introduction _____________________________________ first language acquisition neal r. norrick...

Introduction _____________________________________

First Language Acquisition

Neal R. NorrickSaarland University

Outline

1. First Language Acquisition

2. Developmental sketch

3. Natural order of acquisition

4. Innateness Debate

5. Development of the Innateness Debate

6. Writing grammars for stages of acquisition

7. Trace the history of research in Language Acquisition

8. References

1. First Language Acquisition

• Natural acquisition with no special learning necessary

• Critical period resulting from a combination of factors:– development of connections between nerve cells– myelination of nerve cells– lateralization of brain functions– dominance of left hemisphere– corresponding development of motor skills– general cognitive stages of development (Piaget)


Age Language General9 babbling crawling

10 first words recurrent, maintained

(ba)nana(na) for

'banana, food, mama'

standing up,

claps hands,

holds spoon

11 5-10 recurrent words;

fulfills requests like:

bring me the blue ball

first steps,

recognizes pictures in books

12 5 distinct vowels,

5 distinct consonants

starts walking


Age Language General13 recognizable words

Daddy, nein, ball, allgone

running,

climbing furniture

14 imitations: horse, train

reduplications: choochoo, byebye, taktak ‘clock’

simple puzzles,

turns book pages

16 20+ words

recognizes own name,

points to himself: Where’s Nicky?

18 Vocabulary explosion,

2-word units: ducky allgone,

Nicky haben

climbs stairs without rail


Age Language General20 3-word units: Nicky cookie haben

also: haben Nicky cookie

hangs on monkey bars;

points to eyes, nose, mouth

22 verb + particle: lock up, deck zu

4-word units:

Mami Auto fahren kauft

Inni gute Nacht sagen

dramatic play;

stuffed animals, dolls

24 Verb endings: Inni spuckt bisschen

statement: Nicky auch essen

question: Nicky auch essen, ja?

command: Nicky auch essen

word formation: cutter ‘knife’

auskleben ‘tear apart’ umwärts

kicks soccer ball,

plays hide-n-seek,

draws details: ears, tails, wheels


Age Language General26 Particles:

Mami ist weggegingt

das ist runtergefallt

Comparison:

Pferdchen ein kleineres

Mond größer als Daddy

Monologues/stories:

Mami kommt darein, tic-tac

Danke, Post schickt dadi

draws objectively identifiable figures,

recognizes colors

27 Future orientation: Let’s build a castle, I’ll put it in

sings melodies


Age Language General28 Recursive structures:

Ich weiß nicht, wen der Deckel verloren hat.

Questions with when, how

counts to 5,

recognizes letters: N, C, O

30 Conditionals:

Ich suche, ob ich den Hase finde.

Timmy ist traurig, wenn das Osterhäschen hier schläft.

Plans:

I want to read a book about a story


Age Language General32 First real narratives:

It was a wooden lamby

And it was on the floor in a barn

And they took it home

And they washed it

And it wasn't ugly

builds Legos;

draws people beside tree and house with chimney and windows

34 Reports on TV program:

Plötzlich kamen zwei Krokodile und haben das Kälbchen ge'essen

Reports on activities:

I'm pretending this is a castle

Predicts:

It's gonna be real beautiful, you're gonna love it

learns to peddle trike


Age Language General36 Phonetics:

Voiced th: initial okay in the, this etc

medial v in other

Voiceless th: initial s in sing

final f in both

vocalizes final l and r

mispronunciations: amimals,

cimamon, pasketti

Morphology:

double plurals: mens, feets, mices

double preterites: sawed, standed

regularized preterites: goed, sitted

reverse word-formations: popcorner

mowgrasser


Age Language General36 Syntax:

Negation:

I see it not That doll sits not right

Questions:

What it did? What the lady said?

Counting:

1 2 3 4 5 6 20 14 fiveteen 16

Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) as standard measure of first language development as opposed to age


• "Why mama and papa?" Jakobson• maximum contrast• CV syllable• reduplication


• Order of acquisition for syntax

– one-word utterances with holistic meaning– two-word utterances with no fixed word order– three-word utterances without inflections, prepositions

or other markers– then they begin to acquire syntax


• Brown's (1973) order of acquisition for syntax:

1. present progressive girl playing

2. prepositions ball in water

3. plural toys, dishes


• Innateness: Assume children know innately what they cannot learn by observation

• Chomsky (1986: 150) writes:What we "know innately" are the principles of the various subsystems [phonology, syntax, thematic structure etc] of So [the initial state of the child's mind] and the manner of their interaction, and the parameters associated with these principles. What we learn are the values of the parameters and the elements of the periphery (along with the lexicon to which similar considerations apply).


That is: we "know innately" that sentences will have noun phrases and verb phrases in some order, but we have to learn the order

We need input to learn the whole vocabulary of our language, including the special syntactic properties of the vocabulary we learn

We need input to set parameters like word order, use of cases versus prepositions etc

And we need input for the periphery, i.e. all the structures and rules characteristic for the particular language we hear


• But if input supplies all this information, shouldn't it supply enough information to learn the basic principles?

• But why separate language ability from all other cognitive skills?

• Is human language qualitatively different from animal language?


