Introduction _____________________________________ First Language Acquisition Neal R. Norrick Saarland University

Outline First Language Acquisition Developmental sketch Natural order of acquisition Innateness Debate Development of the Innateness Debate Writing grammars for stages of acquisition Trace the history of research in Language Acquisition References

First Language Acquisition Natural acquisition with no special learning necessary Critical period resulting from a combination of factors: development of connections between nerve cells myelination of nerve cells lateralization of brain functions dominance of left hemisphere corresponding development of motor skills general cognitive stages of development (Piaget)

Developmental sketch Age Language General 9 babbling crawling 10 first words recurrent, maintained (ba)nana(na) for 'banana, food, mama' standing up, claps hands, holds spoon 11 5-10 recurrent words; fulfills requests like: bring me the blue ball first steps, recognizes pictures in books 12 5 distinct vowels, 5 distinct consonants starts walking

Developmental sketch Age Language General 13 recognizable words Daddy, nein, ball, allgone running, climbing furniture 14 imitations: horse, train reduplications: choochoo, byebye, taktak ‘clock’ simple puzzles, turns book pages 16 20+ words recognizes own name, points to himself: Where’s Nicky? 18 Vocabulary explosion, 2-word units: ducky allgone, Nicky haben climbs stairs without rail

Developmental sketch Age Language General 20 3-word units: Nicky cookie haben also: haben Nicky cookie hangs on monkey bars; points to eyes, nose, mouth 22 verb + particle: lock up, deck zu 4-word units: Mami Auto fahren kauft Inni gute Nacht sagen dramatic play; stuffed animals, dolls 24 Verb endings: Inni spuckt bisschen statement: Nicky auch essen question: Nicky auch essen, ja? command: Nicky auch essen word formation: cutter ‘knife’ auskleben ‘tear apart’ umwärts kicks soccer ball, plays hide-n-seek, draws details: ears, tails, wheels

Developmental sketch Age Language General 26 Particles: Mami ist weggegingt das ist runtergefallt Comparison: Pferdchen ein kleineres Mond größer als Daddy Monologues/stories: Mami kommt darein, tic-tac Danke, Post schickt dadi draws objectively identifiable figures, recognizes colors 27 Future orientation: Let’s build a castle, I’ll put it in sings melodies

Developmental sketch Age Language General 28 Recursive structures: Ich weiß nicht, wen der Deckel verloren hat. Questions with when, how counts to 5, recognizes letters: N, C, O 30 Conditionals: Ich suche, ob ich den Hase finde. Timmy ist traurig, wenn das Osterhäschen hier schläft. Plans: I want to read a book about a story

Developmental sketch Age Language General 32 First real narratives: It was a wooden lamby And it was on the floor in a barn And they took it home And they washed it And it wasn't ugly builds Legos; draws people beside tree and house with chimney and windows 34 Reports on TV program: Plötzlich kamen zwei Krokodile und haben das Kälbchen ge'essen Reports on activities: I'm pretending this is a castle Predicts: It's gonna be real beautiful, you're gonna love it learns to peddle trike

Developmental sketch Age Language General 36 Phonetics: Voiced th: initial okay in the, this etc medial v in other Voiceless th: initial s in sing final f in both vocalizes final l and r mispronunciations: amimals, cimamon, pasketti Morphology: double plurals: mens, feets, mices double preterites: sawed, standed regularized preterites: goed, sitted reverse word-formations: popcorner mowgrasser

Developmental sketch Age Language General 36 Syntax: Negation: I see it not That doll sits not right Questions: What it did? What the lady said? Counting: 1 2 3 4 5 6 20 14 fiveteen 16 Mean Length of Utterance (MLU) as standard measure of first language development as opposed to age

Natural order of acquisition "Why mama and papa?" Jakobson maximum contrast CV syllable reduplication

Natural order of acquisition Order of acquisition for syntax one-word utterances with holistic meaning two-word utterances with no fixed word order three-word utterances without inflections, prepositions or other markers then they begin to acquire syntax

Natural order of acquisition Brown's (1973) order of acquisition for syntax: 1. present progressive girl playing 2. prepositions ball in water 3. plural toys, dishes

Innateness Debate Innateness: Assume children know innately what they cannot learn by observation Chomsky (1986: 150) writes: What we "know innately" are the principles of the various subsystems [phonology, syntax, thematic structure etc] of So [the initial state of the child's mind] and the manner of their interaction, and the parameters associated with these principles. What we learn are the values of the parameters and the elements of the periphery (along with the lexicon to which similar considerations apply).

Innateness Debate  That is: we "know innately" that sentences will have noun phrases and verb phrases in some order, but we have to learn the order  We need input to learn the whole vocabulary of our language, including the special syntactic properties of the vocabulary we learn  We need input to set parameters like word order, use of cases versus prepositions etc  And we need input for the periphery, i.e. all the structures and rules characteristic for the particular language we hear

Innateness Debate But if input supplies all this information, shouldn't it supply enough information to learn the basic principles? But why separate language ability from all other cognitive skills? Is human language qualitatively different from animal language?

