First Language Acquisition Teguh Ardianto

Introduction How children acquire their first language? Is it through listening to adults around and imitating? Do they learn the grammar bit by bit? Or does the grammar fall into place naturally? Is the rate of their language development influenced by the way adults speak with them? Is the sequence among children in acquiring language the same or not?

Introduction Acquisition is the initial cognitive and social process of language learning. (p.12) First language acquisition normally takes place between birth and the age of four. (p.12) Second language acquisition is the learning of a language by an individual who already has some degree of control over another language. (p.12) First language refers to the first language people learn in the life. (p.29) Second language refers to any language learned later in life and usually learned after the age of five. (p.29)

Three crucial issues in LA Rice (1986) identifies three crucial issues in language acquisition: The nature of language What the child brings to language acquisition What the environment contributes to language development

The Nature of Language Teguh Ardianto

The nature of language Whether language is seen as a set of grammatical rules? focus on how this rules processed internally Whether language is seen as a tool to socialize and to communicate?  focus on how children learn to use language for expressing pragmatic intentions

The Role of the Child in LA Teguh Ardianto

The role of the child in LA Piagetian view of cognitive and language development Vygotskyan view of cognitive and language development

Piagetian view Cognitive development and language acquisition  closely interrelated processes Toddlers develop an abstract knowledge about the world  experience and observing the object This linked to sensorimotor from B  18 months the language manifested in accordance with the cognition capacity In short: experience with object  processed in the child cognition  children try to manifest the world by using language

Experience with objects Cognitive development (thought) Language Cognitive Determinism

Criticism to Piagetian View Relationships is not always one way  children use language to express concepts at the same time when the concepts are being learned

Vygotskyan view Different Piagetian and Vygotskyan view: Vygotsky stressed the importance of connection between cultural and social environments and language learning. Cognition is seen as closely related to language but not in deterministic manner as Piaget argued. Through language used by themselves and the people around them, children learn to interpret new experiences which further develops their ability to think.

Interaction with the world and with others Cognitive Development (thought) Language Relationship between Cognitive Development and Language

The Role of the Environment in LA Teguh Ardianto

The role of environment in LA Social environment  the circumstances in which children are brought up and learn things about world. Linguistic environment the circumstances in which children interact with other people using language, as well as receiving input, and getting explicit and implicit feedback on their language use.

Adult interaction behaviors Joint referencing adult and child attend to the specific objects, evens or actions in an act of communication which often includes naming or describing. Joint action  a shared action sequence by adult and child.

Adult conversational strategies Register  adults use different register (speech variants, topics) when they are talking to children Conversation strategies adults encourage children to speak  repetitions, modelings, promptings, reformulations, and contingent utterances. Contingent speech  commenting on or a response to a topic established by the child.

Theoretical Models in LA Teguh Ardianto

Theoretical models The three influential theoretical models for explaining language acquisition and how language, the child and the environment connected each other, those models are: The behaviorist model The innatist model The interactionist model

The behaviorist model This theory was popularized by Ivan Pavlov (and his dog, of course ), John Watson, and Edward Thorndike. Learning was seen as behavior change through habit formation, conditioned the presence of stimuli and strengthened through practice and selective reinforcement Language learning was seen as being similar to any other kind of learning.

The behaviorist model Language acquisition was a form of operant conditioning directly resulting from adult modeling and reinforcement, imitation, practice and habit formation on the part of the child. Environment  adult modeling and child imitation to change child’s behavior to habit  drilling

Criticisms of the behaviorist model The absent of overt correction on form. Adult input is often ‘degenerate’ -- full of false starts, hesitations, slip of the tongue and redundancies  insufficient for adequate modeling but children are still able to learn the correct structures  Syntactic rules. Children could not learn all they have to say by only imitating adults. Inability to explain of complex syntactic learning.

The innatist model This theory was proposed by Chomsky which emphasized the role of mental or psycholinguistic processes. Language is not behavior learned through imitation and conditioning, it is rule based and generative in nature, processed and produced through complicated cognitive processes and mechanisms.

The innatist model The assumption of the innatist model toward language learning: Human beings possess an innate mental capacity  Language Acquisition Device (LAD)  Universal Grammar Language development follows a biological and chronological program Because children are equipped with LAD, a large amount of input is not necessary  input is necessary only when it triggers the process.

Criticisms of the innatist model It does little in explaining the developmental of language acquisition  too much focus on innate ability for language learning. It focuses only on internal knowledge of an ideal speaker/listener rather than messy product of real speech. It neglects the important of environment on language acquisition “real” children are more focused on meaning rather than structure/syntactical rules  in comprehending children talk, analyzing syntactic rules is not sufficient, adults need to analyze the semantic process through rich interpretation.

The interactionist model The primary focus of the interactionist approach is how language and cognitive developments take place within key contexts of interaction. In interactionist model, adult-children interaction provides opportunities for children to use and experiment with language. Language acquisition in this model considers both the child’s cognitive capacities as well as social capacities for learning.

Criticisms of the interactionist model It doesn’t adequately explain the cognitive processes that children engage in when noticing and using language during interaction. Needs to draw on development in other related fields to help explain the cognitive processes that take place during language processing and development.

Key features of Behaviorist, Innatist, and Interactionist model Concerned with learning in general Important linguistic input from the environment Modeling Imitation Practice Reinforcements Habit formation Concerned with specific aspect of language learning ‘degenerate’ input from the environment Biological program (critical period hypotheses) Special language learning ability Universal grammar Linguistic rule extraction Hypothesis testing Natural order of acquisition Concerned with social and psychological aspects of language learning Meaningful linguistic input from the environment The importance of communicative contexts Child’s pragmatic intentions Adult conversational/interactional strategies Child directed speech (Motherese) Adult’s rich interpretation and feedback Conversational adjustments Child’s capacity for learning Interdependence of cognitive and language development Behaviorist Key features of Behaviorist, Innatist, and Interactionist model Innatist Interactionist

Comparison of Acquisition Issues addressed by Theoretical Models Language Child Environment It is a subset of all learned behaviors A ‘clean slate’ It is a source of language models and provides selective reinforcements All languages have characteristics in grammatical structure that are universal (UG) Born with syntactic knowledge for analyzing linguistic input The input from the environment is ‘degenerate’ but necessary for ‘triggering’ innate knowledge Language has social and communicative purposes Uses contextual clues from interaction to process language The environment provides meaningful contexts for language input and language use Behaviorist Innatist Interactionist Comparison of Acquisition Issues addressed by Theoretical Models