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28 Febrero 2014
TEMA 2: THEORIES OF FIST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
2.1 THE BEHAVIOURIST PERSPECTIVE
2.1.1 THE BEHAVIOURIST PERSPERCTIVE
• Language is a part of total human behaviour.
• Great importance is given to the enviroment = source of everything that children
need to learn.
• Like other forms of human behaviour, language is learnt by a process of habit-
formation.
• Children attempt to imitate and practice sounds and patterns produced by those
around them.
• If encouraged by positive reinforcement they would continue to imitate/practise the
sounds and patterns they heard.
• Language is described on the basis of “observable data”.
• This is an inffluence of the structural or descriptive school of linguistics (Bloomfield):
“only the publicity observable responses could be subject to investigation.
• Adherece to the “scientific method”.
• As a result, such concepts as consciousness and intuition were regarded as
“mentalistic” illigitimate domains of inquiry.
→ focus on form/study on surface structure. → focus on correctness and primary interest in the phonetic system of language.
6 Marzo 2014
• Children do imitate a great deal, especially in learning sounds and vocabulary
(Task 1)
• However, their grammatical ability cannot be explained on the basis of imitation:
• Children seen unable to imitate grammar construction exactly (e.g. “the single
negative pattern).
• According to O'Grady (2005:165/Reading 2), “Children are not very good at
imitating sentences containing unfamiliar words and structures).
• The earliest stages of child language acquisition may manifest a good deal of
surface structure imitation since the baby may not possess the necesary semantic categories to assign “meaning” to utterances.
• But as children perceive the importance of the semantic level of language, they
attend to a greater extent to that meaingful semantic level -the deep structure imitation.
• They engaged in deep structure imitation. In fact, the imitation of the deep
structure of language can literaly block their attention to the surface structure so that they become, on the face of it, poor imitation.
• The inadequancies of the behaviourist perspective can be summarizes as follows
(Littlewood, 1984):
• 1. Language is not merely “verbal behaviour”. Underlying the actual behaviour that
we observe, there is a complex system of rules. These enable speakers to create and understand an infinite number of sentences, most of which they have never encountered before.
• 2. What children learn, then, is an abstract knowledge of rules (or “competence”).
However, they are exposed only to people's speech (“performance”) -not exposed to “competence”. Extracting abstract knowledge from concrete examples cannot be explained by habit-formation. → creativity. e.g. forms such as “mouses” “goed” “wented” cannot be explained on the basis of imitation.
• 3. Although children are exposed to different actual speech. They arrive as the same
underlying rules as other children in their community. They also pass through simial sequences in acquiring these rules.
• 4. The learning task is therefore a complex one. Yet it occurs at a very early age with
exceptional speed. Again, this cannot be explained by habit-formation alone.
2.1.2 THE NATIVIST APPROACH
• Nativist: language acquisition is innetely determined, that we are born with a
genetic capacity that predisposes us to a systematic perception of language around us, resulting in the construction of an internalized system of language.
• Chomsky's criticism centred on a number of issues:
• The creativity of language.
• Complexity and abstractness of linguistic rules. How can children master them so
quickly and efficiently.
• The Language Acquisition Deviced (LAD)
experience (brain) LAD grammar → → → → → → →
Reading 2. pp 182-183: What is it about children's brain that makes them so good at learning language?
• Many differences of opinion over how best to characterized LAD. See 2 views in
Reading 2.
• Chomsky's view: LAD is not just for language. (Reading 2, pages 184-185) (“The
acquisition device tells (…) belong to which category”)
• It provides children with:
• A knowledge of linguistic universals (e.g. the existence of word order & word
classes).
• General procedures for discovering how language is to be learned.
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2.1.3 FUNCTIONAL APPROCHES: COGNITION AND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT (PIAGET) AND
SOCIAL INTERACTION.
• Piaget's theory:
• Relationship between cognitive development and first language acquisition.
→ Lightbown and Spada (2006:20)
• The developing cognitive understanding is built on the interaction between the child
and the things can be observed or manipulated.
• Language can be used to represent knowledge that children have acquire through
physical interaction with the environment.
• 1. Sensorimotor stage (birth-2 years)
• Infants mainly make use of senses and motor capabilities to experience the
environment.
• The sensorimotor infant gains physical knowledge.
• Children develop a sense of object permanence (later part of the period).
• 2. Preoperational stage (2-7 years)
• Children start to use symbols such as language to represent objects. For instance,
the child understands the word “apple” although a real apple is not seen.
• Learning from concrete evidence.
• Unaware of another person's perspective. They exhibir egocentric thought and
language.
