ELA Chapter 1

CHAPTER I

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

1.1  Definition

1.1.1 Language

Language is the human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, and a language is any specific example of such a system. Natural languages are spoken or signed, but any language can be encoded into secondary media using auditory, visual, or tactile stimuli, for example, in graphic writing, braille, or whistling. This is because human language is modality-independent. When used as a general concept, "language" may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules.

Human language is unique because it has the properties of productivity, recursivity, and displacement, and because it relies entirely on social convention and learning. Languages evolve and diversify over time, and the history of their evolution can be reconstructed by comparing modern languages to determine which traits their ancestral languages must have had in order for the later stages to have occurred

1.1.2 Language Acquisition

Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use words to understand and communicate. This capacity involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive vocabulary.

Language acquisition usually refers to first language acquisition, which studies infants' acquisition of their native language, rather than second language acquisition, which deals with acquisition (in both children and adults) of additional languages.

1.1.3     Components of Language Acquisition

a.    Situational Factors

Indirect determinants of the rate of SLA and also of the level of proficiency achieved, but they do not influence the sequence development, and affect the order of development only in minor and temporary ways. It is the primary causes of variability in language learner language. Such as who is addressing whom, when, about what, and where

b.    Linguistic input (Target Language Features, adjust input features)

Input is interationally (but not necessarily formally) adjusted as a result of the negotiation of meeaning in two way discourse between the learner and another speaker function

c.    Learner differences

Affective learner differences, Such as motivation and personality. The learner’s first language influences the order of development

d.    Learners strategies (learning, production, communication)

Interlanguage development occurs as a product of the learner’s use of procedural knowledge to construct discourse, and Learners strategy.

e.    Linguistic output

Language learner language consists of formulaic spech and utterances constructed creatively.

1.2 How is Language Acquired in General?

Language acquired in general by stages; trial and error; learning from mistakes; not random mistakes – often virtuous errors; child builds up a set of internal ‘rules’ which they apply and subsequently modify

1.3 First Language Acquisition Theories

a.            Behaviorist Theory

Behaviorism as a major learning theory emphasizing stimulus, response, and reinforcement as the basic elements of learning. For language acquisition, behaviorists hypothesized that children learned their first language through stimulus, response, and reinforcement as well, postulating imitation and association as essential processes. For example, to learn the word ball, the child would first associate the word ball with the familiar spherical object, the stimulus. Next the child would produce the word by imitation, at which time an adult would praise the child for saying ball, thereby reinforcing the child’s correct verbal response. Behaviorists assumed that the child’s mind was a tabula rasa, a blank mental slate awaiting the scripture of experience.

Behaviorist concepts of imitation and reinforcement could not account for typical child utterances like “Him don’t say it right,” which were clearly not imitations of adult speech. Moreover, behaviorists could not explain how any novel utterance was produced, even those that were grammatically correct. Yet most utterances we produce in conversation or writing are in fact original. That is, they are not pat phrases we have learned by hearing and repeating. In addition, child language researchers noticed that parents typically reinforce their children for the meaning of their utterances, not for grammatical correctness. These and other concerns were boldly pointed out as Noam Chomsky (1957) engaged in a heated debate with behaviorist B. F. Skinner (1957), attacking behaviorist theory as inadequate to explain observations of child language development.

b.            Innatist Theory

Chomsky was able to garner some strong arguments against the behaviorist explanation of language acquisition, using examples from children’s developing grammars, such as our example from Hope. Skinner and his behaviorist colleagues were experts in psychology, applying their theories to verbal behavior. Chomsky, on the other hand, was a linguist with a genius for analyzing syntax. In fact, his early work on syntax and transformational grammar revolutionized the field of linguistics (Chomsky, 1957, 1959). Chomsky’s explanations of grammatical rules and transformations became the subject of psychological research on language use in the interdisciplinary field of psycholinguistics.

As Chomsky pondered the complex intricacies of children’s development of

grammar, he concluded that language acquisition could only be accounted for by an innate, biological language acquisition device (LAD) or system. Infants must come into the world “prewired for linguistic analysis.” Specifically, Chomsky claims that infants universally possess an innate “grammar template,” or universal grammar, which will allow them to select out the many grammatical rules of the language they hear spoken around them, as they gradually construct the grammar of their mother tongue.

