First Language Acquisition Lecture #16

2 First Language Acquisition  Why do we call it language acquisition?  Learning  Intentional process  Presupposes teaching  Teacher controls pace  Acquisition  Unconscious process  Does not presuppose teaching  Child controls pace

3 First Language Acquisition  How do nurture and nature interact in FLA?  Nature  Must have LAD—poverty of stimulus too great to learn without “language instinct”  All children learn a language; have language capacity  Overgeneralizations demonstrate child is analyzing language  Nurture  Children cannot acquire language without interaction/scaffolding  Children learn the language of their environment; through parents who model social interaction  Memorization of chunks by rote demonstrates not all info is anlayzed fully

4 Four Pillars of FLA  Ability  Physiological  Cognitive  Interaction  Scaffolding (Caretaker speech)  Motivation  Internal vs. External  Instrumental vs. Integrative  Data  Forms  Meaning  Function 1.Targeted/limited vocab 2.Exaggerated intonation 3.Repetition 4.Questioning

5 Critical Period Hypothesis  There is an ideal window of opportunity within which we are primed to acquire language: birth - puberty  Evidence?  Adults struggle to learn a second language (to a greater or lesser degree)  The question is why?  We struggle with both the physiological and the cognitive ability.

6 Stages of First Language Acquisition  Prelinguistic Sounds  0-1 mo. Sleep, eat, cry  1 mo. Intonational patterns  2-5 mos. Cooing stage  5-12 mos. Babbling stage  One-word Stage (holophrastic)  1 yr. emergence of first word (controversial)  1 yr., 6 mos. Holophrastic stage  intonation layers on meaning  ‘fis’ phenomenon

7 Stages of First Language Acquisition  Two-word Stage  2 yrs. Two words, three possible interpretations  Subject-verb ‘Mary go.’  Verb-modifier ‘Push truck.’  Possessor-possesed ‘Mommy sock’  Content words, no function words  Telegraphic Stage  2 yrs., 6 mos. telegraphic stage  2-5 words with little extra morphology  Morphological overgeneralization  Easier, more productive morphemes first

8 Stages of First Language Acquisition  Telegraphic Stage, cont.  2-5 yrs. More elaborate syntax  Learning words per day  Semantic overgeneralization/ undergeneralization  Fine-tuning  5-10 yrs. Refining grammar, building vocabulary  How children learn vocabulary: –Assign word to a broad semantic category –Work out distinctions among words in that category

9 Building Vocabulary  Traditional efforts:  Flash cards  Look it up in the dictionary— what is the problem here?  Better to learn vocab in context:  Reading  Conversation  Language learning software How can you help your children develop their language skills the most?