Second Language

Acquisition

Herbert Mouren Sianipar

Reni Hutagalung

INTRODUCTION
1. The Development of Speech Production
2. The Development Of Speech Comprehension
3. The Relationship of Speech Production,

Speech Comprehension and Thought

The Development of Speech

Production
Vocalization To Babbling To Speech
Vocalization to babbling
Crying
Cooing
Gurgling
Even deaf infants do it!

Vocalization To Babbling
Around the seventh month, children ordinarily

begin to babble (syllabic reduplication).

E.g. Baba, momo, panpan, dada
Both open syllables CV (momo and baba)
and close syllables CVC (panpan).
From as early as 6 months of age infants from
different language communities begin to
babble somewhat distinctively. (intonation)
Deaf infants deprived of hearing do not do.
They babble with their hands!

Babbling to Speech
Around

1 year of age.

There is some degree of discontinuity from

babbling to the production of speech sounds.

Japerson (1993)
There is some discontinuity between babbling and
meaningful speech where the kinds of sounds that
occur in babbling are not always immediately
realized in meaningful speech.
Intentional and non-intentional
Speech is dependent to some degree on babbling.
By babbling the chilled will get the chance to learn
them.

Milestone

Nelson 1973
(18 children)

Fenson 1993
(1,789 children)

10 words

15 months
(range 13-19)

13 months
(range 8-16)

50 words

20 months
(range 14-24)

17 months
(range 10-24)

Vocabulary at 24
months

186 words
(range 28-436)

310 words
(range 41-668)

There is often a spurt of vocabulary acquisition during the

second year. Early words are acquired at a rate of 1-3 per
week (as measured by production diaries); in many cases the
rate may suddenly increase to 8-10 new words per week,
after 40 or so words have been learned.

Explaining the acquisition of

consonants and vowels
Consonants are acquired in /m/,/p/, /b/, /t/ and

/d/ tend to precede /k/ and /x/.

Vowels seem to be in /a/ and /o/ preceding /i/
and //.
Visibility of articulators
Ease of articulation

Early speech stages: naming,

holophrastic, telegraphic.
Naming: one-word utterances
When do children start to say their first words?
Not at all conclusive.
The mere uttering of sound like mama may or

may not indicate word knowledge.

Children can be said to have learned their first
word when
1. They are able to utter a recognizable speech
form,
2. This is done in conjunction with some object or
event in the environment. E.g. dada-mama-papa

Holophrastic Function: One-word

Utterances
Children do not only use words for objects, they

use single words for expressing complex thoughts

as well.
mama as in I want mama.
mama as in the shoe belongs to mama.
Holophrastic=>holo=>whole and phras=>
indicates phrase or sentence.

Telegraphic Speech: Two- And

Three-word Utterances
Around 2 years of age or so children begin to

produce two- and three-word utterances.

Variety of purposes and semantic relations.
Regarding the purpose, The child uses language
to request, warn, name, refuse, answer, etc. and
regarding semantic relations there are relations
and concepts as agent, action, experiencer, and
receiver etc.
Telegraphic (no function words in grammatical
morphemes, example mommy juice, kiss baby)

The Development Of Speech

Comprehension
Can speech sound reach the fetus while it is still in

the uterus?
Benzaquen at al. (1990). microphone inside the
uterus.
Lecanuet et al. (1989). The two sound sequences.
DeCasper and fifer (1980). Recording of a mother
reading a story.
Locke (1993). Suggested that the learning of the
mothers voice have occurred within the first 12
hours after the birth.

The Development Of Speech

Comprehension
Fetuses and Speech Input
The mothers speech sounds were found to be able
to reach the ear of the fetus above the background
sounds.
Newborns (neonates) and Speech Input
Speech Comprehension Occurs without Speech

Production: the Case of Mute-Hearing Children

Christopher Nolan
Anne McDonald
Rie

In Normal Children Speech Comprehension

Develops in Advance of Speech Production

o If children did not first learn to understand
the meaning of words and sentences, they
would not be able to use words or sentences
in a meaningful way.
Relative Paucity of Comprehension Studies
The product of the speech production
process, the childs utterance, is
something that can be directly observed
while the product of the comprehension
process, meaning, cannot.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF SPEECH

PRODUCTION, SPEECH
COMPREHENSION AND THOUGHT.

Speech Comprehension Necessarily Precedes Speech

Production
Children must be able to comprehend the meaning of
the language before they themselves can produce it.
Children first need to be exposed to utterances with
a clear connection to the articles referred to before
they themselves can begin to say such utterances.
Children may sometimes repeat words or phrases
they hear, but this is not evidence for learning unless
the sounds are used in meaningful context that is
suitable for those sounds form.

Motivation for learning

His learning of the new language coincides

with his discovery of the world. the curiosity

that he has toward the world becomes a
powerful force in his language learning.

And every time he uses a piece of language

successfully, it is reinforced in his mind and

his confidence grows

Good Language
Environment
No pressure should be put upon the child as
he learns
the environment does contain within itself the

ability to tell the child where to begin and how

There is all the time that the child needs to learn the
to proceed.
language

References