Week 14 Language Aquisition

Tema 14
General Linguistics
Language Acquisition
1
2Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE Online
Education
Index Page
14. Language Acquisition 3

14.1 First Language Acquisition Theories 3
14.2. The Linguistic capacity of children 6
14.3. Stages in First Language Acquisition 7
14.4. The Acquisition of Phonology, Semantics, 12
Morphology, Syntax, Pragmatics in the
first Language
Complementary Resources 14
Bibliography 15
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14. Language Acquisition

It is a well-known fact that when a child learns a language, he acquires
the grammar of the language, the phonological, morphological, syntactic, and
semantics rules. Likewise, he acquires pragmatic rules and the lexicon of the
language he is exposed to. As we know children are not taught their language.
Children extract grammatical rules and the lexicon of the language they are
exposed to (Fromkin et al., 2014, 436). For example, If a five-year-old child
who was born in Nigeria whose parents are from Nigeria, comes to live in
Ecuador. He will learn Spanish and English. Since at home, his parents speak
English and in kindergarten, his teachers and classmates speak Spanish.
14.1 First Language Acquisition Theories

There are a lot of theories with respect to first language acquisition
among the most important we have Cognition. It holds that children talk
because they have something to talk about (psychologist Piaget). Likewise,
there is the Imitation theory which states that children acquire language through
imitating others and reinforcement (behavioural theorist Skinner) Reinforcement
refers that children
learn through positive and negative reinforcement. Infants are corrected by
people who are with them when they are acquiring the language. They are
praised when they say something correctly (positive reinforcement) or they are
punished/corrected when they say something wrong. For example when an
infant says in Spanish “Yo quiero ver una pucala” immediately her mother says
“no a pucala” película. “Tu quieres ver una película”. Another example in
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English; a mother asks her daughter What do you want: cookies or chocolate?
and her daughter answers /ˈtʃɒkleit/. Her mother pronounces /ˈtʃɒklət/ chocolate
so the infant pronounces /ˈtʃɒklət/ chocolate correctly. As we see according to
this theory, practice is necessary to acquire a language (https://n9.cl/gil37 )
After we have the Innateness theory proposed by Noam Chomsky who
claims that all human beings were born with a Language Acquisition Device. It
means that language is built into all human beings and that the LAD processes
and acquires language. However, for Innatists it is really difficult to explain why
if you receive a limited amount of language when you are a baby, how can you
develop a complete grammatical linguistic system on your own
(https://n9.cl/iyg7 ).
After we have the Interactionist theory. Interactionists are focused on a
linguistic environment where parents or people who look after children in their
early childhood are involved and are essential. Basically, according to this
theory when infants are acquiring a language there is an interchange plus a
conversation plus communication. Parents produce a speech directed to
children. This speech is called motherese or caretalk. Motherese or caretalk
refers to the way in which adults (parents, grandparents) speak to babies. They
speak to babies at a slower rate, higher pitch, simple sentences, etc. In this
theory Interactionists based on Chomsky theory, state that children acquire
language using their Innate ability (LAD) to develop language in interaction with
the linguistic environment. It means that the acquisition of the first language
begins with the innate ability that children are endowed with when they were
born plus the linguistic environment and plus motherese or caretalk.
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Another interesting hypothesis is the Critical Period (Lenneberg). It
supports the idea that the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) works when it is
correctly stimulated, which means at the right time and in the right place. This
theory relies on the fact that language acquisition has a specific and limited time
to be carried out. Two versions can be distinguished in the critical period
hypothesis. In the first version, called the strong version, children must
acquire the first language before puberty; on the other hand, they will never be
able to learn from later exposure. The second version, called the weak version,
holds that children can learn languages at any time. However, after puberty, it
will be more difficult and incomplete (https://n9.cl/iyg7 ) .
Finally, we have the input theory which holds that language acquisition
and environment are related (Linguist Halliday) (https://n9.cl/ne303) We could
not agree more with this theory since we have seen that when Latino babies
have been adopted by American couples and go to live to the United States
they speak English because it is the language that surrounds them an in which
they operate.
First Language Theories. Retrieved from:https://n9.cl/iyg7
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14.2 The Linguistic capacity of children

