FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Language acquisition
- We are not born speaking!
- We have a language instinct, but we must learn our language nonetheless.
- If we think of all that is entailed in knowing a language, it seems a challenge
Yet all normally raised human beings learn language to some degree or other.
Language instinct
- Our language instinct does not tell us what specific language to learn or particular structures to memorize.
- It does provide us with an innate knowledge of basic language features, present in all human languages.
LINGUISTIC UNIVERSALS --> UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR
- Humans then learn to specialize this universal grammar for the particulars of their language.
Innateness of language
- How do we really know this is an innate ability?
- The biologist Eric Lenneberg defined a list of characteristics that are typical of innate behaviors in animals.
Compare, for example, walking and talking to swimming and playing the piano.
If we can show that language displays these characteristics, we have proof for our claim.
Innate behaviors
- emerge before they are necessary.
- do not appear as the result of a conscious decision.
- do not appear due to a trigger from external events.
- are relatively unaffected by direct teaching and intensive practice.
- follow a regular sequence of “milestones” in their development.
- generally observe a critical period for their acquisition
CRITICAL PERIOD
1. Emerge before necessary
- When is language necessary?
To take care of ourselves, provide ourselves with the necessities of life.
This usually occurs in adulthood, or around puberty at the earliest.
- When do children usually begin speaking/using language coherently?
Normally between 12-24 months
- Is this criterion met?
YES
2. Are not conscious
- Does a child decide to consciously pursue certain skills?
YES
to play an instrument or a sport, for example
- Do babies make a conscious decision to start learning a language?
No, it just happens.
- Is this criterion met?
YES
3. Are not triggered
- What would prompt a child to take up soccer?
Seeing her/his friends play
If her/his parents play
Watching on TV
Etc.
- What would prompt a child to begin speaking?
Nothing. We’ve said it’s not necessary. It just happens.
- Is this criterion met?
YES
4. Cannot be taught
- We CAN teach grammar, and prescriptive rules of language. But we’re not talking about that here.
- We correct children’s errors sometimes. Does it help?
Nope. They go on saying the same thing.
- In fact, “coaching” seems to hurt rather than help language ability in children.
- Is this criterion met?
YES
5. Follow milestones
- In spite of different backgrounds, different locations, and different upbringings, most children follow the very same milestones in acquiring language.
For example, around 12months “mamma” and “dadda” begin to emerge.
Around 24 months, the child has a vocabulary of approximately 50 words.
By 30 months, two and three word utterances common.
- Is this criterion met?
YES
6. Observe a critical period
- What is a critical period?
owing to lateralization of brain function and other development
a period of time during which a certain behavior must be acquired
if not, the window is closed and it is not possible to acquire such behavior
- For first language acquisition, there seems to be a critical period of the first two years, during which children must be exposed to rich input. There is also a period, from about 10-16 years, when acquisition is possible, but not native-like.
- For SLA, the issue is more complicated… More later.
- Is this criterion met?
YES
7. Innateness of Language
- We have shown, then, that language is indeed an innate ability.
- We must now turn to questions relating to this ability:
What are theories of language acquisition?
How are first languages acquired?
How are first and second language acquisition different?
How are second languages acquired?
THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
- In the 1950s, behaviorism was the prevailing school of thought in psychology.
- Behaviorism focussed on peoples behaviors rather than on the mental systems beneath.
- Language was viewed as a verbal behavior that children learn:
· Learning through imitation
· Learning through reinforcement
· Learning through analogy
· Learning through structured input
Do children learn through imitation?
CHILD : My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we petted 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.
ADULT : Did you say she held them tightly?
CHILD : No, she holded them loosely.
- Children do imitate to some extent, of course.
- BUT, imitation does not play as large a role as you might think.
- Early words and sentences that children produce show that they are not simply imitating adult speech, because they contain words and structures that are never present in adult speech.
· holded
· tooths
· Cat stand up table.
· What the boy hit?
· Mommy get it my ladder
Do children learn through reinforcement?
CHILD : Nobody don’t like me.
MOTHER : No, say “Nobody likes me.”
CHILD : Nobody don’t like me.
(dialogue repeated 8 times)
MOTHER : Now, listen carefully, say “Nobody likes me.”
CHILD : Oh, nobody don’t likes me.
- Some assume that children learn correct sentences through positive reinforcement if they say something right and negative reinforcement if they say something wrong.
- In reality, parents rarely provide reinforcement to their children.
