Language%20acquisition

1
Language acquisition

• LING 200
• Spring 2003

2
First language acquisition
(a.k.a. developmental psycholinguistics, L1)

• How is it that by age 5 children know their
  language?
• What they do along the way and why?

3
Methods for studying L1

• Production studies
• Spontaneous productions (diary studies)
• Elicited productions
• which doll should he pick up?
• Introspection
• Can you say What did the hippo do?

4
Methods for studying L1

• Comprehension studies
• Perception tasks
• present, then change stimulus measure pacifier
  sucking rate, heart beat
• Judgement tasks
• "The hippo fell over. Is that right?"
• Act-out tasks
• "make the hippo jump over the rhino, then make
  bullwinkle jump over him."

5
Production vs. comprehension

• Production lags behind comprehension
• Recognition of polite forms precedes the ability
  to produce them.
• Puppets requesting candy used direct forms like
  Give me candy.
• Or indirect forms like I would like some
  candy. May I have some candy?
• Indirect forms were judged more polite.

6
Production vs. comprehension

• Recognition of sounds precedes the ability to
  produce them.
• One of us...spoke to a child who called his
  inflated plastic fish a fis. In imitation of the
  childs pronunciation, the observer said This
  is your fis? No, said the child, my fis.
  He continued to reject the adults imitation
  until he was told, That is your fish. Yes, he
  said, my fis.

7
L1 milestones

• Babbling 4-20 months
• One-word 12-18 months
• Two-word apx. 24 months

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Babbling

• 0-1 months crying, coughing
• 2-3 months cooing and gooing (production of
  velar consonants)
• 4-6 months produce greater variety of sounds,
  sounds more like language
• 7-9 months CV syllables, often reduplicated
  e.g. tata canonical babbling

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Babbling

• 12 months
• relatively long sequences of gibberish
• possibly with intonation
• (12-13 months first words)
• 18-20 months babbling ceases

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Characteristics of babbling

• Early babbling is largely independent of what
  sounds are heard
• deaf children babble
• hearing children of deaf parents babble
• sounds produced may not be those heard in child's
  linguistic environment

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Characteristics of canonical babbling

• Simple syllable structure (CV)
• Simple consonants and vowels
• most common consonants
• stops, /s/, /m n/, glides, /h/
• infrequent consonants
• other fricatives, affricates, liquids, N
• voiceless aspirated stops common in input to
  English babies, rare in babble

12
Characteristics of later babbling

• Language specific differences begin to emerge
• Japanese babies word final ? common
• Spanish babies produce longer words
• French babies produce more nasals
• ASL babies produce ASL-like movement

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Later correlates of babble

• Greater amount and complexity of babble
  correlates with
• vocabulary size, 18-24 months
• phonological development, 36 months
• age of onset of meaningful speech
• Lesser amount of babble often correlates with
• later speech and language disorders

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Functions of babble(?)

• Establishes an auditory feedback loop
• Provides motor practice
• Stimulates adult-infant interactions

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One-word stage

• Emerges around 12-18 months
• Characteristics
• words used as sentences
• incipient word meaning typical communicative
  functions
• naming
• child's action
• childs desire for action
• childs emotion
• simple phonology CV syllables CVCV words

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Words known by Eve at 15 months

• Mommy
• Daddy
• go
• go?
• gimme
• baba grandma
• dollie
• cup
• what?
• wawa water
• nana blanket

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One-word stage

• Phonological properties of words
• 52 children, mean 15 months
• Syllable structure
• 37 CVCV
• 26 CV(V)
• 10 CVC
• C1 C2 (85)
• Frequency
• most common initial /b d m/
• most common V__V /d b m/
• most common final /t s k/

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2-word stage

• Emerges few months after 1-word stage
• Characteristics
• short (2-word) sentences
• no inflectional affixes (e.g., genitive, 3sS -s)
• minimal use of syntactic function words (e.g.
  determiners)
• pronouns rare

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Eve at 18 months

• more grape juice
• drink juice
• eating
• no celery
• Mommy soup
• open toybox
• Oh! Horsie stuck
• write a paper
• my pencil
• What doing, Mommy?
• Mommy head?

