‫الجامعة السعودية االلكترونية‬

‫الجامعة السعودية االلكترونية‬

‫‪26/12/2021‬‬
DENG 300 Language Awareness
Chapter 13: First Language Acquisition
Content
• Acquisition
• Input
• The Acquisition Schedule
• Cooing
• Babbling
• The One-word Stage
• The Two-word Stage
• Telegraphic Speech
• The Acquisition Process
• Developing Morphology
• Developing Syntax
• Developing Semantics
Acquisition
• “The process of language acquisition has some basic requirements … a
child requires interaction with other language-users in order to bring
the general language capacity into contact with a particular language
use, such as English. ”

• “The particular language a child learns is not genetically inherited, but

is acquired in a particular language-using environment.”
Acquisition
• “The child must be physically capable of sending and receiving sound
signals in a language.”

• “All infants make “cooing” and “babbling” noises during their first
year, but deaf infants stop after about six months.”

• “In order to speak a language, a child must be able to hear that

language being used. By itself, however, hearing language sounds is
not enough.” (e.g. read about the case of a child with a deaf parents).
Input

• Input: the “language samples” of the native language a child gets

exposed to daily during the acquisition stage.

• Caregiver Speech: the simplified version of the native language

adopted by the parents to communicate with their child.

• The caregiver speech has a very short sentences (mommy) with simple
grammar and involves many “repetition [go-go] and paraphrasing.”
The Acquisition Schedule

• “All normal children develop language at roughly the same time, along
the same schedule.”

• “It would seem that the language acquisition schedule has the same
basis as the biologically determined development of motor skills and
the maturation of the infant’s brain.”
Cooing

• “The child gradually becomes capable of producing sequences of vowel-like

sounds, particularly high vowels similar to [i] and [u].”

• “By four months of age, the developing ability to bring the back of the
tongue into regular contact with the back of the palate allows the infant to
create sounds similar to the velar consonants [k] and [g], hence the
common description as “cooing” and “gooing.”

• “By the time they are five months old, babies can already hear the
difference between the vowels [a] and [i] and discriminate between the
syllables [ba] and [ga].”
Babbling

• “Between six and eight months, the child is sitting up and producing a
number of different vowels, consonants, as well as combinations such as ba-
ba-ba and ga-ga-ga. This type of production is described as babbling.”

• “Around nine to ten months, there are recognizable intonation patterns to

the consonant and vowel combinations being produced as well as variation in
the combinations such as ba-ba-da-da.”

• “Nasal sounds also become common and certain syllable sequences such as
ma-ma-ma and da-da-da are interpreted by parents as inevitably versions of
“mama” and “dada.”
Babbling
• During the tenth and eleventh month, they become capable of using
vocalization to express emotions and emphasis. This late babbling
stage is characterized by more complex syllable combination (ma-da-
ga-ba) and A lot of sound play & attempted imitations.

• “There is substantial variation among children in terms of the age at

which particular features of linguistic development occur. “
The One-word Stage

• “Between twelve and eighteen months, children begin to produce a variety of

recognizable single-unit utterances.”

• “This period, traditionally called the one-word stage, is characterized by speech in

which single terms are uttered for everyday objects ‘milk’, ‘cookie’, ‘cat’”

• “Holophrastic speech (meaning a single form functioning as a phrase or sentence”

such as ʌsæ for what's that.

• “During this stage, then, the child may be able to refer to Karen and bed, but isn’t
ready yet to put the form together in a more complex phrase”
The two-word stage
• “Around eighteen to twenty months … the child’s vocabulary moves beyond fifty words”

• “By the time the child is two years old, a variety of combinations, similar to baby chair, will have appeared.”

• “The adult’s interpretation of such combinations is, of course, very much tied to the context of their utterance.”

• “The phrase Baby chair may be taken as an expression of possession (=this is baby’s chair), or as request (=put
the baby in chair).”

• “The child not only produces speech, but also receives feedback confirming that the utterance worked as a
contribution to the interaction.”

• By the age of two, whether the child is producing 200 or 300 “words”, he or she will be capable of
understanding 5 times as many.”
Telegraphic Speech
• “Between two and two and half years, the child beings producing a large number of words …
classified as “multiple-word” speech.”

• During the Telegraphic Speech Stage, “the child has clearly developed sentence-building
capacity … and can get the word order correct.”

• In this stage, "a number of grammatical inflections begin to appear and simple prepositions (in,
on) are also used.”

