introduction _____________________________________ first language acquisition neal r. norrick...
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Introduction _____________________________________
First Language Acquisition
Neal R. NorrickSaarland University
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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
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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)
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2. Developmental sketch
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
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2. Developmental sketch
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
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2. Developmental sketch
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
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2. Developmental sketch
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
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2. Developmental sketch
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
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2. Developmental sketch
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
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2. Developmental sketch
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
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2. Developmental sketch
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
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3. Natural order of acquisition
• "Why mama and papa?" Jakobson• maximum contrast• CV syllable• reduplication
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3. Natural order of acquisition
• 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
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3. Natural order of acquisition
• Brown's (1973) order of acquisition for syntax:
1. present progressive girl playing
2. prepositions ball in water
3. plural toys, dishes
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4. Innateness Debate
• 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).
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4. Innateness Debate
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
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4. Innateness Debate
• 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?
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4. Innateness Debate
• 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
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4. Innateness Debate
• 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
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4. Innateness Debate
• 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)
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5. Development of the Innateness Debate
• 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
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5. Development of the Innateness Debate
• 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
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5. Development of the Innateness Debate
• 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?
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5. Development of the Innateness Debate
• 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.
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5. Development of the Innateness Debate
• 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
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5. Development of the Innateness Debate
• 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.
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5. Development of the Innateness Debate
• 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
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5. Development of the Innateness Debate
• 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.
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5. Development of the Innateness Debate
• 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
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5. Development of the Innateness Debate
• 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.
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5. Development of the Innateness Debate
• 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
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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!
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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
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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.