1. Language and the mind. Prof. R. Hickey. WS 2007/08
Language and the mind Prof. R. Hickey WS 2007/ First Language Acquisition
Katharina Auerswald (LN, Grundstudium) Daniela Neeven (TN, Hauptstudium) Sabrina Hoffmann (TN, Grundstudium)

2. Language and the mind. Prof. R. Hickey. WS 2007/08
Language and the mind Prof. R. Hickey WS 2007/ Language Acquisition and Maturation
Ann-Katrin Grendreizig und Lena Jägen LN und TN Hauptstudium or Grundstudium

3. Language acquisition Def.:
First language acquisition refers to the acquisition of one’s mother tongue during the first 6 to 7 years of one's life (from birth to the time when children start school).

4. Language acquisition for children consists of achieving control in four main areas:
A set of syntactic rules determining how phrases are formed out of words and sentences out of phrases.
2) A set of morphological rules determining how words are built up out of morphemes.
3) A set of phonological rules determining how words are pronounced.
4) A set of semantic rules determining the meaning of words, phrases and sentences.

5. Maturation no evidence for any conscious and systematic
teaching of language
environment changes, because the child's behaviour
changes
most important differences between pre- and
postlanguage phases originate in the individual
> maturational processes
differ in each individual so that it is very difficult to
explore

6. Hallmarks for maturationally controlled emergence of behaviour
regularity in the sequence of appearance of given milestones
opportunity for environmental stimulation remains relatively constant, each infant makes different use of these opportunities
emergence of behaviour before it is of immediate use to the individual
clumsy beginnings are not signs of goal-directed practice

7. Emergence of Speech and Language
onset of speech > gradual unfolding of capacities
speech milestones and motor-developmental
milestones occur together but it is no logical necessity
independent from articulatory skills
can babble but cannot form simple utterances
>psychological retarding factor in language acquisition, not a physical one

8. Emergence of Speech and Language
at the age of three speech skills are fully developed,
other mechanical skills not
language comprehension comes before the language production

9. Emergence of Speech and Language
12 weeks > cooing: squealing-gurgling sounds,
vowel- like in character
6 months > cooing changes into babbling,
on-syllable utterances like ma, mu or da
12 months > signs of understanding, identical sound
sequences are replicated, mamma or dadda
18 months > definite repertoire of words, more than
3, less than 50, no attempt to communicate, no
frustration for not being understood, no spontaneous
two-item phrases

10. Emergence of Speech and Language
24 months > more than 50 words, spontaneous two-
item phrases, own creations, interest in language
30 months > new vocabulary every day,
communicative intent, frustrated if not understood,
rarely verbatim repetitions, understand everything,
intelligibility not good yet
3 years > 1000 words, intelligible even to strangers,
grammatical complexity similar to colloquial adult
language
4 years > language well-established

11. Acquisition of morphemes:
Research of uncontrolled spontaneous speech has shown that:
The developmental order of the morphemes (in, on,
third person regular/irregular articles a.s.o.) is quite
constant > the same is true of grammatical devices in
general
BUT
The rate of development varies greatly between
different children

12. Communication Pressure
Is there a pressure in communication that forces
children to replace ill-formed utterances by well-formed
utterances?
investigation with questions, negatives and tags
showed that there is no communication pressure
ill-formed utterances were understood perfectly well,
meaning became clear

13. Contingent approval
the approval or disapproval has no influence on the syntax, it depends on the truth value of utterances

14. Conclusion no conscious or systematic teaching of language
independent from mechanical skills of the child
no communication pressure or contingent approval

15. Division between First and Second Language Acquisition:
The ability to acquire a language with the competence of a native speaker diminishes around puberty due to
general inflexibility of the brain caused by fixing of
various functions of parts of the brain
2. hormonal changes during puberty having the same
effect

16. Language and the mind Prof. R. Hickey WS 2007/08
Steffi Dickmans und Hannah Neugebauer TN Grundstudium

17. B.F. Skinner American psychologist (1904-1990)
amongst others he wrote a book on verbal behaviour
in 1957
his thesis is that external factors such as present
stimulation and reinforcement are crucial for the First
Language Acquisition of a child

18. B.F. Skinner therefore children learn the rules of language by
imitating what they are been presented and taught in
daily life
Skinner thinks that children learn to produce
grammatically correct sentences because they are
positively reinforced and corrected by parents or other
adults
the learning of a child’s first language is similar to any
other learned behaviour

19. Denise Lemke und Monika Ophey TN Grundstudium
Language and the mind Prof. R. Hickey WS 2007/ Language and Experience
Denise Lemke und Monika Ophey TN Grundstudium

20. Introduction Importance of Experience  General Information
Role of experience in language learning
General Problems from Learning from Observations
Two Experiments
Conclusion

21. Importance of Experience
To know a language = to know the relations between sounds and their meanings
Relations vary in different languages
- English /si/ means: “gaze with the eyes“
- Spanish /si/ means “Yes“
 Special experience is needed

22. Role of experience in language learning
Experiment: language learning by blind children
the blind seem to confront a world quite different from our own
Blind children have another context for learning words and sentences than sighted children
Question: How much differs the language learning?