• Consider Hockett’s “design features” of language:

– Arbitrariness: no relation between word and concept – Duality of patterning: two independent structural levels:

• phonology, syntax; higher-level segments (words) are composed of lower-level (phonemes) segments

– Displacement: no causal connection between utterance and context

– Reflexivity: language can focus metalingually on itself– Prevarication: language can function to deceive or

misinform


• Vocabulary:

– Webster’s dictionary 500,000 words

– Average educated person’s vocabulary: 40,000 (and another 40,000 proper names, idioms, sayings)

– monolingual speakers acquire about 3,000 words per year

– or about 8 words every day


• Even within the Chomskyan scheme, there is debate on whether the principles and parameters are complete in the newborn child (like the heart) or whether they develop over time (like the teeth, which slowly grow and appear, then are replaced by an adult system)


• Poverty of Stimulus Argument Some patterns in language are unlearnable from positive

evidence alone due to the hierarchical nature of languages – You are happy.– Are you happy?

• Possible rules: (1) the first auxiliary verb in the sentence moves to the front(2) the 'main' auxiliary verb in the sentence moves to the front


• But compare:– The girl who is on the bus is happy.– *Is the girl who __ on the bus is happy?– Is the girl who is on the bus __ happy?

Children do not see sentences like this enough to decide which rule works but nobody ever chooses the wrong

rule


• Grammaticality judgments:

– Who do you think Mary knows?– Who do you think that Mary knows?– Who do you think knows Mary?– *Who do you think that knows Mary?


• Note translations– Chomsky posits LAD and UG– Child Language researchers countered by showing

caregivers using simple, grammatical sentences as well as repetitions & expansions

• Kevin (20 months, 21 days) takes puppetKevin: Dougall. Dougall, Dougall.Mother: He's a lovely Dougall, isn't he?

• Eileen (24 months, 8 days) points puppet toward televisionEileen: Skippy a telly.Mother: That's Skippy on the telly.


• Chomsky argues competence requires negative evidence as basis for grammaticality judgments– Al is easy to please - It is easy to please Al– Sue is eager to please - *It is eager to please Sue

• Child Language researchers claim kids learn to make grammaticality judgments only later (in school)

• argue that judgments are based on semantic factors– It is eager unacceptable for ungrammatical reasons


• Gold proves mathematically that natural languages are unlearnable in principle without negative evidence

• Child Language researchers show caregivers making corrections, esp. in expansions (as above) and responses

Billy: Daddy fixit?Father: Yeah. Daddy'll fix it for you.

Janik(4,8): Mami, ich will mit dich.Mother: Mit?Janik: Dir.


• Chomskyites argue that caregivers are more concerned with truth and appropriateness of kids' talk than grammaticality

• They find language communities where kids receive little if any controlled input or feedback from caregivers, and they learn language anyway

• Child Language researchers went back to study input, e.g. as a register like foreigner talk

• This led to study of interaction and hence to kids developing pragmatic competence, including interaction between kids


• We find kids correct each other from c. 4 1/2 yrs on

Nick (4;3): I'm his- I'm a Santa. Who are you? Coco (2;7): Santa Mrs.Nick: No, Mrs. Santa. Come on, let's break the other

people's house down.

Coco (3;2): Und sie waren in dem Wald in die Nacht.Nick (4;10): In der Nacht.


• Due to influence of linguistic pragmatics, frame theory and richer theories of learning, Child Language researchers re-emphasized:

– input– feedback and – strategies of learning, esp. negative evidence


• We find kids not only provide negative evidence, but even engage in metalinguistic talk:Nick: Daddy, Coco hat gesagt güter. Das kann man nicht

sagen, oder?Me: Nee, was muss man sagen.Nick: Coco meint besser.Coco: Nein, güter.Nick: Nein, Coco, besser. Du musst besser sagen.Coco: Lass mich, das ich sage.Nick: {lacht} Jetzt hat Coco wieder Unsinn gesagt.

Nick (5;9): Coco, look at these mouses.Coco (4;1): Mice.Nick: Same thing.


• Operating Principles & Universals of acquisition (Slobin)– Whether parts of language acquisition are innate or not,

developing kids seem to follow specific strategies and their acquisition processes reveal universals

• Operating Principles– identify word units– pay attention to the ends of words

• Universals– postposed forms learned before preposed forms– one-to-one marking is acquired earlier than compound markings– unchanging singular articles like French le are acquired faster

than der/den/dem

6. Writing grammars for different stages

• “shoe” different contexts, meanings, but no grammar yet

• “mama shoe” different contexts & meanings suggest grammar even if child also says “shoe mama”

– ‘here is mama’s shoe’ nomination, location– ‘this shoe belongs to mama’ possession– ‘I’ll take this shoe to mama’ agent-action– maybe just: ‘mama – shoe’ X relation Y

compare adult: “Carol’s shoe”

differentiate grammar and pragmatics!

7. Trace the history of research in Language Acquisition

• diary studies: one kid, language and behavior• longitudinal studies: few kids, whole range• large scale studies: usually just morphemes, MLU• interactional studies: CDS, child-child

approach determines scope and type of results

8. References

Brown, Roger. 1973. A first language: The early stages. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 1968. Language and mind. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.

Hockett, Charles. 1966. The problem of universals in language.

Jakobson, Roman. 1962. Why 'mama' and 'papa'? Selected writings, vol. I: Phonological studies, ed. by Roman Jakobson, 538–545. The Hague: Mouton.

Piaget, Jean. 1958. The language and thought of the child. New York: Meridian Books.

Slobin, Dan I. (ed.) 1985. The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.

introduction _____________________________________ first language acquisition neal r. norrick...

Documents

syntax slide

rail slide

age slide

story slide

trike slide

stages of acquisition

word units

word utterances