INBORN KNOWLEDGE

LAD / UG

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

CRITICAL PERIOD

ADULT SPEECH

FEEDBACK

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico, Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya KL

Inborn knowledge :

LAD

COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

CRITICAL PERIOD

ADULT SPEECH

FEEDBACK

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico, Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya KL

nativism : grammatical knowledge – inborn

LAD (Language Acquisition Device)

children are born with prior knowledge of categories, operations, principles common

to all human languages:

UG (Universal Grammar)

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico, Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya KL

Principle of word order

UG X’ consists of X & Complement

Principle (UG) : inborn

Parameter : X + complement [head-initial]

Complement + X [head final]

parameters – language-specific/acquired

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico, Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya KL

XP

spec X’

x comp Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico, Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya KL

language acquisition – autonomous cognitive development

15 year old retardate: general cognitive ability – deficient non-linguistic ability – preschool child linguistic ability –fully developed

cases of people normal IQ – have difficulty in inflections for past tense & plural

The boys eat four apple.

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico, Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya KL

normal linguistic development is possible only if children are exposed to language during a particular time frame.

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico, Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya KL

phonetic : slow carefully articulated higher pitched

with longer pauses

lexical & semantic : restricted vocabulary;

concrete reference to here & now

syntactic: few incomplete short sentences;

imperative questions

conversational: more repetitions;

few utterances per conversation turn

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico, Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya KL

correcting errors: Child: Want other one spoon, Daddy. Father: You mean, you want the other spoon. Child: Yes, I want other one spoon, please Daddy. Father: Can you say “the other spoon”? Child: Other . . . one . . . spoon. Father: Say “other”. Child: Other. Father: Spoon. Child: Spoon. Father: “Other spoon”. Child: Other. . .spoon. Now give me the other one spoon?

(O’Grady & Archibald, 2009; p. 362)

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico, Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya KL

recast : repeating the utterance, making adjustment to its form/content

Child: Daddy here Mother: Yes, Daddy is here. Child: Him go. Mother: Yes, he is going. Child: Boy chasing dog. Mother: Yes, the boy is chasing the dog. Child: The dog is barking Mother: Yes, he is barking at the kitty.

(O’Grady & Archibald, 2009; p. 363)

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico, Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya KL

important factor in the child’s language acquisition process: actual use of sound and word combination in interaction or in word play.

one, two, tie my shoe; three, four, shut the door; five, six, pick up sticks; seven, eight, lay them straight; nine, ten, a big fat hen.

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico, Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya KL

Stage

Typical age

Description

Babbling and Cooing 1 to 8 months Repetitive CV patterns – ba, pa, ma

Hear the difference between [i] and [a] and syllables like [ba] and [pa]

One-word stage 9-18 months Single terms: milk, cat, cup

holophrastic stage Single form functioning as a phrase or sentence

Two-word stage 18-24 months clauses with simple semantic relations – baby eat, dog bad, cat drink

Telegraphic stage or early multiword stage

24-30 months sentence structures of lexical rather than functional or grammatical morphemes- cat drink milk, this baby all wet, daddy go

Later multiword stage 30+ months Grammatical or functional structures emerge

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico, Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya KL

Brown, H. Douglas. 2007. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, 5th Edition. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.

O’Grady, William and John Archibald. 2009.

Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction, 6th Edition. Canada: Pearson Education.

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico

www.languagelinks.org

Dr. Jessie Grace U. Rubrico, Faculty of Education Universiti Malaya KL