From the innatist perspective, children construct grammar through a process of hypothesis testing. For example, a child may hypothesize the rule that all plural nouns end with an -s. Thus when they come to a word such as child, they form the plural as childs, or when they come to the word man, they say mans for the plural. Gradually, they will revise their hypothesis to accommodate exceptions to the plural rule. Thus children create sentences by using rules rather than by merely repeating messages they have heard, as assumed by behaviorists. This application of rules accounts for the generative nature of language. With a finite set of rules, people can generate an infinite number of novel utterances. Children acquire the rules, according to Chomsky, with little help from their parents or caregivers. But as Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner stated (Gardner, 1995, p. 27), the Chomskyan view is “too dismissive of the ways that mothers and others who bring up children help infants to acquire language.” Gardner argues that, “while the principles of grammar may indeed be acquired with little help from parents or other caretakers, adults are needed to help children build a rich vocabulary, master the rules of discourse, and distinguish between culturally acceptable and unacceptable forms of expression.” This interest in the role of people in the social environment provides the focus of the next theoretical perspective on language acquisition that we discuss, the interactionist perspective. In response to Chomsky’s emphasis on innate grammar mechanisms centered in the infant, interactionists have brought back an interest in the role of the social environment and the influence of parents and caregivers on children’s language acquisition.

c.            Interactionist Theory

According to the interactionist position, caregivers play a critical role in adjusting language to facilitate the use of innate capacities for language acquisition. This is in sharp contrast to the innatist view that adapting language has little effect on a child’s acquisition process. The interactionist view thus takes into consideration the importance of both nature and nurture in the language acquisition process.             Interactionists study the language mothers and other caregivers use when caring for infants and young children, with special attention to modifications they make during these social interactions to assist children in communication. One strategy often observed between English-speaking, middle-class mothers and their toddlers is conversational scaffolding (Ninio & Bruner, 1978), as illustrated in the following conversation:

CHILD            : Birthday cake Megan house.

MOTHER    : We had birthday cake at Megan’s house. What else did we do at   Megan’s house?

CHILD            : Megan dolly.

MOTHER      : Megan got a doll for her birthday, didn’t she?

In this conversation, the mother repeats the child’s meaning using an expanded form, thereby verifying her understanding of the child’s words while modeling adult usage. In addition, the mother assists or scaffolds the toddler’s participation in the conversation through prompting questions at the end of each of her turns. In this way, scaffolding provides conversational assistance and focused linguistic input tuned to the child’s own interests and language use at that moment.  By preschool age, this kind of scaffolded conversation is no longer necessary. Whether scaffolding is actually necessary for language acquisition has not been verified. In fact, ways in which infants and young children are spoken to varies across cultures (Ochs & Schieffelen, 1984; Schieffelin & Eisenberg, 1984). Nonetheless, caregivers generally facilitate children’s vocabulary development, their ability to use language appropriately in social situations, and their ability to get things done through language.

Children’s language develops over time, not within a single interaction. As children develop language, they must construct the meanings of thousands of words. Adult assistance in this process is illustrated in the following dialogues, as British linguist M. A. K. Halliday and his wife (1984, 1994) interact with their son, Nigel. This transcript captures Nigel’s “ongoing construction” of the concept of cats as it transpired over a period of eight months. In these dialogues, we witness Nigel’s semantic development as he both contributes and receives information to help him construct the concept cat.

Nigel at 2; 10; 22 (2 years; 10 months; 22 days)

NIGEL            : And you [that is, “I”] saw a cat in Chania Falls.

MOTHER      : Yes, you saw a cat in Chania Falls.

NIGEL            : And you picked the cat up. Mummy, do cats like meat?

MOTHER      : Yes, they do.

NIGEL            : Do cats like bones? Do cats like marrow?

Nigel at 3; 0; 26

NIGEL            : How do the cat’s claws come out?

FATHER       : They come out from inside its paws. Look, I’ll show you.

NIGEL            : Does it go with its claws?

FATHER       : Not if it’s going along the ground.

NIGEL            : And not if it’s climbing up a tree?

FATHER       : Yes, if it’s climbing up a tree it does go with its claws.

Nigel at 3; 5; 12

NIGEL            : Cats have no one else to stop you from trossing them . . . cats have

no other way to stop children from hitting them . . . so they bite. Cat,

don’t go away! When I come back I’ll tell you a story. [He does so.]

Nigel at 3; 6; 12

NIGEL            : Can I give the cat some artichoke?

MOTHER      : Well, she won’t like it.

NIGEL            : Cats like things that go; they don’t like things that grow.

Nigel at 3; 6; 14

NIGEL            : I wish I was a puppet so that I could go out into the snow in

the night. Do puppets like going out in the snow?

FATHER       : I don’t know. I don’t think they mind.

NIGEL            : Do cats like going out in the snow?

FATHER       : Cats don’t like snow.

NIGEL            : Do they die? [He knows that some plants do.]

FATHER       : No, they don’t die; they just don’t like it.

NIGEL            : Why don’t puppets mind snow?

FATHER       : Well [hesitating] . . . puppets aren’t people.

NIGEL            : Yes, but . . . cats also aren’t people.

FATHER       : No, but cats are alive; they go. Puppets don’t go.

NIGEL            : Puppets do go.

FATHER       : Yes, but you have to make them go, like trains.

NIGEL            : Trains have wheels. Puppets have legs.

FATHER       : Yes, they have legs; but the legs don’t go all by themselves.

You have to make them go.*

Halliday (1994) says: “Interpersonally, it (the dialogue) evolves into a dynamic modeling of question, answer, challenge, contradiction, and the like that is the essential component of the resources out of which all conversation is constructed” (p. 79). Most important, this is not talk for talk’s sake but a serious effort over time to build a concept through interaction between parent and child.

