Language Acquisition later stages Morpheme & Syntax Acquisition (Steinberg & Sciarini, pp )

Acquisition Determinants Brown (1973): semantic & syntactic complexity Dulay et al. (1982): a predetermined order in the child’s mind Steinberg & Sciarini (2006): (a)observability, meaningfulness, distinctiveness (b) memory, logical thinking (pp , 34-36)

Later Acquisition: Negation Rule Formation Stages: I.no/not + X (noun, verb) (e.g., “No money,” “Not a teddy bear”) II.Negatives appear in the middle. (e.g., “I don’t want it,’ “He no bite you” ) III. ‘am not,’ ‘will not (=won’t),’ ‘don’t,’ and ‘didn’t,’ and ‘can’t’ emerge. (e.g.,“Paul can’t have one,” “You didn’t caught me,” “I not hurt him”)

Role of the environment (input) The mother’s speech sounds were found to reach the ear of the fetus above the background sounds (heartbeat and blood flow) Mothers’ reading of a story to their newborns

Comprehension vs production Comprehension develops before speech production. Huttenlocher 1974 Sachs and Truswell study Thought as the basis of speech comprhension (pp )

Parentese (motherese) The sort of speech that children receive when they are young Highly grammatical and simplified Short and simple structures Simple and short vocabulary Exaggerated intonation and stress

Baby talk A form of parentese but with its own characteristics. Involves the use of vocabury and syntax that is overly simplified and reduced. Vocabulary: ‘bow-wow,’ ‘choo-choo’

Role of imitation, rule learning, and correction Children seem to enjoy imitating the sounds that they hear Imitation of the sounds can apply only to speech production and not to speech comprehension. Productivity by rule *sheeps, *mouses, Conclude: Parents corrections are rare and do not play a role in grammar learning. (pp )