails to explain
- children’s own grammar rules
- why children seem impervious to correction
What is the grammar acquisition process?
- Listen
- Try to find patterns
- Hypothesize a rule for the pattern
- e.g. past tense /-ed/
- Test hypothesis
- Modify rule as necessary
What is the problem with Connectionist Theory?
predicts that any pattern is learnable by humans, but this is demonstrably false
