FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

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The COGNITISTS
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COGNITISTS

• This chapter tries to answer the following
  questions
• 1. Hows childs language developed?
• 2. What strategies the child uses in the
  process of understanding and developing the
  language?

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• According to the COGNITISTS,
• language is developed simultaneously with the
  childs intellectual growth.

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COGNITISTS

• Linguistic structures will appear and later
  develop in the language of the child, only if
  there is an already-established cognitive
  foundation.

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Childs Language Development Number of words per
a sentence
Five Four Three Two One word
30 36 24 18 12 6 Childs
age in month
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COGNITISTS

• This means that less complex structure appears
  (acquired) in the language of the child earlier
  than more complex structure.

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COGNITISTS

• e.g. present progressive (She is writing) is
  acquired before present perfect (She has
  written) or present perfect progressive (She has
  been writing)

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COGNITISTS

• The child follows a number of strategies in order
  to understand and develop the language.
• These strategies are called operating principles

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COGNITISTS

• 1. AVOID EXCEPTIONS
• Children tend to follow rules of the language
  without thinking of any exceptions. Thiss
  called Generalization Strategy
• e.g. children may produce breaked, mans for
  broke, men. This proves that regular rules are
  acquired before irregular ones.

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COGNITISTS

• 2. Words inside the sentence should have clear
  meaning-relationships
• There seems to be a natural tendency to prefer
  the first noun in a sentence as the subject and
  the second as the object
• 1) Huda drinks tea after dinner
• 2) Tea is drunk after dinner
• This shows why active is easier than passive.

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COGNITISTS

• 3. Grammatical markers help to make semantic
  sense of what the child hears
• Children to tend to use grammatical markers
  in order to understand the patterns they hear.
  This accounts for the late acquisition of f
  marked adult category
• 1) I will appears before Ill
• 2) The pen which he used appears
  before The pen he used

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COGNITISTS

• The study of such strategies or operating
  principles may lead to better understanding of
  what is easy for the child (which appears first)
  or difficult (which appears later) and why.

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