The ease with which children learn a language and the uniformity of the
stages of development for all children and all languages, in spite of having
impoverished input or poverty of stimulus they receive lead to linguists to
believe that the language faculty is innate and that children come endowed or
equipped with a Universal Grammar which aids children in the task of
constructing a grammar for their language (Fromkin et al., 2014, 436).
Note that according to Norquist (2020) in the above definition “poverty of the
stimulus is the argument that the linguistic input received by young children is
in itself insufficient to explain their detailed knowledge of their first language, so
people must be born with an innate ability to learn a language
(https://n9.cl/a2p36 )”. Note that the innate ability is the Language Acquisition
Device which is a tool that processes and acquires a language according to the
Innateness theory which holds that language is built into all human beings
(Cognitive scientist Chomsky) (https://n9.cl/ne303)
It is necessary to emphasize that universal grammar according to Chomsky is
the ability that infants have to learn the grammar of a language effortlessly.
Infants create grammars based on the linguistic input they receive and are
guided, accompanied, and influenced in this process by Universal Grammar.
This ability is built into the human brain from birth regardless of language.
Chomsky believed that exposure to a language was not the only requirement or
condition for a young child to become competent at understanding and
speaking a language. He claimed that human beings are born with an innate
ability to learn languages and that the basic structures of language are already
encoded in the human brain at birth. Therefore, children learn languages
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effortlessly. When we talk about Universal Grammar we are not talking about
English Grammar or Spanish grammar. Universal grammar theory holds that
every language has similar laws. “Universal Grammar represents the principles
and parameters to which all human languages conform (Fromkin et al., 2014,
436)”. It means that each language has ways to ask questions, make
affirmations or negative statements. In the same way, each language has ways
to identify tenses, gender, plurals, etc.
We can conclude that if all the languages have the same grammar laws, a child
needs only to follow the particular set of rules that other speakers follow in order
to understand and produce their native language. Consequently, when a child
was born his environment determines which language he will use, but he is born
or endowed with the tool (Language Acquisition Device LAD) to learn any
language effortlessly (https://n9.cl/b4t18 ).
14.3 Stages in First Language Acquisition

All children around the world acquire their first language in stages. It is
universal. During the first year of life, infants acquire and develop the sounds of
their languages. First, babies perceive and listen to many sounds that do not
exist in their linguistic environment and after they produce them by imitation.
There are six stages in first language acquisition.
1. Pre-talking stage / Cooing (0-6 months)
At this stage, after several weeks a baby is born, the baby begins to recognize
his mother’s voice and at the age of 5 and 6 months, he begins to use his voice
saying just vowels. “According to Bolinger (2002:283), pre-talking stage or
cooing is the vowel-like sound responding to human sounds more definitely,

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turns head, eyes seem to search for speakers occasionally some chuckling
sounds. For example, Miles (at the age of 4 months) demonstrating the cooing
stage of language acquisition. He is producing vowel-like sounds (especially,
the back vowels [u] and [o])in the sounds of “oh”, “uh”, and “ah”,
typical of "cooing".He still finds difficulties in producing the vowel sound [i]
except when he is screaming in“hiii”. However he cannot pronounce
the consonant sounds like [b], [p], or [m] yet” (https://n9.cl/bxys2).
2. Babbling stage (6-8 months)
After infants develop the babbling stage in which the baby begins to try to
imitate his parents’ words. The baby hears sounds and tries to imitate and
reproduce them with limited success. Consequently, babbling is defined as the
baby's attempts at creating, experimenting, and imitating sounds. Note that
when a baby babbles in Spanish “teta” he relates the word or sounds to the
object or thing in this case the baby bottle. From 8 months to 12, the baby has
more control over his vocal cords babbling, gesturing, and moving his body to
ask for something (body language). In the end, the baby uses verbal and non-
verbal means to communicate and he moves on to the next stage to acquire his
first language.
To conclude, we will say that babbling is the sounds (consonants-vowels
combinations) that babies produce trying to imitate adults, Steinberg
(2003:147).
Some of the words most often babbled by babies in Spanish are mama, teta,
papa, and some words babbled by babies around the world are [ma-ma-ma] or
[da-da-da] and [ba-ba-ba] or [na-na-na] (https://n9.cl/rluwk ).
During the stage of babbling, we can see that children develop sounds
i.e. there is a phonological development. We can see a phonemic expansion

