LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

We are designed to walk… That we are taught to walk is

impossible. And pretty much the same is true of language. Nobody

is taught language. In fact you can’t prevent the child from

learning it.Noam Chomsky, The Human Language Serie 2 (1994)

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION• Language is extremely complex• Children before 5 already know the complex system that

make up the grammar of a language:– Syntactic – Phonological– Morphological– Semantic and pragmatic rules of grammar

• Children acquire a system of rules that enables them to construct and understand sentences, most of them have never produced or heard before.

• Children are creative in the use of language• Nobody teach grammatical rules to the children

Mechanism of language acquisition

REINFORCEMENT

ANALOGY

IMITATION

BEHAVIOURISM

COMPUTER MODEL

CONNECTIONISM MODELNo grammatical rules are stored

anywhere

ANALOGY

Child’s environment has Specific properties.

Reinforcement

MOTHERESE

HYPOTHESIS

Emphasize on the role of the environment in

facilitating language

acquisition

Adults speak to children in a special

languageCDS

Analogy, imitation, and reinforcement

• Cannot account for language development.

• What the child acquires is a set of sentences rather than a set of grammatical rules

Language Acquisition is a creative process

The innateness Hypothesis

Language faculty Children acquire Children create Brain is

Is innate. The a complex grammar grammars based equipped

Infant is endowed quickly and easily on the linguistic for

With a UG. Input and are acquisition

UG helps children guided by UG of human

to extract the rules language

of their language. grammar

STAGE IN LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

• Babbling: linguistic ability. Auditory input

• Holophrastic stage. Children’s utterance is one word.

• Telegraphic stage: Starting to put words together into sentences.

• The words and sentences that children produce at each stage of development conform to the set of grammatical rules.

• Humans are born with a predisposition to discover the units that serve to express linguistic meaning.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF GRAMMAR

PHONOLOGY

SYNTAX

PRAGMATIC

MORPHOLOGY

Children acquire the small set of sounds

Common to all languages

Overgeneralization. ChildrenAcquire rules of their particular

language

Children understand word orderrules.

Language in context

By manner of articulation: nasal, glidesStops, liquids, fricatives, and

africates.

Children’s utterances reflectTheir internal grammar.

Child assumes that his listener knowsWho is talking about.

By place of articulation features:Labials, velars, alveolars and

palatals

KNOWING MORE THAN ONE LANGUAGE

• Second language acquisition or 2 acquisition, refers to the acquisition of a second language by someone who has already acquired a first language.

• Bilingual language acquisition refers to the simultaneous acquisition of two languages beginning in infancy. (before 3)

Some amount of language mixing is normal part of early bilingual acquisition process and not necessarily an indication of any language problem.

THEORIES OF BILINGUAL DEVELOPMENT

• The unitary system hypothesis children initially construct one lexicon one grammar • The separate system hypothesis the bilingual child builds a distinct lexicon and grammar for each language.

• Bilingual children develops their grammar along the same line as monolingual children.

The rule of the thumb is that children receive equal input in the two languages to achieve native proficiency in both.

Second Language Acquisition

• L2 learners construct grammars of the target language.

• Fundamental difference hypothesis: L2 acquisition is different from L1

• Interlanguage grammar- stages

• Transfer of grammatical rules from L1 to L2

• Age is a significant factor in L2 acquisition

Second languageTeaching Methods

Synthetic ApproachBottom- up method

Analitical ApproachTop- down method

Teaching of the grammatical, lexical,

phonological, and functional Units of the language

The goal is to select topics, tasksthat are relevant to the needs

and Interests of the learner

Grammar translationContent- based

instruction