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Beyond 2-word stage Eve at 27 months

• Put my pencil in there.
• I go get a pencil n write.
• Dont stand on my ice cubes.
• I put them in the refrigerator to freeze.
• An I want to take off my hat.
• You come help us.
• Just like Mommy has, and David has, and Sara has.
  
• What is that on the table?
• Were going to make a blue house.
• You make a blue one for me.

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Eve at 27 months

• I have a fingernail.
• And you have a fingernail.
• This is not better.
• See, this one better but this not better.
• There some cream.
• Put in you coffee.
• They was in the refrigerator, cooking.
• That why Jacky comed.
• How bout another eggnog instead of cheese
  sandwich?

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Theories of first language acquisition

• Imitation hypothesis children learn solely by
  imitating what they hear
• Reinforcement hypothesis children learn by
  being positively or negatively reinforced for
  certain kinds of behavior
• Active construction of grammar hypothesis
  children are actively constructing and refining a
  grammar of the language of their environment

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Against Reinforcement hypothesis

• Children don't get a lot of corrections
• some lexical/content corrections
• not a lot of grammatical corrections
• Children don't absorb a lot of the corrections
  they do hear

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Child Nobody dont like me.
Mother No. Say nobody likes me.
Child Nobody dont like me.
... ...
Mother Now listen carefully. Say nobody LIKES me.
Child Oh...Nobody dont LIKES me.
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Against Imitation hypothesis

• Children produce novel utterances (not in
  imitation of adult productions)
• other one spoon
• causatives
• 'you're fedding me up'
• Dont eat her yet. Shes smelly! (wants mother
  to change sisters diaper before feeding her)
• These flowers are sneezing me!

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• novel verbs
• Why you didnt jam my bread?
• I hate you and Ill never unhate you or
  nothing!
• Put me that broom. Lets get brooming.
• Who growed it? (referring to potted plant)

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Child My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
Adult Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits?
Child Yes.
Adult What did you say she did?
Child She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
Adult Did you say she held them tightly?
Child No, she holded them loosely.
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Grammar construction hypothesis

• Children make systematic, not random, errors
• In phonology. Inventory of English consonants
  (age 2)

p b t d k g
f s h
m n
w
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• Inventory of English consonants, age 4

p b t d c? ?? k g
f v s z š h
m n N
l
w r j
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• More systematic errors in phonology

child target rule
gu here glue no C clusters
mummy gIb give syll-final Cs are stops
me lIlI little only vowels as syll peak
take m?næn? banana all Cs in word must be oral or nasal
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• Systematic errors in morphology
• Regularization of plurals
• gooses
• Regularization of past tense forms of verbs
• heared, hitted, goed, bringed, comed
• I tooked it smaller
• Regularization of comparative forms of
  adjectives
• He hitted me. Hes a puncher he is. Hes being
  badder and badder.

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Acquisition summary thus far

• Regular stages of L1 can be identified
• Theories of L1
• only imitation
• only reinforcement
• grammar construction
• errors are systematic
• evidence of evolving grammar
• phonology
• morphology

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• Systematic semantic errors
• Overextension (broadening, hypernymy)

childs word first referent extensions
fly housefly specks of dirt, dust, all small insects, childs own toes, crumbs, small toad
koko rooster crowing piano, phonograph, tunes played on violin, accordian, all music, merry-go-round
wau-wau dog toy dog, soft slippers, picture of old man in furs, all animals
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• Systematic semantic errors
• Underextension (narrowing, hyponymy)

childs word first referent (no extensions)
car family Pontiac
plant fern in kitchen
dish childs dish
mow-mow family cat
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• Systematic syntactic errors acquisition of
  negation

stage productions rule
1 No a boy bed. More...no. no/not sentence edge.
2 Dont bite me yet. That no Mommy. no/not/cant/dont after subject, before V
No square is...clown. Touch the snow no. no/not sentence edge.
3 I didnt did it. I am not a doctor. no/not/cant/dont/wont/isnt after subject, before V
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Innateness hypothesis

• Humans are equipped with Universal Grammar, or
  are genetically programmed for language.
• UG severely constrains the possible form that a
  human language may take.
• The actual form of language is determined by
  environment/language experience.