• “By the age of two-and-a-half, the child’s vocabulary is expanding rapidly and the child is
initiating more talk.”

• “By three, the vocabulary has grown to hundreds of words and pronunciation become clearer.”
The Acquisition Process

• “For the vast majority of children, no one provides any instruction on

how to speak the language.”

• “A more accurate view would have the children actively constructing,

from what is said to them and around them, possible ways of using the
language.”

• “The child’s linguistics production appears to be mostly a matter of

trying out constructions and testing whether they work or not.”
The Acquisition Process

• “It is also unlikely that adult’s "corrections” are a very effective

determiner of how the child speaks.”

• ”One important factor … in the child’s acquisition process is the actual

use of sound and word combinations.”
Developing Morphology

• "By the time a child is two and two-a-half years old, he or she is ….
Incorporating some inflectional morphemes that indicate the
grammatical function of nouns and verbs used.”

• “The first to appear to appear is -ing form … as cat sitting.”

Developing Morphology
• “The next morphological development is typically the marking of regular plurals with the stem -s, as
in boys and cats.”

• “The acquisition of the plural marker is often accompanied by a process of overgeneralization.”

• The child overgeneralizes the apparent rule of adding –s to form plurals and will talk about foots.”

• “When the alternative pronunciation of the plural morpheme used in houses (i.e., ending in [-əz])
comes into use, … forms such as boyses or footses can be heard.”

• “At the same time as this overgeneralization is taking place, some children also begin using irregular
plurals such as men quite appropriately for a while, but then try out the general rule on the forms,
producing expressions like some mens.”
Developing Morphology
• "Not long after, the use of possessive inflection -’s appears such as girl’s bag.

• “At about the same time, different forms of the verb “to be,” such as are and was, begin to be used.”

• “At about the same time, went and came should be noted. These irregular past-tense forms …. do typically preceded the
appearance of the -ed inflection.” (played, walked).

• Once the past-tense forms being appearing … the irregular verb forms disappear for a while, replaced by overgeneralized
versions goed and comed.”

• “For a period, the -ed inflection may be added to everything.”

• “The child works out (usually after the age of 4) which forms are regular and which are not.”

• “Finally, the regular -s marker on third person singular present tense verbs appears. It occurs first with full verbs first
(comes, looks) and then with auxiliaries (does, has).”
Developing Syntax

• “We will look at the development of two structures that seem to be

acquired in a regular way by most English-speaking children.”

• “In the formation of questions and the use of negatives, there appear
to be three identifiable stages.”

• “The ages at which children go through these stages can vary quite a
bit, but the general pattern seems to be that stage 1 occurs between
18 and 26 months, stage 2 between 22 and 30 months, and stage 3
between 24 and 40 months.”
Developing Syntax
• “In forming questions, the child’s first stage has two procedures.
Simply add a Wh-form (Where, Who) to the beginning of the
expression with a rise in intonation towards the end.”
“Where kitty? “ “Doggie?”

• “ In the second stage, more complex expressions can be formed, but

the rising intonation strategy to be used.”
“What book name?” “You want chair?
Developing Syntax
• “In the third stage, the required movement of the auxiliary in English
questions.”
“I can go → Can I go?”

• “Stage 3 questions are generally quite close to the adult model.”

“Can I have a piece?” “Did I caught it?”
Developing Syntax
• In the case of negatives, stage 1 seems to Involves a simple strategy of
putting No or Not at the beginning. In some cases (e.g. No you doing
it).”

• “In the second stage, the additional negative forms don’t and can’t
appear.”
“He no bite you” “I don’t want it”
Developing Syntax
• The third stage sees the incorporation of other auxiliary forms such as
didn’t.”
“I didn’t caught it”

• “A very late acquisition is the negative form isn’t, with the result that
some Stage 2 forms (with not instead of isn’t) continue to be used for
quite a long time”
“He not taking it”
Developing Semantics

• “During the holophrastic stage, many children use their limited vocabulary to refer
to a large number of unrelated objects.”

• “Overextending the meaning of a word on the basis of similarities of shape, sound,

or size,” is known as overextension such as “the word ball is extended to all kinds of
rounds objects, including a lampshade, a doorknob and the moon.”

• “Some types of antonymous relations are acquired fairly late (after the age of five).”

• “The distinction between a number of other pairs such as before/after and buy/sell
also seem to be later acquisition.”
References

• Yule, G. (2014). The study of language (5th ed.). Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.
Thank You