First Language Aquisition

S It is easy to make the observation that a child learns a

first language with ease. However, learning a second language seems like a more difficult task.
S Why is this? S What is the difference between learning a first language

and learning a second language?

Theories in First Language Acquisition

S Behavioral Approaches:
S Language is studied as part of the human behavior. S Focus on empirical observation and scientific methodology. S Focus on observable aspects of linguistic behavior.

S Language use is a response to stimuli or conditioned by

reinforcement. S B.F. Skinners operant conditioning: conditioning in which the organism emits a response and that response, or operant is maintained by the reinforcement. S Verbal behavior is conditioned by its consequences.

Criticisms to Behavioral Approaches

S How do you explain novel utterances by the learner? S Unresolved relation between meaning and utterance. S Cognitive and affective experience of a person ignored.

The Nativist Approach

S Nativist: We are born with a genetic capacity that

presupposes us to a systematic perception of language around us, resulting in the construction of an internalized language system.
S Noam Chomsky
S The language acquisition device (LAD) S Universal Grammar (UG)

LAD
S S

set of language learning tools, provided at birth.. 4 innate linguistic properties: (1) the ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds. (2) ability to organize linguistic data into different classes. (3) knowledge that some linguistic systems possible while others are not. (4) constant evaluation of the linguistic system.

Universal Grammar (UG): The basis upon which all human languages build.
S S S

Basis: (1) the short time in which a child acquires a language. (2) deduction of rules from language that children hear. This grammar offers a certain limited number of possibilities like the word order of a sentence. It is as if the child were offered at birth a certain number of hypotheses, which he or she then matches with what is happening around him.

Criticism of Nativist Approaches

S Information is processed simultaneously . S Parallel distributed processing S Connectionism S No grammar rules. The systematicities of syntax emerge

from the set of learned associations between language functions and base and past tense forms, with novel responses generated by online generalizations from stored examples.
S Emergentism: the complexity of language emerges from,

relative simple developmental process being exposed to a massive and complex environment.

S Critics say he reduces language to grammar. He regards

meaning as secondary.
S 'Colourless green ideas sleep furiously S 'My mother, he no like bananas

S Disregard to meaning, means no regard to the social situation

in which the child learns a language.

S Chomsky differentiates between competence and performance. S He differentiates between core and central grammar of

language.

Functional Approaches

S What do they mean by function of language? S The meaningful, interactive purposes within a social context

that we accomplish with forms. Forms: morphemes, words, sentences, and the rules that govern them.

S Cognition and Language Development S Piaget: overall development as the result of the childrens

interaction with their environment, with an interaction between their developing perceptual cognitive capabilities and their linguistic experiences. S Mommy sock. This utterance could mean different things to a child depending on the social context.

Social Interaction and Language Development

S The psychologist Jerome Bruner that there is a possibility

of the presence LAD but it has to be accompanied by the Language Acquisition Support System (LASS).
S Others argue that children have an innate capacity to

read meaning into social situations.

S Functions of language and discourse. S Social constructivist emphasis.

Issues in First Language Acquisition

S Competence and performance S Language competence: ones underlying knowledge of the system of language (grammar, vocabulary, etc.). S Language performance: actual production (speaking and writing). S Production competence and comprehension competence S Evidence of comprehension of aspects of language that is never produced and production of language that is yet not comprehended.

S Nature and nurture S What behaviors are accounted by nature, in a predetermined

biological timetable and which are exposed by the environment by teaching and social interactions.
S Universality of language acquisition S Principles, parameters and structure dependency S Systematicity and variability S Language and thought S How thoughts affect language and how language affects

thoughts

Imitation
S S

Surface structure imitation Deep structure imitation

Practice and frequency

S

Brown and Hanlon (1970), for example, found that the frequency of occurrence of a linguistic item in the speech of mothers was an overwhelmingly strong predictor of the order of emergence of those items in their childrens speech.

Input
S

Adult input in a childs acquisition

Discourse
S

Berko-Gleason said, ..in order for successful first language acquisition to take place, interaction, rather than exposure, is required...

References

S Brown, H. (2007). Frist Language Acquisition. Principles

of Language Learning and Teaching. Pearson Education, White Plains, NY, pp. 24-53.
S Mason, Timothy. Learning Language. Timothy Masons

Site. Retrieved from: http://www.timothyjpmason.com/ WebPages/LangTeach/Licence/CM/OldLectures/ L1_Introduction.htm

S Summarize the important positions of the various theoretical

positions of first language acquisition: behaviorist, and nativist and functional.

S Answer question #8 in page 52

S Answer Classroom Connections question in page 46 in

(Teaching Implications).
S Journal entry: Use bullet number 3 in page 53 to write your first

journal entry.