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Innateness hypothesis

• Noam Chomsky (1988) Language and Problems of
  Knowledge
• ...language appears to be a true species
  property, unique to the human species in its
  essentials and a common part of our shared
  biological endowment, with little variation among
  humans apart from rather serious pathology. (p.
  2)

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Do only humans have language?

• Noam Chomsky 
• ...the language faculty does appear to be a
  unique human possession. Other organisms have
  their own systems of communication, but these
  have properties radically different from human
  language...In the past years there have been
  numerous efforts to teach other organisms
  (forexample, chimpanzees and gorillas) some of
  the rudiments of human language, but it is now
  widely recognized that these efforts have failed,
  a fact that will hardly surprise anyone who gives
  some thought to the matter. The language faculty
  confers enormous advantages on a species that
  possesses it. It is hardly likely that some
  species has this capacity but has never thought
  to use it until instructed by humans. That is
  about as likely as the discovery that on some
  remote island there is a species of bird that is
  perfectly capable of flight but has never thought
  to fly until instructed by humans in this skill.
  Although not a logical impossibility, this would
  be a biological miracle, and there is no reason
  to suppose that it has taken place. Rather, as we
  should have expected all along, the evidence
  suggests that the most rudimentary features of
  human language are far beyond the capacity of
  otherwise intelligent apes, just as the capacity
  to fly or the homing instinct of pigeons lie
  beyond the capacity of humans.

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Chimp studies

• Summary of attempts to teach chimps English, ASL,
  manipulation of symbols
• Chimps show some spontaneity, creativity
• Skills comparable to 1-2 year old child
• Don't get past 2-3 word stage
• Limited syntax. Trouble with
• word order
• structure dependent operations (e.g. conjunction)

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Language as a species-specific property

• Chimps
• are capable of learning some aspects of human
  language
• are not predisposed to learn human language
• lack latent capacity for human language

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Innate behaviors
innate not innate
walking skating, playing football
speaking or signing a language reading or writing a language
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Characteristics of innate behaviors
innate behavior L1
Emerges before needed. Speed of learning L1 (?age 5)
Not the result of a conscious decision. Needed for L1 immersion in lgc environ.
Not triggered by (extraordinary) external events. Poverty of stimulus Children exposed to motherese, adult performance
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innate behavior L1
Not affected by explicit instruction. correction has no effect
Normal stages of achievement can be identified. cross-linguistic regularities in learning uniformity of resulting grammars (UG) lg development independent of intelligence, other cognitive skills
Critical age for the acquisition of the behavior critical age L1 cases Genie, Chelsea, Maria Noname, etc.
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L1 vs. L2

• Children are able to completely master a first
  language, whereas adults rarely do

L1 L2
lack of instruction overt instruction
speed of learning slowness of learning
uniformity of resulting grammars lack of uniformity of resulting grammars
regular stages no defined stages
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Creoles and L1

• Pidgin
• No native speakers
• Derived from two or more languages in contact
• Lexicon typically relatively small
• Variable and relatively simple grammar
• E.g. Chinook Jargon

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Creole

• Pidgin that has undergone L1 for some speech
  community
• Examples
• Hawaiian Creole
• Jamaican Creole

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Claimed characteristics of creoles

• Relatively uniform (in contrast to great
  variability of pidgins)
• Fully expressive
• substantial lexicons
• grammar not simple

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Hawaiian Creole marking of tense/aspect

• past/perfect bin or wen bin get there was
• Bin get one wahine she get three daughter.
  There was a woman who had three daughters.
• habitual/present stay
• John them stay cockroach the kaukau. John and
  his friends are stealing the food.

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Implications of creoles for Innateness Hypothesis

• Derek Bickerton (U. Hawaii)
• since creoles must have been invented in
  isolation, it is likely that some general
  ability, common to all people, is responsible for
  the linguistic similarities
• i.e., creoles owe their uniform complexity to L1

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Acquisition summary

• Characteristics of first language acquisition
  suggest that language is an innate behavior.
• There is a Critical Period for the acquisition
  of a first language (critical age cases, L1 vs.
  L2 differences)
• Children do not learn grammar solely by imitation
  or reinforcement they learn by working out rules
  for themselves.