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since children produce and experiment with a lot of phonemes (sounds), more
or less up to 150 different sounds.
3. Holophrastic / One-word stage (9-18 months)
The one-word and two-word stage. Retrieved from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_BJ-

0EB_9s
In this stage, babies produce or say one-word sentences. Of these sentences
50% are nouns, 30 % are verbs and modifiers and 20% are questions and
negatives. In this stage when the infant says milk it means that he wants to
drink milk now. Or when his mother asks him “ Is the food delicious?” he says
“no” moving his head. It means the food is not delicious. Another example is
when his mother commands him to eat his soup and he says “no” moving his
head, it means that he does not want to eat the soup.
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Babies saying “No” taken from:https://n9.cl/pjzs2
These sentences are used by babies when they want or need something.
However, sometimes they say the word “mama” when they need their mama’s
attention. Note that when babies can speak in successive one-word sentences
they are ready to move on to the next stage.
During the one-word stage, infants tend to overgeneralize.

Remember that overgeneralization means that a word is given a broader
meaning than it should have. For example, the word “dog” is not only used by
infants to refer to other dogs
but also to other four-legged animals.
At this stage, children respond to simple instructions. e.g. “give me a kiss”, “say
hello”, “say bye” “blow a kiss”, etc.
At this stage infants acquire syntactic understanding, it means that they
understand how language is structured (https://n9.cl/ne303 ).
4. Two-Word Stage (18-24 months)

In this stage, babies or toddlers produce sentences made up of
two words. Basically one word is the subject and the other one is the predicate.
For example, a baby says “kitty meow” for the sentence “the cat is meowing”. In
this stage we see that infants incorporate single modifiers; For example, “that
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kitten”, two-word questions e.g. “Daddy come?“and also infants begin to use the
present continuous or the suffix (-ing) onto words to describe something that is
happening at the moment of speaking. e.g. “Doggie eating” (https://n9.cl/rluwk ).
5.- Telegraphic Stage

This stage is called telegraphic because it is similar to what is seen in a
telegram. It means that the sentences that infants produce contain just enough
information to make sense or to be understood. At this stage, infants produce
several three and four-word sentences. It is believed that within this stage
infants begin to see the relationhip between words and objects. In the process
of acquiring their first language children make specific kinds of errors, for
example, they tend to overgeneralize morphology by saying womans, and
bringed. It clearly shows that they are acquiring the rules of their first language.
Typical examples of the telegraphic stage are “Daddy eat pizza”, “What his
name?”, and “He playing soccer”. It is said that within this stage children’s
vocabulary expands from 50 words to 13.000 words. Furthermore, in this stage
infants incorporate plurals, linking words, and they try to get a grip on tenses.
As an infant acquires his first language, we could say that he acquires each part
of the language in random order. However, it is wrong to assume that. There is
an order in which infants acquire a language. First, they acquire the vowels,
they produce rounded mouthed vowels like “oo” and “aa”. After the vowels,
infants produce consonant sounds. the easiest consonants to pronounce for
them are p,b,m,t,d,n,k,and g, The most difficult consonants to pronounce for
infants are “s” and ”z” since these consonants require that infants place the
tongue in the alveolar ridge and they cannot do it at that age. Likewise, there
are sounds that children cannot produce yet, so they replace them with other
sounds. For example, they could replace fis for fish, thoap for soap, and wun for
run .
6. Later multiword stage (30+months)