Innateness Debate Consider Hockett’s “design features” of language: Arbitrariness: no relation between word and concept Duality of patterning: two independent structural levels: phonology, syntax; higher-level segments (words) are composed of lower-level (phonemes) segments Displacement: no causal connection between utterance and context Reflexivity: language can focus metalingually on itself Prevarication: language can function to deceive or misinform

Innateness Debate Vocabulary: Webster’s dictionary 500,000 words Average educated person’s vocabulary: 40,000 (and another 40,000 proper names, idioms, sayings) monolingual speakers acquire about 3,000 words per year or about 8 words every day

Innateness Debate Even within the Chomskyan scheme, there is debate on whether the principles and parameters are complete in the newborn child (like the heart) or whether they develop over time (like the teeth, which slowly grow and appear, then are replaced by an adult system)

Development of the Innateness Debate Poverty of Stimulus Argument  Some patterns in language are unlearnable from positive evidence alone due to the hierarchical nature of languages You are happy. Are you happy? Possible rules: (1) the first auxiliary verb in the sentence moves to the front (2) the 'main' auxiliary verb in the sentence moves to the front

Development of the Innateness Debate But compare: The girl who is on the bus is happy. *Is the girl who __ on the bus is happy? Is the girl who is on the bus __ happy?  Children do not see sentences like this enough to decide which rule works but nobody ever chooses the wrong rule

Development of the Innateness Debate Grammaticality judgments: Who do you think Mary knows? Who do you think that Mary knows? Who do you think knows Mary? *Who do you think that knows Mary?

Development of the Innateness Debate Note translations Chomsky posits LAD and UG Child Language researchers countered by showing caregivers using simple, grammatical sentences as well as repetitions & expansions Kevin (20 months, 21 days) takes puppet Kevin: Dougall. Dougall, Dougall. Mother: He's a lovely Dougall, isn't he? Eileen (24 months, 8 days) points puppet toward television Eileen: Skippy a telly. Mother: That's Skippy on the telly.

Development of the Innateness Debate Chomsky argues competence requires negative evidence as basis for grammaticality judgments Al is easy to please - It is easy to please Al Sue is eager to please - *It is eager to please Sue Child Language researchers claim kids learn to make grammaticality judgments only later (in school) argue that judgments are based on semantic factors It is eager unacceptable for ungrammatical reasons

Development of the Innateness Debate Gold proves mathematically that natural languages are unlearnable in principle without negative evidence Child Language researchers show caregivers making corrections, esp. in expansions (as above) and responses Billy: Daddy fixit? Father: Yeah. Daddy'll fix it for you. Janik(4,8): Mami, ich will mit dich. Mother: Mit? Janik: Dir.

Development of the Innateness Debate Chomskyites argue that caregivers are more concerned with truth and appropriateness of kids' talk than grammaticality They find language communities where kids receive little if any controlled input or feedback from caregivers, and they learn language anyway Child Language researchers went back to study input, e.g. as a register like foreigner talk This led to study of interaction and hence to kids developing pragmatic competence, including interaction between kids

Development of the Innateness Debate We find kids correct each other from c. 4 1/2 yrs on Nick (4;3): I'm his- I'm a Santa. Who are you? Coco (2;7): Santa Mrs. Nick: No, Mrs. Santa. Come on, let's break the other people's house down. Coco (3;2): Und sie waren in dem Wald in die Nacht. Nick (4;10): In der Nacht.

Development of the Innateness Debate Due to influence of linguistic pragmatics, frame theory and richer theories of learning, Child Language researchers re-emphasized: input feedback and strategies of learning, esp. negative evidence

Development of the Innateness Debate We find kids not only provide negative evidence, but even engage in metalinguistic talk: Nick: Daddy, Coco hat gesagt güter. Das kann man nicht sagen, oder? Me: Nee, was muss man sagen. Nick: Coco meint besser. Coco: Nein, güter. Nick: Nein, Coco, besser. Du musst besser sagen. Coco: Lass mich, das ich sage. Nick: {lacht} Jetzt hat Coco wieder Unsinn gesagt. Nick (5;9): Coco, look at these mouses. Coco (4;1): Mice. Nick: Same thing.

Development of the Innateness Debate Operating Principles & Universals of acquisition (Slobin) Whether parts of language acquisition are innate or not, developing kids seem to follow specific strategies and their acquisition processes reveal universals Operating Principles identify word units pay attention to the ends of words Universals postposed forms learned before preposed forms one-to-one marking is acquired earlier than compound markings unchanging singular articles like French le are acquired faster than der/den/dem

Writing grammars for different stages “shoe”  different contexts, meanings, but no grammar yet “mama shoe”  different contexts & meanings suggest grammar even if child also says “shoe mama” ‘here is mama’s shoe’ nomination, location ‘this shoe belongs to mama’ possession ‘I’ll take this shoe to mama’ agent-action maybe just: ‘mama – shoe’ X relation Y  compare adult: “Carol’s shoe”  differentiate grammar and pragmatics!

Trace the history of research in Language Acquisition diary studies: one kid, language and behavior longitudinal studies: few kids, whole range large scale studies: usually just morphemes, MLU interactional studies: CDS, child-child  approach determines scope and type of results

References Brown, Roger. 1973. A first language: The early stages. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chomsky, Noam. 1968. Language and mind. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. Hockett, Charles. 1966. The problem of universals in language. Jakobson, Roman. 1962. Why 'mama' and 'papa'? Selected writings, vol. I: Phonological studies, ed. by Roman Jakobson, 538–545. The Hague: Mouton. Piaget, Jean. 1958. The language and thought of the child. New York: Meridian Books. Slobin, Dan I. (ed.) 1985. The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition. Hillsdale: Erlbaum.