PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING - BROWN

CHAPTER 2
FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Has interested men of thought and science since late 18th century
In the 2nd half of the 20th century

Researchers started to analyse child language systematically.

What’s the nature of the psycholinguistic processes that enable
human beings to speak fluently?
Teachers and teacher trainers
Study general findings to draw analogies between
1st language and 2nd language acquisition

DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Babbling, cooing and crying

As small babies Specific attempts to imitate words

At the end of their first year of life Utterance of their first word
Considerable multiplicity of words
By about 18 months of age Beginning of two-word and three-word “sentences”
Comprehension of an incredible quantity of linguistic input

By about 3 years old Non-stop chattering and incessant conversation

Learning of what to say and what NOT to say

At school age
Social functions of their language
 “Verbal Behaviour” (1957)
BEHAVIOURISTIC APPROACHES
Theory of operant-conditioning
Skinner
The organism (child) emits a response, or operant (a
Verbal behaviour, like other behaviour, sentence or utterance) without necessarily observable
is controlled by its consequences. stimuli. That operant may be maintained by
reinforcement.

If rewarding = behaviour maintained

If punishing or lack of reinforcement = behaviour weakened and finally forgotten.

Linguistic stimulus (word or sentence) elicits a “mediating” response

that is self-stimulating
Mediation Theory
First attempt to account for abstractions or “mentalism”
Left many questions unanswered.
level of underlying meaning that is only manifested overly
Deep structures by surface structures.

The child may acquire frames of a linear pattern of sentence

Jenkins and Palermo elements and learn the stimulus-response equivalences that
can be substituted within each frame.

Failed to account for the abstract nature of language

 Language acquisition is innately determined.
THE NATIVIST APPROACH
We are born with the genetic capacity of constructing an
internalised system of language.
Chomsky
Existence of innate properties of language to explain the child’s mastery of a native
language in such a short time despite the abstract nature of the rules of language.

LAD – Language Acquisition Device

The innate knowledge

-not a cluster of brain cells.

originated the idea of -cannot be isolated.
-cannot be neurologically located.
UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

System of universal linguistic rules

Human beings are genetically equipped with abilities

that enable them to acquire language.

A child’s language at any given point is

a legitimate system (systematic). Not a process of
Language development developing fewer and
fewer mistakes.

Child constantly forming hypotheses on

the input received, and then testing those
hypotheses in speech. These hypotheses being continually revised,
reshaped, or sometimes abandoned.
 Discovered that English-speaking children as young as four years of age applied rules
Berko for the formation of the plural, present progressive, past tense, third singular, and
possessives.

Using a simple nonsense-word test

Nativists tried to describe hypothetical grammars of Based on empirical data

child language.

Describe the abstract rules underlying surface output

From early one-and-two-word forms to complex

language of five to ten-year-olds. PIVOT GRAMMARS

Two separate word classes not thrown together at random.

My cap – All gone milk – That horsie – Mommy sock
Words on the left-hand side seem to
belong to a class and words on the right-
hand side to another.

FIRST WORD = PIVOT WORD

SECOND WORD = OPEN WORD SENTENCE = PIVOT WORD + OPEN WORD

Research yielded a multitude of such rules (generative

rules) from early stages to adult-like speech.
PDP – Parallel distributed processing

The “rule-governed” model was finally challenged by

PDP – Parallel distributed processing
Neurons in the brain are said to form multiple connections

Rather than a serial process of one rule

being applied, then another.
Thus a child’s (or adult’s) linguistic performance may be the
consequence of many levels of simultaneous neural
Analogy with music interconnections

At least 12 separate parts performed

Orchestra playing a symphony simultaneously

Symphony of the brain Plays many segments and levels of language,

cognition, affect, and perception at once, in a
A SENTENCE – which has phonological, morphological, parallel configuration.
syntactic, lexical, semantic, discourse, sociolinguistic,
and strategic properties- is NOT generated by a series RATHER
of rules.
Sentences are the result of the simultaneous
interconnection of a multitude of brain cells.
CONTRIBUTIONS of all these nativist approaches:

1. Freedom from the scientific method to explore the unseen,

unobservable, underlying, abstract, linguistic structures.

2. Systematic description of the child’s linguistic repertoire.

3. The construction of a number of potential properties of Universal Grammar.

 FUNCTIONAL APPROACHES On the generative/cognitive side of the continuum

Better described

Researchers began to see that language was one manifestation of the cognitive
and affective ability to deal with the world, with others and with the self.

Rules described under the nativistic framework were abstract , formal. Explicit, and quite logical,
yet they dealt specifically with the FORMS of language and not with the deeper FUNCTIONAL
levels of meaning constructed from social interaction.

Cognition and language development

Lois Bloom pointed out that the relationship in which words occur in telegraphic
utterances are only superficially similar.