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According to Bolinger (2002:283) at this stage we can see the fastest

increase in infants’ vocabulary with many new words every day; There is no
babbling anymore. Their utterances have communicative intent. There is a
great variation among children. Infants understand everything they hear or say
to them (Hatauruk, 2015, 55).
14.4 The Acquisition of Phonology, Semantics,

Morphology, Syntax, Pragmatics in the first
Language
Wylie, S. (n.d.) Stages of language development. Retrieved from http://shannonwylie.weebly.com/stages-

of-language-development-analysis.html
This picture shows the different stages of language development in

infants. During all these stages children acquire the phonology, semantics,
morphology, syntax, lexicon, and pragmatics of their first language. Within the
first year of life, children develop the sounds of their languages (phonology).
They begin to perceive and produce many sounds spoken by their parents or
people around them. So that at the late babbling stage we can see that
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children's productions are fine-tuned and have all the phonological features of
the input language.
At the end of the first year, children pronounce their first words,and when they
are 2 years old they say short phrases it means that they have acquired more
lexicon and likewise they develop much of the phonological system. According
to several experimental studies, children are sensitive to stress, and phonotactic
constraints. Note that phonotactic constraints define what sound sequences
are possible and what other sound sequences are not possible in a given
language. These constraints are based on an examination of what sequences
occur and what sequences do not occur in that language (https://n9.cl/4839w ).
Infants are also sensitive to statistical regularities of the input that helps them
segment the fluent speech that they hear into words. One method of
segmenting speech is prosodic bootstrapping.
But what is prosodic bootstrapping?

Everybody knows that adults’ speech to young children is simpler, less complex
grammatically, less diverse in vocabulary, and generally more redundant. It is
also more fluent and more melodic. These characteristics benefit infants to
acquire their first language, especially the latter two characteristics since they
help children to decode input. The speech children hear has prosodic cues;
these cues do not label the units for a child, nor inform the child of the
relationships among the units. They provide tools for the child to separate one
unit from another. Once children have separated one unit from the other they
can discover the linguistic function of each unit. It is known as “prosodic
bootstrapping” (see Gleitman, Gleitman, Landau, & Wanner, 1988; Morgan,
1986)(https://pubs.asha.org/doi/10.1044/1058-0360.0401.66#d3e269 )
“Other bootstrapping methods can help the child to learn verb meaning based
on syntactic context (syntactic bootstrapping) or syntactic categories based on
word meaning (semantic bootstrapping) (Fromkin et al., 2014, 437)”
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Semantic Bootstrapping. Retrieved from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDQtIIQ_OtU
While infants acquire the lexicon of the language children may overextend word
meaning by using dog to refer to any four-legged creature. Likewise, infants
may underextend word meaning and use the word dog to refer just to the family
pet and not other dogs. It means that they think that the dog’s name is dog, As
we see, these types of errors are present in language acquisition. However, the
acquisition of children’s lexicon, and their grammatical development is guided
by general principles (Fromkin et al., 2014, 437).
Complementary Resources
● Video about Language Acquisition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD0Ff3VSCbE
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Bibliography
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2014). An Introduction to
Language (Vol. 10th Edition). Wadsworth. https://n9.cl/9406t
Glossary of Linguistic Terms. (2020). Glossary of Linguistic Terms.
Glossary of Linguistic Terms. https://n9.cl/y83q
Hatauruk, B. S. (2015, Aug). Children First Language Acquisition At Age
1-3 Years Old In Balata. IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social
Science (IOSR-JHSS), Volume 20(Issue 8), 51-57. 10.9790/0837-
20855157
Lingualinks Library. (2003). Glossary of Linguistic Terms. Glossary of
Linguistic Terms. https://glossary.sil.org/bibliography
Nordquist, R. (2020, Aug 28). "The Theory of Poverty of the Stimulus in
Language Development." ThoughtCo,. https://n9.cl/a2p36
Your Dictionary. (2020). Your Dictionary. Your Dictionary.
https://n9.cl/f3wla
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Tema 14

14. Language Acquisition 3

14. Language Acquisition

the grammar of the language, the phonological, morphological, syntactic, and

exposed to (Fromkin et al., 2014, 436). For example, If a five-year-old child

English and in kindergarten, his teachers and classmates speak Spanish.

