First language acquisition

1. First language acquisition LING 400 Winter 2010

2. Overview • Characteristics of L1 • Theories of L1 • L1 and innateness • Critical period • L1 and ASL Please turn off your cell phone. For further learning: LING/PSYCH 347

3. Some questions about L1 • How is it that by age 5 children (basically) know their language? • What they do along the way?

4. Characteristics of L1 • Regular stages (milestones) • Babbling • One-word stage • Two-word stage

5. Babbling • “Precanonical babbling” • 0-1 months: crying, coughing • 2-3 months: “cooing and gooing” (velar Cs) • “Canonical babbling” • 4-6 months: greater variety of sounds, more like language • 7-9 months: CV syllables, often reduplicated ([tata]) • “Advanced forms” • 12 months: long sequences of gibberish, possibly with intonation • 18-20 months: babbling ceases • Examples of babbling at different stages (http://www.vocaldevelopment.com/)

6. One-word stage • 12-18 months (overlaps with babbling) • Characteristics • words used as sentences • simple phonology: CV syllables; CVCV words • typical communicative functions • naming • child’s action or desire for action • child’s emotion

7. Words produced by Eve at 15 months • Mommy • Daddy • go • go? • gimme • baba ‘grandma’ • dollie • cup • what? • wawa ‘water’ • nana ‘blanket’

8. Eve at 18 months short “sentences” eating open toybox no celery more grape juice limited inflection What doing, Mommy? Mommy_ soup Mommy_ head? limited function words write a paper Oh! Horsie _ stuck pronouns rare my pencil _ drink juice 2-word stage (±24 months

9. Beyond 2-word stage • Eve at 27 months • Pronouns and other pro-forms • You make a blue one for me. • Put in you coffee • Embedding • I put them in the refrigerator to freeze. • Determiners and auxiliaries • What is that on the table? • How ‘bout another eggnog instead of _ cheese sandwich? • Omission of be • See, this one _ better but this _ not better. • Wrong verb forms • That why Jacky comed.

10. Production lags behind comprehension • Sounds recognized before produced • ‘One of us...spoke to a child who called his inflated plastic fish a fis. In imitation of the child’s pronunciation, the observer said: “This is your fis?” “No,” said the child, “my fis”. He continued to reject the adult’s imitation until he was told, “That is your fish.” “Yes,” he said, “my fis.”’ • Word order understood before long sentences produced • Clip from Acquiring Language (bigbird.mov, 0:44-2:31)

11. Some theories of L1 • Reinforcement hypothesis • Children learn from corrections. • Imitation hypothesis • Children imitate only what they hear. • Active construction of grammar hypothesis • Children construct, refine grammatical rules.

12. Corrections • Children don’t get a lot of corrections • some lexical/content corrections • not many grammatical • Children don’t absorb corrections • Child: Nobody don’t like me. • Mother: No. Say ‘nobody likes me’. • Child: Nobody don’t like me. • ... • Mother: Now listen carefully. Say ‘nobody LIKES me’. • Child: Oh...Nobody don’t LIKES me.

13. Imitation • Children imitate lg of environment to a large extent • But also produce forms not heard • ‘other one spoon’ • novel verbs • ‘Why you didn’t jam my bread?’ • novel forms of verbs • 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.

14. Grammar construction hypothesis • Children’s deviations from adult grammar are systematic, not random • Regularization of morphology • Plurals • gooses • Past tense forms of verbs • I tooked it smaller • Comparative forms • He hitted me. He’s a puncher he is. He’s being badder and badder.

15. Systematic deviation from adult phonology • A 2-year-old’s English consonant inventory • No C clusters • “[gu] here” (glue) • Syll-final Cs are stops • “mummy [gIb]” (give) • No syllabic consonants • “me [lIlI]” (little) • Cs must be all oral or all nasal • “take [mnæn]” (banana)

16. Systematic semantic errors • Hyponyms • car (first referent: only family Pontiac) • dish (child’s dish only) • mow-mow (family cat only) • Hypernyms • fly (first referent, housefly; later, specks of dirt, dust, all small insects, child’s own toes, crumbs, small toad) • koko (first, rooster crowing; later, piano, phonograph, tunes played on violin, accordian, all music, merry-go-round)

17. L1 and innateness • Innateness Hypothesis • Humans genetically programmed for language • Universal Grammar constrains possible form of human language • Actual form of language determined by environment • Syntactic errors may resemble well-formed sentences in other languages • A clip from Acquiring the human language, childerror1.mov (1:47-3:56)

18. L1 as an innate behavior • Emerges before ‘needed’ • L1 complete  age 5 • No conscious decision to learn • L1: immersion in lgc environment sufficient • Not triggered by external events • L1 ‘poverty of stimulus’: motherese, adult performance • Not affected by explicit instruction • Correction has no effect on L1 • Normal stages of achievement • L1: Independent of other cognitive skills, cross-linguistic regularities, uniformity of resulting grammars • ‘Critical age’ for learning the behavior

19. L1 as a critical age skill • Critical Age Hypothesis • Critical age for learning behavior/skill in order for complete mastery • L1: approximately puberty • Some differences between L1, L2 • Instruction • L1: none • L2: usually overt and necessary • Speed of learning • L1: relatively fast • L2: relatively slow • Resulting grammar • L1: more uniform • L2: more idiosyncracy • Stages in learning • L1: regular stages resulting in complete mastery • L2: no such stages, incomplete mastery

20. Cases of isolated children • Victor, Genie (1970), Chelsea, Maria Noname, etc. • Documentary about Genie

21. ASL and L1 • Lance Forshay: “Fourth of five Deaf generations.” • In right environment, same milestones as hearing children • But 90%+ deaf children born to hearing parents • “signers are the only large population that undergoes delayed exposure to a primary language” (Meier 1991) Washington School for the Deaf, Vancouver WA

22. Acquisition summary • L1 proceeds in regular stages • L1 learners construct, refine grammar as they go • L1 appears to be an innate behavior

23. Question • Paul at age 2. How does Paul’s pronunciation systematically differ from adult pronunciation? Paul: • sun [sʌn] • see [si] • spoon [pun] • snake [neɪk] • sky [kɑɪ] • stop [tɑp]