As we saw with Nigel, interactions do not necessarily lead to immediate understanding. Rudimentary understandings must be developed and refined over time, often through misunderstandings. For example, during salary negotiations between hockey players and club owners, there was a lot of talk about salary caps. When a sportswriter’s young son heard that the strike had been settled, he asked his father, “Will the players have to wear their salary caps now?” An explanation followed. Children are constantly constructing meaning as they interact with people and the world around them, and through these interactions, they gradually sort out the nuances and construct the multiple meanings of words and phrases. The interactionist perspective acknowledges the important roles of both the child and the social environment in the language acquisition process.

TABLE 2.1  COMPARISON OF BEHAVIORIST, INNATIST, AND INTERACTIONIST THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

ACQUISITION ASPECTS	BEHAVIORIST PERSPECTIVE	INNATIST PERSPECTIVE	INTERACTIONIST PERSPECTIVE
Linguistic focus	Verbal behaviors (not analyzed per se): words, utterances of child and people in social environment	Child’s syntax	Conversations between child and caregiver; focus on caregiver speech
Process of acquisition	Modeling, imitation, practice, and selective reinforcement of correct form	Hypothesis testing and creative construction of syntactic rules using LAD	Acquisition emerges from communication; acts scaffolded by caregivers
Role of child	Secondary role: imitator and responder to environmental shaping	Primary role: equipped with biological LAD, child plays major role in acquisition	Important role in interaction, taking more control as language acquisition advances
Role of social environment	Primary role: parental modeling and reinforcement are major factors promoting language acquisition	Minor role: language used by others merely triggers LAD	Important role in interaction, especially in early years when caregivers modify input and carry much of conversational load

Table 2.1 summarizes the behaviorist, innatist, and interactionist perspectives on language acquisition by comparing (1) the focus of linguistic analysis, (2) how each theory accounts for the process of acquisition, (3) the role of the child, and (4) the role of the people in the social environment. Of the three approaches, the behaviorist approach, which places primary weight on children imitating what they have heard, has proven least adequate for explaining observed facts in child language development. The innatist view, in contrast, places primary weight on the child, and particularly on innate, biological mechanisms to account for language acquisition. The interactionist perspective, acknowledging both the child’s role and that of caregivers in the social environment, emphasizes the importance of social interactions aimed at communication as the essential ingredient in language acquisition. To the extent that more research is needed on both the biological and social mechanisms in language acquisition and use, innatists and interactionists are likely to add important information to the overall understanding of language acquisition now and in the future.

1.4 Life Stages Development

a.            Pre-natal Development (13 to 24 weeks of age)

b.            Infancy (0 – 1 years old)

c.            Critical Periods of Development ( infancy – childhood)

There are infancy and childhood during which development of certain perceptual, sensorimotor, social and language systems depends crucially on environmental stimulation.

d.            Toddlerhood (1 – 2 years old)

e.            Early childhood (pre-school age, exploratory age, and  toy age)

f.             Adolescence

(i)     Early Adolescence: 11 to 12 years (preteen, tween),

(ii)    Mid Adolescence: 13 to 15 years and

(iii)  Late Adolescence: 16 to 19 years

g.            Early adulthood

h.            Middle age (40 – 60)

i.              Old age (60 – 100)

1.5 Stages of Language Acquisition In Children

TABLE 2.2  STAGES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN CHILDREN

STAGE	PROCESS	TYPICAL AGE	DESCRIPTION
I	Basic Biological Noising	0-8 weeks	Spluttering, rhythmic coughing, reflexive noises (hunger, pain, discomfort), vegetative noises (breathing, eating, excreting)
II	Cooing and laughing	8-20 weeks	Later strings of cooing sounds, but not actual connected speech. Some syllable sounds of equivalents – [ga] [gu] often diphthongs [au] [ou].
III	vocal play	20-30 weeks	Varied vowel-like and consonant-like sounds, including nasal sounds [mmm] and [nn] and fricatives [fff]. Produces range of sounds including glides – low to high pitch and high to low pitch; practice a variety of sounds.
IV	Babbling	6-8 months 25-50 weeks	Repetitive CV patterns [abababababa] [mamamamamamamama] also known as reduplicating monosyllables A much smaller range of sounds produced than Stage 3, but those sounds made are practised over and over: baby getting more skilled at making right sounds.  After 9 months, sounds of consonants and vowels change with each syllable of ‘words’ made e.g. [adu] and [maba].
V	One-word stage (better one-morpheme or one-unit) or holophrastic stage	9-18 months	Single open-class words or word stems
VI	Two-word stage	18-24 months	"mini-sentences" with simple semantic relations
VII	Telegraphic stage or early multiword stage (better multi-morpheme)	24-30 months	"Telegraphic" sentence structures of lexical rather than functional or grammatical morphemes
VIII	Later multiword stage	30+ months	Grammatical or functional structures emerge