14.1 First Language Acquisition Theories

because they have something to talk about (psychologist Piaget). Likewise,

imitating others and reinforcement (behavioural theorist Skinner) Reinforcement

refers that children

learn through positive and negative reinforcement. Infants are corrected by

punished/corrected when they say something wrong. For example when an

so the infant pronounces /ˈtʃɒklət/ chocolate correctly. As we see according to

this theory, practice is necessary to acquire a language (https://n9.cl/gil37 )

After we have the Innateness theory proposed by Noam Chomsky who

develop a complete grammatical linguistic system on your own

After we have the Interactionist theory. Interactionists are focused on a

theory when infants are acquiring a language there is an interchange plus a

conversation plus communication. Parents produce a speech directed to

children. This speech is called motherese or caretalk. Motherese or caretalk

theory Interactionists based on Chomsky theory, state that children acquire

born plus the linguistic environment and plus motherese or caretalk.

Another interesting hypothesis is the Critical Period (Lenneberg). It

to be carried out. Two versions can be distinguished in the critical period

will be more difficult and incomplete (https://n9.cl/iyg7 ) .

and environment are related (Linguist Halliday) (https://n9.cl/ne303) We could

First Language Theories. Retrieved from:https://n9.cl/iyg7

14.2 The Linguistic capacity of children

impoverished input or poverty of stimulus they receive lead to linguists to

equipped with a Universal Grammar which aids children in the task of

constructing a grammar for their language (Fromkin et al., 2014, 436).

in itself insufficient to explain their detailed knowledge of their first language, so

people must be born with an innate ability to learn a language

(Cognitive scientist Chomsky) (https://n9.cl/ne303)

It is necessary to emphasize that universal grammar according to Chomsky is

guided, accompanied, and influenced in this process by Universal Grammar.

condition for a young child to become competent at understanding and

encoded in the human brain at birth. Therefore, children learn languages

English Grammar or Spanish grammar. Universal grammar theory holds that

to identify tenses, gender, plurals, etc.

to understand and produce their native language. Consequently, when a child

language effortlessly (https://n9.cl/b4t18 ).

14.3 Stages in First Language Acquisition

There are six stages in first language acquisition.

1. Pre-talking stage / Cooing (0-6 months)

saying just vowels. “According to Bolinger (2002:283), pre-talking stage or

cooing is the vowel-like sound responding to human sounds more definitely,

stage of language acquisition. He is producing vowel-like sounds (especially,

except when he is screaming in“hiii”. However he cannot pronounce

the consonant sounds like [b], [p], or [m] yet” (https://n9.cl/bxys2).

2. Babbling stage (6-8 months)

reproduce them with limited success. Consequently, babbling is defined as the

baby's attempts at creating, experimenting, and imitating sounds. Note that

To conclude, we will say that babbling is the sounds (consonants-vowels

combinations) that babies produce trying to imitate adults, Steinberg

[da-da-da] and [ba-ba-ba] or [na-na-na] (https://n9.cl/rluwk ).

i.e. there is a phonological development. We can see a phonemic expansion

or less up to 150 different sounds.

3. Holophrastic / One-word stage (9-18 months)

The one-word and two-word stage. Retrieved from:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_BJ-

In this stage, babies produce or say one-word sentences. Of these sentences

head, it means that he does not want to eat the soup.

Babies saying “No” taken from:https://n9.cl/pjzs2