Lecture 19 - First Language Acquisition

Question 1

What are the two positions on acquisition of first language?

Describe each

Answer 1

1. Innatist position
   
   • ​Children are born with a hard-wired Language acquisition device
   • Innate knowledge of Universal grammar
   • ‘Flipping the switch’ into whichever language
2. Socio-cognitive position
   
   • Language acquired through interaction with others
   • Children are ‘socialised’ into learning language
     
     • eg Peek-a-boo game

Question 2

What is LAD?

What does it allow children to do?

Answer 2

Language acquisition device

Allows children to hypothesise about the rules of a language

• eg Children exposed to Italian or Spanish hear that personal pronouns aren’t used, and so drop them when they themselves produce language

Question 3

What is the evidence against LAD?

Answer 3

It has not been possible to identify a location in the brain where the LAD might be

• Studies in a group of children, all with bullets in the brain
• The children all have lesions in different locations
• All children were able to go on to develop language normally
• Where, then, is the LAD located?

Question 4

What is the ‘critical period’?

Answer 4

The period during which a first language must be learnt

After this, a first language can not be acquired

• Seems to be around 13 years (onset of puberty)
  
  • Genie was 13 when found, was never able to learn language
  • Victor the wild child was able to learn language, but he was found much earlier

Question 5

What is the role of human input in language development?

Answer 5

• Human input is necessary for development of language
• Furthermore, children can not learn a second language without human input, even after learning the first
• This is demonstrated by the critical period
  
  • Without human language input before the age of 13, Genie was never able to develop language

Question 6

What is child directed speech?

Answer 6

• Adults often alter their speech when talking to children:
  
  • Prosody
  • Phonology
  • Lexicon
  • Content
• Similar to language directed at foreigners of animals (esp. dogs)
• Language is often reduced

Question 7

What is the effect of child directed speech on primary language acquisition?

Answer 7

Type of input does not seem to matter greatly:

• Use of child directed speech (baby talk) does not affect the language acquisition of children
• It is neither necessary
  
  • Children who are spoken to w/o CDS attain same language level at school age
• Nor detrimental

Question 8

Describe the role of instruction in first language development

Answer 8

Children don’t learn language via instruction, in fact, they **resist **instruction

• ‘the other one spoon’, ‘no, say the other spoon’, ‘the other one spoon’
• ‘I holded it’, ‘you held it?’, ‘yes, I holded it’

Question 9

Describe the process of phonological development in children

Answer 9

The vocal tract more closely resembles that of an ape, than of an adult human:

• Palate
• Tongue
  
  • Takes up a lot of space in mouth
• This is a clear physiological reason why babies can not produce all sounds

Process of development

1. Cooing
   
   • No phonological shape
   • Lack of fine muscle coordination
2. Babbling
   
   • 4-6 months
   • Tongue takes up a lot of space in mouth
   • Reduplicated babbling:
     
     • eg Mama, papa
   • Tongue gets used to making sounds, practicing what it feels like to move tongue around in the mouth
3. Reduction & deletion
   
   • Syllables
     
     • banana ⇒ nana
   • Final consonants are deleted
     
     • boot ⇒ bu
   • Reduction of consonant clusters
     
     • glass ⇒ das

Question 10

Describe the process of language development

Answer 10

1. First words
   
   • Minimal pairs of sounds
   • It is up to the interlocutor to interpret the meaning
   • Often refer to familiar things:
     
     • People
     • Food
     • Toys
   • Overgeneralisation
     
     • Doggie = any four legged creature
   • ~50 words by 20 months
2. Emergence of syntax
   
   • During second year
   • Combination of words
   • Telegraphic speech (loss of words without semantic content)
     
     • Determiners
     • Modals
     • Verbal inflections
     • Pronouns
3. Early two-word combinations
   
   • ​Mummy sit
   • Block red
4. Multi-word stages
   
   • ​Measured by MLU: mean length utterance
5. Vocabulary growth
   
   • ​Age 5: 20 000 words
   • Age 12: 50 000 words
   • Age 18: 80 000 words
   • Between 18 and 21 yrs there is often a period of increased expansion of vocabulary
   • The expansion of vocabulary is not simply learning new words, but learning to recognise features of words
   • Words are assigned additional meanings
   • Vocabulary continues to increase throughout life

Question 11

What is the MLU?

Answer 11

Mean length utterance - Number of morphemes in an utterance Allows us to see the complexity of utterances

Question 12

Describe Perception vs. Production

Answer 12

There is a difference between what children expect to hear, and what they produce themselves

• Phonology
  
  • Fis vs. Fish - ‘no, my fis’
• Grammar
  
  • Children who repeatedly omit grammatical elements in their speech still expect to hear these when listening to adults
    
    • Sentence comprehension suffers when the grammaticaly elements are omitted

Question 13

What is the role of genetics in language learning?

Answer 13

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