FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

DEFINITIONS

First language (L1)

• Language a person learns from birth or
speaks first

Second language (L2)

• Any language a person learns to speak other
than their native language
CHARACTERISTICS OF CHILDREN´S LANGUAGE

There are many similarities in the way their

language develops all over the world.
• A child’s basic capacity to learn any language is
innate
• But a child acquires the specific forms/
meanings and connections of ONE individual
language as a result of prolonged exposure to
a specific speech community.
Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another
http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies?language=en
First Stage of FLA: Pre-linguistic Stage

Phonation stage - Birth - 2 months

• Utters vowel-constant sounds.
• Is already aware of the need to communicate
to get needs (cries/whimpers).

Developmental Milestones: Baby Talk from First Sounds to First Words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7WAfwKi88Q
First Stage of FLA: Pre-linguistic Stage

Goo stage – 2 - 3 months

• Begins to recognize the intonation of L1.
• Attitudes and emotions of speaker
• Difference between statements and
questions

Developmental Milestones: Baby Talk from First Sounds to First Words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7WAfwKi88Q
First Stage of FLA: Pre-linguistic Stage

Expansion – 4 - 6 months
• Babbling sound more speech-like
• Consonant sounds /p/, /d/, /m/ heard

Developmental Milestones: Baby Talk from First Sounds to First Words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7WAfwKi88Q
First Stage of FLA: Pre-linguistic Stage

Canonical – 7 - 10 months
• Babbling has long & short groups of sounds
• Now uses non-crying sounds to gain attention
(e.g. coughing)

Developmental Milestones: Baby Talk from First Sounds to First Words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7WAfwKi88Q
First Stage of FLA: Pre-linguistic Stage

Variegated – 11 - 12 months
• Last step before child utters ‘real’ words
• Learns rhythm of patterns of speech

Developmental Milestones: Baby Talk from First Sounds to First Words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7WAfwKi88Q
MODIFIED SPEECH: Crucial Element In LA Process

The way adults modify their speech when

communicating with children
• Slower rate of speech
• Higher pitch
• Varied intonation
• Shorter, simpler sentence patterns
• Frequent repetition
• Paraphrase
• Reformulation
First Stage of FLA: Linguistic Stage

Holophrastic (12 months to 17 months)

• One word linked to child’s own action or desire for an action
• Convey emotions and commands

Telegraphic (18 months to 24 months)

• Two word sentences with clear syntactic meaning
• Mommy up, baby fall down, kiss baby, more outside, all gone cookie

Multiple Word ( 20 months to 27 months)

• Variety of sentences
• Use of questions
L1 Developmental Sequences

• Acquisition of Grammatical morphemes

• Acquisition of Negation (to deny, reject,

disagree with, and refuse something)

• Acquisition of Questions
Acquisition of Grammatical morphemes

Roger Brown’s study (1973):

approximate order of acquiring grammatical morphemes
(not necessarily at the same age)

• Present progressive –ing (running)

• Plural –s (books)
• Irregular past forms (went)
• Possessive -’s (daddy’s hat)
• Copula (am/is/are)
• Articles (a/an/the)
• Regular past –ed (walked)
• Third person singular simple present –s (he runs)
• Auxiliary ‘be’ (He is coming)
Acquisition of Grammatical morphemes
e.g., “wug test” – by Gleason
1) Here is a wug. Now there are two of them.
There are two ______.
2) John knows how to bod. Yesterday he did the
same thing. Yesterday, he_______.
• Through the tests, children demonstrate that they know the
rules for the formation of plural and simple past in English.
• By generalizing these patterns to words they have never
heard before, they show that their language is not just a list
of memorized word pairs such as ‘book/books’ and
‘nod/nodded’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgB2iMuEZAA
Acquisition of Negation
Lois Bloom’s study (1991) – four stages

• Stage 1: ‘no’ – e.g., “No go”. “No cookie.”

• Stage 2: subject + no – e.g., “Daddy no comb hair.”

• Stage 3: auxiliary or modal verbs (do/can) + not

(Yet no variations for different persons or tenses)
e.g., “I can’t do it “, “He don’t want it.”

• Stage 4: correct form of auxiliary verbs (did/doesn’t/is/are) + not

e.g., He didn’t go. She doesn’t want it.
But sometimes double negatives are used
e.g., I don’t have no more candies.
Acquisition of Questions
Lois Bloom’s study (1991):
Order of the occurrence of wh- question
words

1. “What” - Whatsat? Whatsit?

2. “Where” and “who”
3. “Why” (emerging at the end of the 2nd
year and becomes a favorite at the age of
3 or 4)
4. “How” and “When” (yet children do not
fully understand the meaning of adults’
responses)
e.g., Child: When can we go outside?
Mother: In about 5 minutes.
Child: 1-2-3-4-5! Can we go now?
Acquisition of Questions

Lois Bloom’s study (1991):

Six stages of children’s question-making
• Stage 1: using single words or single
two- or three-word sentences with
rising intonation
(“Mommy book?” “Where’s Daddy?”)

• Stage 2: using the word order of the

declarative sentence (“You like this?”
“Why you catch it?”)

• Stage 3: “fronting” - putting a verb at

the beginning of a sentence
(“Is the teddy is tired?” “Do I can have a
cookie?”)
Acquisition of Questions

• Stage 4: subject-auxiliary inversion in

yes/no questions but not in wh-
questions
(“Do you like ice cream?” “Where I
can draw?”)

• Stage 5: subject-auxiliary inversion in

wh-questions, but not in negative wh-
questions
(“Why can he go out?” “Why he can’t
go out?”)

• Stage 6: overgeneralizing the inverted

form in embedded questions
(“I don’t know why can’t he go out.”)
The pre-school years

• By age 4, children have mastered the basic structures of the

language.

• in the late pre-school years, the focus will be on developing kids

ability to use language in widening social environment.

• They develop Metalinguistic Awareness = treat language as an

object separate from the meaning.

• Focus on the meaning: “Drink the chair” vs “cake the eat”

The school years

• Learning to read gives them a new understanding

that language has form as well as meaning.

• Astonishing growth of vocabulary. (1000+ a year)

• Acquisition of different language Registers: Written

vs spoken language, formal vs. informal language