23. General Problems from Learning from Observations
Too many encodings of experience are available
False Experiences
The problem of abstract meanings

24. Too many encodings of experience are available
Normally learners are exposed to objects, scenes, and
events as they listen to the stream of speech
Problem: no direct connection between the “meanings“
and the objects, scenes, and events
Example: cat on the mat, the mat under the cat, and
the mat and the cat on the floor  same meanings 
difficult for children to understand

25. False Experiences A child is inspecting a scene while the adult is
speaking of something else
 false pairing
Example: Mother says: “Time for your nap“ while the
child inspects a cat on the mat

26. The problem of abstract meanings
Many words have no direct connection with sensory-
perceptual experience
Example:
- Simple verbs as “get“ or “put“
- Simple nouns as “fun“ or “pet“
- Simple adjectives as “fair“ or “good“

27. Experiment 1: Does look mean “touch“ to the blind child?
Setting:
- Kelli and sighted control children were tested in a familiar room
- Experimenter gives commands and waits for response
Subjects:
- Kelli: blind child, 36 months old
- 4 sighted blindfolded control children: 33 to months
Commands: Look up, Look down, Look behind you, Look in front of you, Look over here by me, Look over there by Mommy

28. Experiment 1: Does look mean “touch“ to the blind child?
Results:
- Kelli moved her hands to the commanded directions every time, but never moved her head
- In contrast each blindfolded child moved the head in the commanded direction
 For Kelli look means „touch“

29. Experiment 2: Look is more like “apprehend“ to the blind child
Results of Experiment 1 lead to a problem: Is there a
difference between look and touch for Kelli?
Further question: Does certain adjectival and adverbial
modifications of look produce still more distinctive
behaviours?

30. Experiment 2: Look is more like “apprehend“ to the blind child
Subjects:
- Kelli: 36 months old
- 4 blindfolded sighted children: months
Commands: “look” or “touch” (using toys)
1. With spatial modifiers: up, behind you, in that, under, here
2. With intensity modifiers: real hard, gently, real good
3. With instruments of contact: with your finger, foot, nose, mouth, ear

31. Experiment 2: Results of Kelli
In most cases she distinguished between touch and
look
1. With spatial modifiers
- “look behind you”  she searched around in the are
behind her
- “touch behind you”  she touched her back
2. With intensity modifiers
- “look real hard”  she rubbed the object all over
- “touch real hard”  she banged against the object

32. Experiment 2: Results of Kelli
3. With instruments of contact
- “look with your mouth”  she held the object up to
her mouth
- “touch with your mouth”  she pressed her mouth
against the object
touch = “contact”
 look = “explore” or “apprehend”

33. Experiment 2: Results of the sighted children
These children also usually distinguished between
look and touch commands
Touch = “contact”
 Look = “visual”

34. Conclusion Children do not acquire a language just by experience
and observation
But Kelli shows that experiences in different contexts
in early infancies lead to different meanings of words

35. Language and the mind. Prof. R. Hickey. WS 2007/08
Language and the mind Prof. R. Hickey WS 2007/ The Child’s Learning of English Morphology
Mouna Ksiksi (TN, Hauptstudium), Nazgül Songün (TN, Grundstudium) Aysel Sahan und Günes Yildirim (LN, Grundstudium)

36. The Child’s Learning of English Morphology
To discover what is learned by children exposed to
English morphology experimenters used nonsense
materials.
If children do have knowledge of morphological rules
how does this knowledge evolve?
To test the children’s knowledge they began with an
examination of the actual vocabulary.

37. The Child’s Learning of English Morphology
Tested areas: the plural/ the two possessives of the
noun/ the third person singular of the verb/ the
progressive/ the past tense/ the comparative and
superlative of the adjective
Children’s vocabulary at the first-grade level contains
a number of words that are made of a free morpheme
and a derivational suffix or of two free morphemes.
It also contains a number of compound words.

38. Materials and Procedure
The subjects included pre-school children, first- grade
children and adults.
Pictures to represent the nonsense words were drawn
on cards.
Subjects were asked to supply the missing word and
the item was noted phonemically.
After all of the pictures had been shown, the subjects
were asked why they thought the things denoted by the
compound words were so named.

39. Examples: 1. Plural ´ This is a wug. Now there is another one.
There are two ……..´
2. Past tense
´ This is a man who knows how to spow. He is
spowing. He did the same thing yesterday.
What did he do yesterday? Yesterday he ……. ´
3. Compound words (e.g. football, airplane)

40. Results The first question to be answered was whether there is
a sex difference in the ability to handle English
morphology at this age level.
There was not a significant difference between the
boys´ and girls´ performance, boys did as well as girls,
or somewhat better, on over half the items, so that
there was no evidence of the usual superiority of girls
in language matters.