• 3. Concrete operational stage (7-11 years)
• The concrete operational child begins to think logically. Operations are associated
with personal experience, but not in abstract manipulations.
• 4. Formal operational stage (11 years and beyond)
• After roughly 11 years old, students have the ability to:
• consider manu possibilities for a given condition
• deal with propositions that explain concrete facts
• have the ability to use planning to think ahead
• they can also think abstractly
2.2 GENERAL STAGE IN THE 1L ACQUISITION PROCESS: PHONOLOGICAL,
GRAMMATICAL, SEMANTIC AND PRAGMATIC/DISCURSIVE DEVELOPMENT
(FOTOCOPIA)
GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES
Remarks (Yule, 1985: 143-144)
- Instances of overgeneralization patterns:
• Plural forms: foots-footses, boy-boyses (following the houses pattern).
• Regular past tense (walked, played). Overgeneralization: wented, comed,
walkeded).
- Variability throughout the sequence:
• “good forms” one day and “odd” forms the next.
• The child is working out how to use the linguistic systematic
KEY TO TASK 1
STAGE 1 (18-26 MONTHS)
• negatives:
→ no/not at the beginning of any expression (no sit here, no fall)
• questions:
→ utter the expression with rising intonation → wh- forms added to the beginning of the expression.
STAGE 2 (22-36 MONTHS)
• negatives:
→ “no” and “not” begin to be placed in front of the verb (he no bit you) → “don't” and “can't”
• questions:
→ more complex expression. Rising intonation strategy continues
STAGE 3 (24-40 MONTHS)
• negatives:
→ incorporation of other auxiliary forms, such as “didn't” and “won't” → attach the negative element to the correct form of auxiliary verbs (she does't know, I won't go). Form “isn't”: very late acquisition → still difficulty with some other features related to negatives (nobody don't likes me)
• questions:
→ inversion of subject and verb (but not always in wh- form)
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SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT
• The learning of vocabulary is the most noticeable feature of the early months of
language acquisition. → An indication of the scope and speed of progress (from a study of American 1- year-olds):
• Production: about new words a month
• In comprehension: an average of 22 new words each month.
• The content of early words: children talk about what is going on around, then
the “here and now” → connection with section 2.3. (motherese):
• people, mainly relatives and house visitors: daddy, man, postman
• actions (give, jump) and routine activities in the child's day (hello, bye-bye)
• food
• body parts: usually facial words first (mouth, nose), then other areas (toes)
• clothing of all kinds: nappy/diaper, shoes
• animals, vehicles, toys, locations, etc
• The meaning of early words:
Children do not learn a word with its meaning “ready made”. They have to work out for themselves what it musmean, and in so doing they make errors. Three types of error occur often during the second and third year:
• 1. overextension
• 2. underextension
• 3. mismatch
• Coinage of new words. 3 main ways to create new words:
Studies of young children's conversations show that many adult interaction skills are already present well before school-age.
28 Marzo 2014
2.4. THE CRITICAL PERIOD HYPOTHESIS (CPH) IN L1 ACQUISITION
IS THERE A SENSITIVE PERIOD FOR LANGUAGE ACQUISITION?
• A “critical period” was found with certain species?
• The question was therefore raised wether there were also a critical period in human
maturation.
Adults undergoing surgery of the left hemisphere → more language problems. By contrast, children with left hemisphere damaged showed an ability to recover over a longer period:
• right hemisphere takes over the language function → brain plasticity in childhood.
Lenneberg argued that the reason the language couldn't be recovered after puberty was that lateralization (specialization of the left hemisphere for language) was by them complete.
• The development of language was said to be the result of the brain maturation: the
hemispheres were equipotential at birth, with language gradually becoming laterilized in the left hemisphere.
• The process of lateralization began at around the age of 2 and enden at puberty.
• Conflicting evidence → see the final remarks at the end,
FINAL REMARKS
A CRITICAL PERIOD FOR LANGUAGE?
• The critical-period hypothesis has been controversial. Reasons:
• The pathological evidence is mixed:
Child recovery helped by right hemisphere but also left hemisphere damage producing long-lasting aphasia.
• The evidence of normal language acquisition is also mixed.
Some aspects well stablished before age 5 but some linguistic skills (in semantics and pragmatics) still developing in teenage childre and young adults.
• Neuropsychological evidence: some studies suggest that lateralization may be
stablished long before puberty -as early as the third year. Complex relation between lateralization and language.
• The case of “Genie” supports Lenneberg's hypothesis only in a weak form (see text
in the video worksheet) → connection with video session.
