First Language Acquisition 1

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FIRST LANGUAGE

ACQUISITIONBY: Marisol Barraza


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HOW DO CHILDREN COMMUNICATE?

SMALL BABIES

END OFFIRST YEAR

18 MONTHS

3 YEARS

SCHOOL AGE


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First Language Acquisition Children have a remarkable ability to

communicate.

1. Small babies: children babble and coo and

cry and vocally and non-vocally send

messages and receive messages.

2. End of first year: children start to imitatewords and speech sounds and about this

time use first words.


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3. 18 months: their vocabulary in terms of wordshas increased and are beginning to use 2 word

3 word utterances (telegraphic utterances)

4. 3 years: Children can comprehend anincredible quantity of linguistic input, they

chatter nonstop.

5. School age: Children start to internalizeincreasingly complex structures, expand their

vocabulary and sharpen their communicationskills and they also learn the social functions oftheir language.


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FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

WHAT ARE THE THREE POSITIONS IN

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION?


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Theories of First Language

Acquisition Theories of language acquisition attempt to

answer some questions about how people

can have the amazing language acquisitionability.


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FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Behavioristic Position

Nativist Position

Functional Position


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Behavioristic Position

Individuals are born without built-in mentalcontent and their knowledge comes fromexperience and perception(tabula rasa).

Assumes a learner is essentially passive,responding to environmental stimuli.

Behavior is shaped through positivereinforcement or negative reinforcement.

Consider effective language behavior to be theproduction of correct responses to stimuli. If aparticular response is reinforced, it thenbecomes habitual, or conditioned. Video


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Nativist We have an innate predisposition to learn

language, and learning is in our genetics.

According to Chomsky, this innate knowledgeis embodied in a little black box of sorts, a

language acquisition device (LAD).

All human beings are genetically equipped withthe ability that enables them to acquire

language. (a system of universal linguistic rules

or Universal Grammar)


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Nativist The childs language at any stage is systematic in

that the child is constantly forming hypotheses conthe basis of the input received and then testing those

hypothesis in speech and comprehension. The early grammars of child language were referred

to as pivot grammar.

The parallel Distributed Processing: a childslinguistic performance may be the consequence of

many levels of simultaneous neuralinterconnections rather that a serial process of onerule being applied, then another, then another andso forth.


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Functional ApproachesTwo emphases emerged

1. Researchers began to realize that language

was a cognitive and affective ability tocommunicate with all the things including

the self.

2. They dealt with the forms of language, notthe deeper functional levels.


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Functional ApproachesCognition and Language Development

Bloom found three possible underlying relationships:

agent-action, agent-object, and possessor-possessed. In addition, he concluded that children learn underlying

structures, not superficial word order.

Piaget insisted that what children learn about languageis determined by what they already know about the

world. Dan Slobin demonstrated that semantic learning

depends on cognitive development.


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Functional ApproachesSocial Interaction and Language Development

Social constructivist emphasized on the

function of language in discourse.

Discourse has a special meaning in that

language is used for interactivecommunication.


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What issues in FirstLanguage Acquisition

were covered in this chapter?


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Issues in First Language AcquisitionCompetence and Performance

Competence:

Refers to ones underlying knowledge of asystem, event, or fact.

It is the nonobservable ability to do something,to perform something.

Competence &L

anguage: it is ones knowldegeof the system of a language (rules of grammar,vocabulary)-all the pieces of language and howthey fit together.


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Competence and PerformancePerformance

It is the overtly observable and concrete

manifestation or realization of competence.

It is the actual production (speaking,

writing) or the comprehension (listening,

reading) of linguistic events.


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Issues in First Language AcquisitionComprehension and Production

They are both aspects of competence and

performance.

Children seem to understand more than

they actually produce like adults do.


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Issues in First Language AcquisitionIs language acquisition nature or nurture?

Even if Nativists insist that a child is born with

an innate knowledge toward language, thereare a number of problems.

The innateness is important, but we should not

ignore the environmental factors.

Language is both acquired and learned


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Issues in First Language AcquisitionUNIVERSALS

Children go through similar Universal Language Acquisition stagesregardless of cultural and social circumstances.

Language is universally acquired in the same manner, and the deepstructure of language at its deepest level may be common to alllanguages.

According to Maratsos (1988), universal linguistic categories suchas word order, morphological marking tone, agreement, reducedreference of nouns and noun clauses, verbs and verb classes,

predication, negation and question formation are common to alllanguages.

There are principles and parameters which specify some limitedpossibilities of variation.

Parameters determines ways in which languages can vary.


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Issues in First Language AcquisitionSystematicity and Variability

Systematicity means that children show aremarkable ability to infer the phonological,structural, lexical and semantic system oflanguage.

However, in the midst of all this systematicity,there is an equal amount of variability in the

process of learning. This means that something children once

learned may easily be changed or forgotten dueto the perception of new language systems.


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Issues in First Language AcquisitionLanguage and Thought

Piaget claimed that cognitive development

affects language.

On the other hand, others claimed that

language has an effect on thought.

The truth is that language and thought are

closely related.


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Issues in First Language AcquisitionImitation

One of the most important strategies a childuses in language learning is imitation.

Behaviorists assume one type of imitation, buta deeper level of imitation is much moreimportant in the process of languageacquisition.

When children imitate the surface structure ofthe language, they are not able to understandwhat they are imitating.


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Issues in First Language AcquisitionPractice

A behavioristic model of first language acquisition wouldclaim that practice - repetition and association is the

key to the formation of habits by operant conditioning. Practice is usually regarded as referring to speaking

only. But we can also think about comprehensionpractice.

The child learns not only how to initiate a conversation

but how to respond to anothers initiating utterance andrecognize the function of the discourse.


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Issues in First Language AcquisitionInput

The role of input in the childs acquisition oflanguage is very important.

Children can speak what they hear.

Adult and peer input to the child is far morecrucial that nativists earlier thought.

Adult input shapes the childs acquisition andthe interaction patterns between child andparent change according to the increasinglanguage skill of the child.


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Issues in First Language AcquisitionDiscourse

Berko-Gleason mentioned that interaction,

rather than exposure, is required in orderfor successful first language acquisition totake place and children learn language inthe context of being spoken to.

Sinclair and Coulthard proposed thatconversations should be examined in termsof initiations and responses.


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In Conclusion In order to understand why its not easy to

learn a second language in spite of the first

language acquisition, we should understandthe nature of initial acquisition process.

First Language Acquisition 1

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