41. Results
Age differnce
The first graders did significantly better than preschoolers on slightly less than half of these
Formation of the plural
The results of the first-grade children in the plural tasks were better than the results of the pre- school children. The significance level of difference was 5 percent.

42. Verb inflexions The children were shown a picture of a man how to
*zib and were required to say he was *zibbing. Fully
97% of the first graders answered this question
correctly
= there is just one allomorph of the progressive
morpheme, and the child either knows the –ing form or
not
The results of the past tense form shows that the
children can handle the /-t/ and /-d/ allomorphs of the
past.
Correct percentage answering: *binged: 78; *glinged:
77. The older group did better than the younger group
on *binged.

43. Verb inflexions All English verbs with the ending –ing are irregular:
50% of the adults said *bang or *bung for the past
tense of *bing. 75% said *glang or *glung for the past
tense of *gling. Only one of the children said *bang and
one said *glang.
The percentages on *bing and *gling represent a
substantial grasp of the problem of adding
phonologically /-t/ o /-d/.

44. Verb inflexions *spow: several children retained the inflexional /-z/
and said spowzd, others repeated the progressive.
The children had to choose one or the other of the
allomorphs, and the drop to 52% correct represents
this additional complexity.
On *bodded they were 31% right, on rang only 17%
right. The older group was better than the younger
group.

45. Adjectival inflexion
The child was shown dogs that were incrasingly *quirky
and expected to say that the second is *quirkier than
the first, and that the third was the quirkiest.
Only one child was able to give the right answer.
If the children failed to answer, the experimenter
supplied the form *quirkier, and said “this dog is quirky
This dog is quirkier. And this dog is the …?”
Under this condtions 35% of the children could supply
the –est form.

46. Derivation and compounding
They were asked what they would call a man who
*zibbed.
The adults said that a man who *zibs is
a *zibber, using the common agentive pattern –er.
Only 11% of the children said *zibber,
35% gave no answer,
11% said *zibbingman and
5% said *zibman.
The rest of the answers were real words like acrobat or
clown.

47. Analysis of compound words
They were asked about some of the compound
words in their own vocabulary. The object of this
questioning was to see if children at this age are aware
of the separate morphemes in compound words.

48. Analysis of compound words
4 categories:
1. identity: “a blackboard is called a blackboard
because it is a blackboard.”
2. statement of the object’s salient function or feature: “a
blackboard is called a blackboard because you write on
it”

49. Analysis of compound words
3. the salient feature happens to coincide with part of
the name: “ blackboard is called a blackboard because
it s black.”
4. there is the etymological explanation given by adults,
it takes into account both parts of the word, and is not
necessarily with some functional feature:”Thanksgiving
is called Thanksgiving because the pilgrims gave
thanks.”

50. Analysis of compound words
the greatest number of etymological responses (23%)
was given for Thanksgiving, wich is an item wich
children are taught.
despite this teaching, for 67% of the children
answered: Thanksgiving is called Thanksgiving
because you eat a lots of turkey.
shows the general nature of the private meanings
children may have about the words in their vocabulary.

51. Conclusion The experiment
In this experiment preschool- and first-grade children
from the age of four to seven years were asked to
supply English plurals, verb tenses, possesives,
derivations and compounds of nonsense words
General question: Do children possess morphological
rules?

52. Conclusion > The children knew something more than the
individual words in his vocabulary. They were able to supply the right morphological items to the new words.
They understood the problem of the experiment and
did not want to make any mistakes by giving the
answers
> Children at early age have a good command on
morphological rules.

53. Conclusion Sex differences:
No sex differences in the acquisition of English
morphology
Boys and girls did equally well
> Every child at young age is in contact with spoken
English and has to grapple with basic morphological
processes.
> This capability does not depend on complex
sentences, it also appears in simple ones.
> Practice with limited vocabulary has the same effect
as practice with extensive vocabulary.

54. Conclusion Differences between preschool- and first-grade children
No child in preschool was able to supply the irregular
past “rang” and a few in the first grade could do
>This difference was significant
The answers were not qualitatively different
Both groups applied the same morhological rules

55. Conclusion Further analysis- Example
children were able to form the plurals requiring /-s/ or
/-z/ and they did best on the items
In their vocabularies were also real words that form
their plural in /-әz/
> They did not generalize to form new words in /-әz/.

56. Conclusion Their rule is to add /-s/ or /-z/.
To unknown word ends which sound like /s z ž š ĵ/
they did not try to make the plural
> Generally it can be said that the childrens choice of
voiced and voiceless consonants or sibilants lead back
to phonological rules about final sound sequences.

57. Thanks for your attention!
The End
Thanks for your attention!

58. References First Language Acquisition - The Essential Readings
Edited by Barbara C. Lust and Claire Foley