Lecture: Psycholinguistics Professor Dr. Neal R. Norrick

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Psycholinguistics

Universität des SaarlandesDept. 4.3: English Linguistics

SS 2009

5. 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)

5.1 Developmental sketch

Age Language General

(months)

9 babbling crawling

10 first words standing,

precurrent, maintained claps hand,

(ba)nana(na) for holds spoon

'banana, food, mama'

Age Language General(months)

11 5-10 recurrent words first steps, fulfills requests like: recognizesbring me the blue ball pictures inshow me the big red dog books

12 5 distinct vowels starts walking5 distinct consonants

Age Language General

(months)

13 recognizable words running,

daddy nein ball climbing furniture

allgone

14 imitations: horse, train simple puzzles,

reduplications: turns book pages

choochoo,

byebye, taktak ‘clock’

Age Language General

(months)

16 recognizes own name points to himself:

20+ words Where's Nicky?

18 vocabulary explosion climbs stairs

2-word units: without rail

ducky allgone

Nicky haben

Age Language General

(months)

20 3-word units: hangs on monkey

Nicky cookie haben bars, points to

also: eyes, nose, mouth

haben Nicky cookie

Age Language General

(months)

22 verb + particle: dramatic

lock up/ deck zu play,

4-word units: stuffed Mami Auto fahren kauft animals,

Inni gute Nacht sagen dolls

Age (months): 24

Language General

verb endings: Inni spuckt bisschen kicks soccer ball

statement: Nicky auch essen plays hide-n-seek

question: Nicky auch essen, ja? draws details:

command: Nicky auch essen ears, tails, wheels

word-formation: cutter ‘knife’

auskleben ’tear apart’

umwärts

Age (months): 26

Language General

participles: Mami ist weggegingt draws objectively das ist runtergefallt recognizable figures,

recognizes colorscomparison: Pferdchen ein kleineres

Mond grösser als Daddy

Monologues/ Mami kommt darein, tic-tacstories: Danke, Post schickt Daddy

Age Language General

(months)

27 future orientation: sings melodies

Let's build a castle

I'll put it in

28 recursive structures: counts to 5

Ich weiss nicht, wen recognizes letters:

der Deckel verloren hat N, C, O

questions with

when, how

Age Language

(months)

30 conditionals:

ich suche, ob ich den Hasen finde

Timmy ist traurig, wenn das

Osterhäschen hier schläft

plans: I want to read a book about a story

Age Language General (months)

32 first real narrative: builds LegosIt was a wooden lamby draws people and it was on the floor and housein a barn with chimneyand they took it home and windowsand they washed itand it wasn't ugly

Age Language General (months)

34 reports on TV program: learns toPlötzlich kamen zwei peddle

trikeKrokodile und haben das Kälbchen ge'essen

reports on activities:I'm pretending this is a castle

(continued: 34 months)

explains actions:

I break it that I can make it new

predicts:

It's gonna be real beautiful,

you're gonna love it

Age (months): 36

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

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

5.2 Natural order of acquisition:

5.2.1 "Why mama and papa?“

Jakobson's order for phoneme acquisition

• in babbling, children produce all kinds of sounds and sound combinations; many children produce imitations after babbling

• but around age 2, children narrow their sound repertory and begin to produce sounds of their language in fixed order

order reflects an attempt to create the clearest possible set of distinctions at any given point, within the given physiological limits

• this order of acquisition also reveals parallel between different languages• most salient distinction is between Vowels (V) and Consonants (C)

Vowels are characteristically open and resonant: • the prototypical V is a

Consonants are characteristically closed and obstruent:

• stops are prototypical Cs• the prototypical stop is p

the prototypical syllable is CV: maximizing the C-V distinction, a child's first syllable should be pa given children's tendency to reduplication, a child's first real word should be papa

the first division within the class of Cs is that between oral and nasal; the nasal counterpart of bilabial p is m

maximizing the p-m distinction and reduplicating,

the child's second word should be mama

(actually initial nasals often appear first, because of the association with sucking; and mama is often first word recorded, because of the centrality of mother for the child)

major divisions within the class of Vs are those between front and back, high and low, spread and open; the vowel most distinct from a along all these parameters is i

again maximizing the a-i distinction (and reduplicating), the child's next words should be pipi and mimi

extending the pattern of Vs, always seeking to maximize distinctness, the child should move to a triplet:

a

u i

after the Cs p and m , the child usually acquires t , then the third voiceless stop k and so on: p m t k

child moves on to ever larger patterns with increasing numbers of distinctive features

only when child controls the individual consonants can they occur together in 2-consonant clusters:

• then word-initial clusters like pl- and st- precede final clusters like -lp and –st• later come initial 3-consonant clusters like spr- and str-• and then word-final 3-consonant clusters like -rst and -sks

of course, kids don't learn sounds in isolation, but only in words and syntactic structures

5.2.2 Order of acquisition for syntax

at first, kids produce:• 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 4. irregular past tense went, told 5. possessive Ann's toys 6. articles a dog, the dog 7. regular past tense jumped, hugged, wanted

8. regular 3rd person she goes, talks, watches 9. irregular 3rd person she does, has10. auxiliary be: I am, you are, she is11. contracted auxiliary I'm, you're, she's

order of acquisition as reflecting general learning strategies and stages of development (Piaget) or as evidence of innate language acquisition device (Chomsky)

5.3 Piaget

language as product of intelligence, not behaviorist learningrational origin of language presupposes fixed nucleus,

i.e. structures common to all human languageslike subject-predicate, hierarchical organizationbut no specific language-learning device (despite Chomsky)

Piaget assumes child language development reflects species development; no innateness assumption is necessary, given sensorimotor intelligence in human development

language as a special case of general symbolic behavior

developmentally, each stage prepares for the next, but each new stage requires a reorganization

e.g. infant recognizes caregiver as separate from continuum

caregiver as recurrent/stable entity

self as separate

self as entity like caregiver

e.g. kid recognizes human sound separate from continuum

language sound as separate from babbling

discrete word as separate from continuum

discrete word as recurrent/stable entity

word + word as unit

hierarchy within word + word unit etc

Piagetian stages in general cognitive development

1. Sensory-motor stage (birth to 2 years)• child notices objects as separate from self and

permanent• manipulates objects as chief contact with

environment

2. Preoperational thought

2a. Stage of symbolic thought (age 2-4)• symbolic play, pretending and language

acquisition• child recognizes social nature of language.

2b. Stage of intuitive thought (age 4-7)• child begins to think in language, but thinking is

still egocentric and centered on one relationship at a time

3. Stage of concrete operations (age 7-11)• child can vary two or more relationships

independently solves conservation problem by compensation

4. Stage of formal operations (age 11-15)• hypothesis formation and testing. rational

consideration of the form of an argument, e.g.

All three-legged snakes are purple.

I am hiding a three-legged snake.

What color is it?