Language Acquisition Flashcards
Innateness Hypothesis
our ability to acquire (human) language is innate (genetically encoded)
Language Acquisition Device (LAD)
a purported instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language
Universal Grammar (UG)
set of structural characteristics shared by all languages
sign languages
languages that use the visual-manual modality to convey meaning.
Theories of Acquisition
Imitation, Reinforcement, Active Construction of a Grammar, Connectionist Theories
Imitation
children imitate what they hear
Reinforcement
children learn through positive and negative reinforcement
Active Construction of a Grammar
Children invent grammar rules themselves, Ability to develop rules is innate.
Connectionist Theories
Claims that exposure to language develops and strengthens
neural connections
Critical Period Hypothesis
there is a critical period in development during which a language can be acquired like a native speaker
Stages of Development
Prelinguistic, Babbling, One-word, two-word, beyond 2-word stage
Babbling
- starts at about 6 months of age
- not linked to biological needs
- pitch and intonation resemble language spoken around them
One-word
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
- 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
- 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
Language Acquisition
- All (normal) human children…
- learn a language.
- can learn any language they are exposed to.
- learn all languages at basically the same rate.
- follow the same stages of language acquisition.
Prelinguistic
- babies make noises, but not yet babbling
- crying, cooing
- response to some stimuli (hunger, discomfort…)
- sensitive to native and non-native sound distinctions
Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS)
the “surface” skills of listening and speaking which are typically acquired quickly by many students; particularly by those from language backgrounds similar to English who spend a lot of their school time interacting with native speaker
Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP)
the basis for a child’s ability to cope with the academic demands placed upon her in the various subjects
additive bilingualism
the first language continues to be developed and the first culture to be valued while the second language is added
subtractive bilingualism
the second language is added at the expense of the first language and culture, which diminish as a consequence
context-embedded task
one in which the student has access to a range of additional visual and oral cues; for example he can look at illustrations of what is being talked about or ask questions to confirm understanding
context-reduced task
one such as listening to a lecture or reading dense text, where there are no other sources of help than the language itself
Structure Dependency
language is organized in such a way that it crucially depends on the structural relationships between elements in a sentence
Parameters
determine the ways in which language can vary
Head Parameter
specifies the position of the head in relation to its compliments within phrases for different languages
surface structure
represents the physical properties of language
deep structure
represents the core semantic relations of a sentence, and is mapped on to the surface structure via transformations
minimalism
aims at the further development of ideas involving economy of derivation and economy of representation in transformational theory
economy of derivation
a principle stating that movements (i.e. transformations) only occur in order to match interpretable features with uninterpretable features
economy of representation
the principle that grammatical structures must exist for a purpose, i.e. the structure of a sentence should be no larger or more complex that required to satisfy constraints on grammaticality
interpretable features
features that have a semantic content
uninterpretable features
features that are devoid of a semantic content
uniform
rules should not be stipulated as applying at arbitrary points in a derivation, but instead apply throughout derivations
transformation
a rule that takes an input typically called the deep structure and changes it in some restricted way to result in a surface structure
generalized transformations
takes small structures which are either atomic or generated by other rules, and combines them like embedding
Cognitive Theory
language acquisition must be viewed within the context of a child’s intellectual development
input Theory
parents do not talk to their children in the same way as they talk to other adults and seem to be capable of adapting their language to give the child maximum opportunity to interact and learn
steps for children to learn language
imitation, repetition, memorization, controlled drilling, reinforcement
nativist or innateness theory
children must be born with an innate capacity for language development
