Language Acquisition

First language acquisition

Second language acquisition

Requirements: Interaction with other language-

users to bring the ‘lang. faculty’ into operation

Physically capable of sending and receiving sound signals in a language

Individual’s potential for acquiring any lauguage

Competence (Chomsky) Irrelevant to cultural differences, nor

race differences A spontaneous process From babyhood

1. Pre-language stages

2. The one-word or holophrastic stage

3. The two-word stage

4.Multiple-word stage

3 to 10 months 12 to 18

months

18 to 20 months

2 to 3 years

Cooing: 3months old the first recognizable sounds with velar consonants such as [k] [g] as well as high vowels such as [i] [u] Babbling: 6months old fricatives, nasals, syllabletype sounds 9months old recognizable intonation patterns, combination 10-11months old use vocalizations to express emotions and

emphasis video cooing and

babling

Characterized by speech in which single terms are uttered for everyday objects

Already extending their use Most verbs and nouns, infrequent

function words Tend to informative words

Mama

Mama is coming !

I saw Mama’s socks !

Milk

I want milk ….

Video Baby arguing

Begin around 18 to 20 months, As child’s vocabulary moves beyond 50

distinct words Combinations: Mama book. Toy mine. Baby chair. Sock pretty

A)possession: This is Mama’s book.

b)request :  Mama gave me the book.

(c)statement：   Mama is reading the book.

Between 2-3 years old Producing a large number of utterances Telegraphic speech: strings of lexical

morphemes in phrases Develop some sentence-building

capacity Can order some forms correctly A number of grammatical inflections

begin to appear

Videos Star wars.. Charlie bit my finger..

Cathy build house. Cat stand up table. Daddy like this

book. Chair all broken. I good boy today.

What that? What her name? No sit there. Mummy no play. Me put it back. Baby no eat apple