· If it does occur, it is usually regarding incorrect pronunciation or incorrect reporting of the facts, but rarely structural (morphological or syntactical) information.
- Even if they do, it is rarely heeded by the children, as they fail to see what they are doing wrong.
Do children learn through analogy?
- Recently, a computer model of language representation and acquisition called connectionism has been proposed.
- In this model, no grammatical rules are stored anywhere. Rather, information is represented by a set of connections between different phonological forms.
- Analogy to known forms helps produce new forms.
· Dance - danced > prance - pranced
· Drink - drank > sink - sank
- This is a potentially powerful theory, but more applicable to language USE than to language acquisition.
- The model assumes certain characteristics of the input data the children receive, although studies fail to show that these are present in the actual input.
· He flies a kite. He flew a kite. *The batter flew out.
- There are also things a child couldn’t learn by analogy alone.
· I painted a red barn. I painted a barn red.
· I saw a red barn. *I saw a barn red.
Do children learn through structured input?
- Another suggestion is that children are able to learn languages because adults speak to them in a special “language”. (See File 9.5 for more details.)
· This is often known as “motherese” or “child directed speech” (CDS) - also, informally, “baby talk”.
- This theory of acquisition emphasizes the role of the environment in facilitating language acquisition.
- Motherese, although slower and clearer, is not simpler. It includes a variety of sentence types:
· questions
· imperatives
· embedded sentences
· negatives + tag questions
- Studies show that infants prefer to listen to motherese over normal adult speech.
· The exaggerated intonation (etc.) of motherese may help attract and hold a child’s attention.
- BUT, studies also show that this kind of speech does not affect the child’s language development.
- Many cultures do not use this special register to talk to children, and some cultures rarely speak to children. Nonetheless, speech develops normally in these cultures as well.
How do children learn?
- That question is of course difficult to answer.
- We know that imitation, reinforcement, analogy and structured input are insufficient to provide the answer.
- We also know that children are born with a language instinct, and that this instinct enables them to construct grammars.
L1 ACQUISITION
- Sound production/babbling
- Phonological acquisition
- Morphological/Syntactical acquisition
- Milestones in L1 development
Acquisition of phonology
- Babies begin playing with sounds after a couple of weeks. Their abilities are constrained by physiological limitations.
- By 4 months, they can distinguish between [a] and [i], so their perception skills are good.
- By about 4-6 months, children babble, putting together vowels and consonants. This is not a conscious process!
- At about 7-10 months starts repeated babbling.
- By 10-12 months, children produce a variety of speech sounds.
The acquisition of morphosyntax
- At about 12 months, children begin producing words consistently.
- One-word stage:
Name people, objects, etc.
Also incorporate adult phrases as one word
- Two-word stage:
Approximately 18-24 months
Use consistent set of word orders, with structure determined by semantic relationships
• agent+action (baby sleep)
• possessor+possession (Mommy book)
Morphosyntax (cont’d.)
- Later stages
Once children can combine two words, they begin using three- and four-(+) word sequences
Still ‘telegraphic’ speech in that it contains only m0orphemes and words that carry semantic content.
What about second languages?
- Is second language acquisition the same as first language acquisition, or is it inherently different?
- L2 acquisition is indeed different, in many crucial ways.
- Fundamental Difference Hypothesis
Does not meet the Lenneberg criteria
Requires conscious effort
Very few adult L2ers achieve native-like proficiency
Extensive variation across L2ers, compared to fairly uniform L1 acquisition process
What about second languages?
- SLA, though, does share some characteristics with L1 acquisition.
Progression through stages
Learners construct grammars that represent the continuum between L1 and L2, known as Inter-language grammars.
The errors L2 learners make are systematic and rule-governed, although they differ from the systematic errors and L1 learners makes
The role of UG in SLA is a hotly debated topic, which we will not get into here.
L2 ACQUISITION
- What are the factors that could potentially influence the acquisition of a second language?
First language transfer and interference
• Positive, negative and null interference
• Can affect syntax, morphology, phonology
Over-generalization
• of rules from L1 or from L2, extended to too many cases
Instruction
• Can explicit training in L2 benefit?
Immersion
• Is immersion in the L2 the only way to truly learn L2?
- Is there a critical period for L2?
- There is some debate as to whether there is a CRITICAL period or not, or if there’s a SENSITIVE period.
- Either way, success in L2 is dependent to some degree on the age of acquisition.
All areas are affected, but one seems to be most affected…
PHONOLOGY