1. Nature of the Input Dana Hughes

2. What is the Nature of Input in Regards to Language Acquisition?

3. Introduction A long-standing debate of how children come to acquire their language Nature vs. Nurture Need for input is beyond dispute, it is agreed upon that children process input from their caregiver’s and use it in their speech output The nature of this necessary input is disputed Goal of my paper was to explore literature on this topic in hopes of determining the innateness of the human language

4. What does the “nature of input” mean? The subtle and obvious differences in caregiver’s speech to children Types of input: Positive evidence- grammatically correct utterances (utterances that are “allowed” in the native language). Negative evidence- ungrammatical utterance which are not allowed to occur in a particular language.

5. My Research Questions 1. Is input necessary for language development? 2. Which type of input (positive or negative) is most beneficial in language acquisition? 3. Is the quality of the input more effective than the quantity of the input?

6. Overarching Research Question **Based on the nature of the linguistic input to children, does language acquisition seem to be established by nature or nurture?

7. My Hypotheses: Language Acquisition is due to the interaction between nature and nurture: DEBATED Quantity was more important than quality: WRONG Positive evidence/feedback is the most effective input: CORRECT

8. Researchers: Marcus (1993) Brown and Hanlon (1970) Anderssen, Bentzen, & Westergaard (2010) Snow & Ferguson (1977) Gathercole & Hoff (2007) Gallaway & Richards (1994)

9. Research Conducted by Others Gallaway & Richards (1994)- Effects and Non-effects of Child-directed speech (CDS) Brown & Hanlon- order of emergence is due to the derivational complexity of an utterance Gathercole & Hoff (2007)- Examine nature of input to determine what children actually extract from it Snow & Ferguson (1977)- Study the relevance of mother’s speech to their child’s language acquisition

10. Others Continued Anderssen, Bentzen, Westergaard (2010)- Review input properties: word frequency, overall amount of input, saliency of the sentence position, and word order variability Goal- to determine which, if any, of these properties affect language acquisition Marcus (1993)- Concludes that positive evidence is the only evidence available to children A.) Too weak B.) Not provided to all children at all errors, yet ever child will one day overcome these errors C.) Not consistent

11. How Research Helped to Answer My Questions: Anderssen et al. (2010)- Proved my hypotheses that positive input is most important Gathercole & Hoff (2007)- Quality vs. Quantity Snow & Ferguson (1977)- Study performed by Brown & Bellugi (1964) to test Hess & Shipman’s findings supported all three of my research questions Gallaway & Richards (1994) and Marcus (1993)- Type of input most effective for language acquisition

12. Conclusion Concrete answers to my research questions may never be discovered As discussed, only one of my original hypotheses proved correct through research analysis Many studies conducted on CDS, which is positive input

13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQbYc7qLgBc

14. References Anderssen, Merete, Bentzen, Kristine, Westergaard, Marit. Variation in the Input: Studies in the Acquisition of Word Order. Springer Science. 2010. Gallaway, Claire, Richards, Brian J. Input and interaction in language acquisition. Cambridge University Press. 1994. Hoff, Erika, Shatz Marilyn. Blackwell Handbook of Language Development. Blackwell Publishing. 2007. Marcus, Gary F. (1993). Negative Evidence in Language Acquisition. Cognition, 46, pgs. 53-85. Snow, Catherine E. & Ferguson, Charles A. Talking to Children: Language input and acquisition. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge. 1977.