Mommy sock For NATIVISTS A pivot word and an open word

Bloom found at least 3 possible

underlying relations Agent-action (M is putting the sock on)
Agent-object (M sees the sock)
Possessor-possessed (Mommy’s sock)

Children learn underlying structures and not superficial word order.

Piaget
Described overall development as the result of children’s interaction with their environment,
with a complementary interaction between their developing perceptual cognitive capacities and
their linguistic experience. What they learn about language is determined by what they already
know about the world.

Slobin
In all languages, semantic learning depends on cognitive development and sequences of
development are determined more by semantic complexity than by structural complexity

There are two major pace setters to language:

1- On the functional level, development is paced by the growth of conceptual and communicative
capacities, operating in conjunction with innate schemas of cognition.

2- on the formal level, development is paced by the growth of perceptual and information-
processing capacities operating in conjunction with innate schemas of grammar.

Researchers started to consider formulation of the rules of the FUNCTIONS of language and the
relationship of the FORMS of language to those functions.
 Social interaction and language development

Language functioning extends well beyond cognitive thought and memory structure.

Holzman Reciprocal model

a reciprocal behavioural system operates between the language

developing infant-child and the competent (adult) language user in a
socializing teaching-nurturing role.

Other investigations centered child language on DISCOURSE

study What do children know and learn about talking with others?

about their interaction between hearer and speaker?

Communicative and pragmatic function about connected pieces of discourse?

conversational cues?
The very heart of language
Hesitations, pauses, backtracking, and the like are
significant conversational cues.
 ISSUES IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
overtly observable and concrete manifestation or
Competence and Performance
realization of competence. The actual doing of something.

one’s underlying knowledge

of a system

Chomsky a theory of language must be a theory of competence

How could one scientifically assess

this unobservable, underlying level?
Comprehension and Production
can be aspects of both performance and competence

production is of course more directly observable but comprehension is as much

performance as production is.

In children superiority of comprehension over production

Superiority of production? why? Is comprehension competence separate from

production competence?

some researchers claim so Yes, we need to consider them separately.

children in a study demonstrated that they could produce

certain aspects of language they cannot comprehend
For example “colours”
 Nature or Nurture?
Nativists
Is it a correct theory?
LAD
there may be “language genes” but what about the environment?

Bickerton (1981) found evidence, across a number of

languages, of common patterns of linguistic and cognitive
development

Human beings are “bio-programmed” to proceed from stage to stage.

Universals which are them?

principles and parameters

Child’s initial state

a set of universal principles which specify some limited possibilities of variation,

expressible in terms of parameters which need to be fixed in one of a few possible
ways

According to UG, languages cannot vary in an infinite PARAMETERS

number of ways

determine ways in which languages can

HEAD-FIRST (English) vary
HEAD-LAST (Japanese)
HEAD PARAMETER
Systematicity and Variability
Some claim there’s a great deal of variation

there’s an order inn the process of acquisition

stages

Language and thought How does thought affect language? How does language
affect thought?

Behaviourists cognition too mentalistic

Piaget language is dependent upon and springs from cognitive

development

Bruner language influences cognition (for example words

shaping concepts)
Vygotsky
social interaction through languages is a prerequisite to
cognitive development
Zone of proximal development

distance between a child’s actual cognitive capacity

and the level of potential development

Whorf/Sapir hypothesis of linguistic relativity

each language imposes on its speaker a particular “world view”

 IMITATION more related to Behaviouristic approaches

echoing strategy in early language learning

BUT

there are different types of imitation

surface structure imitation deep structure imitation

imitate the utterance without paying children attend to a greater extent to that
attention to meaning (ex. BABY) meaningful semantic level

in foreign language classes This kind of imitation can literally block their
attention to the surface structure
we may evoke this kind of imitation when we
make students repeat phrases they don’t
understand they become “poor imitators”

PRACTICE Which is the role of frequency?

Do children practice? They “play” with language through monologues

What about comprehension practice? they naturally repeat and repeat and repeat

Frequency of occurrence
speech of mothers
INPUT role of input crucial

What kind?
semigrammatical?

far more important than ungrammatical?

nativists earlier believed
carefully changed when addressing a child?

parental speech selective?

Adults’ input seems to shape the child’s acquisition, and the interaction patterns between
child and parent increasing language skill of the child.
 DISCOURSE specially since the era of social constructivist research

conversational or discourse analysis

parent input significant but only one aspect
children also interact with peers and other adults

children learn to take part in conversations How do they detect pragmatic or intended meaning?
How do they learn discourse rules?
imitations responses

The child not only learns how

to initiate a conversation but
how to respond to another’s
initiating utterance
request for information

Questions are recognized functionally as request for action

request for help

At an early age they learn that utterances have both a literal and an
intended or functional meaning

In the case of the question Can you go to the movies tonight?

I’m busy

understood as a negative response