First language Acquisition, Chapter 2. H. douglas Brown

Summary.

Not until the second half of the twentieth century did researchers begin to analyze child language systematically and to discover the nature of the psycholinguistic process that enables every human being to gain fluent control of an exceedingly complex system of communication.

Theories of first language acquisition.

During their first year, children make specific attempts to imitate words and speech sounds they hear around them and about this time they utter their first “words”. By about 18 months of age, these words have multiplied considerably and are beginning to appear in two-word and three-word “sentences”, referred to as “telegraphic” utterances.

By about age three, children can comprehend an incredible quantity of linguistic input; their speech capacity mushrooms as they become the generators of nonstop chattering and incessant conversation.

At school age, children not only learn what to say but what not to say as they learn the social functions of their language.

Using the schools of thought referred to the extreme behavioristic position would claim that children come into the world with a tabula rasa. At the other constructivist extreme is the position that makes not only the rationalist/cognitivist claim.

These positions represent opposites on a continuum, with many possible positions in between.

Behavioristic Approaches.

The behavioristic approaches focused on the immediately perceptible aspects of linguistic behavior. A behaviorist might consider effective language behavior to be the production of correct responses to stimuli. If a particular response is reinforced, it then becomes habitual, or conditioned.

The Skinner’s theory of verbal behavior was an extension of his general theory of learning by operant conditioning. Operant conditioning refers to conditioning in which the organism emits a response, or operant without necessarily observable stimuli; that operant is maintained (learned) by reinforcement.

In an attempt to broaden the base of behavioristic theory, some psychologists proposed modified theoretical positions. One of these positions was mediation theory, in which meaning was accounted for by the claim that the linguistic stimulus (a word or sentence) elicits a “mediating” response that is self-stimulating. Charles Osgood called this self-stimulation a “representational meditation process”. In fact, some ways meditation theory was really a rational/cognitive theory masquerading as behavioristic.

Yet another attempt to account for first language acquisition within a behavioristic framework was made by Jenkins and Palermo. While their admitting that their conjectures were “speculative” and “premature”. They claim that imitation was an important, if not essential, aspect of establishing stimulus-response associations.

The Nativist Approach.

The term nativist is derived from the fundamental assertion that language acquisition is innately determined, that we are born with a genetic capacity that predisposes us to a systematic perception of language around us.

Chomsky claimed the existence of innate properties of language to explain the child’s mastery of a native language. This innate knowledge is embodied in a language acquisition device (LAD). McNeill described LAD as consisting of four innate linguistic properties.

1.       The ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds in the environment.

2.       The ability to organize linguistic data into various classes that can later be refined.

3.       Knowledge that only a certain kind of linguistic system is possible and that other kinds are not.

4.       The ability to engage in constant evaluation of the developing linguistic system so as to construct the simplest possible system out of the available linguistic input.

McNeill arguments for the appropriateness of the LAD proposition, especially in contrast to behavioristic, stimulus-response (S-R) theory.

More recently, researchers focuses on what has come to be known as Universal Grammar. Positing that all human beings are genetically equipped with abilities that enable them to acquire language.

Rather, the child’s language at any stage is systematic in that the child is constantly forming hypotheses on the basis of the input received and then testing those hypotheses in speech.

Jean Berko demonstrated that children learn language not as a series of separate discrete items, but as an integrated system.

Nativist studies of child language acquisition were free to construct hypothetical grammars. The early grammars of child language were referred to as pivot grammars.

A new Spolsky was provided by what has came to be known as the parallel distributed processing (PDP) model ( also called connectionism) in which neurons in the brain are said to form multiple connections.

All of these approaches within the nativist framework have made at least three important contributions to our understanding of the first language acquisition process:

1.       Freedom from the restrictions of the so-called “scientific method”

2.       Systematic description

3.       Potential properties of Universal Grammar.

Functional Approaches.

It’s a move even more deeply into the essence of language. Two emphases have emerged: a) researchers began to see that language was one manifestation of the cognitive and affective ability to deal with the word, with others, and with the self. b) The generative rules 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 constructured from social interaction.

              Cognition and Language Development.

     Lois Bloom pointed out that the relationships in which words occur in telegraphic utterances are only superficially similar. By examining data in reference to contexts, Bloom concluded that children learn underlying structures.

     Bloom’s research, along with that of jean Piaget and other, paved the way for a new wave of child language study, this time centering on the relationship of cognitive development to first language acquisition. What children learn about language is determined by what they already know about the world.

    Dean Slobin demonstrated that semantic learning depends on cognitive development and that sequences of development are determined more by semantic complexity than by structural complexity. Bloom noted that “an explanation of language development depends upon an explanation of the cognitive underpinnings of language”

              Social Interaction and Language Development.

In recent years it has become quite clear that language functioning extends well beyond cognitive thought and memory structure. Here we see the second, social constructivist emphasis of the functional perspective.

Issues in First Language Acquisition.

             

Competence and Performance.

                         Competence refers to one’s underlying knowledge of a system, event, or fact. Performance is the overtly observable and concrete manifestation or realization of competence.

                         Tarone calls heterogeneous competence – abilities that are in the process of being formed.

Comprehension and Production.

Into some foreign language teaching materials is that comprehension can be equated with competence, while production is performance. It is important to recognize that this is not the case: production is more directly observable, but comprehension is as much performance.

Nature or Nurture?

Nativists contend that a child is born with an innate knowledge of or predisposition toward language, and that this innate property (the LAD or UG) is universal in all human beings.

Universals.

Closely related to the innateness controversy is the claim that language is universally acquired in the same manner, and moreover, that the deep structure of language at its deepest level may be common to all languages.
Intereintig universlas of pivot grammar and other telepgraphese emerged. Maratsos enumerated some of the universal linguistic categories. These categories are still the subject of current inquiry:

• wonder order
• morphological marking tone
• agreement (e.g., of subject and verb)
• reduced reference nouns and noun classes
• verbs and verb classes
• predication
• negation
• question formulation

Much of current UG research is centered around what have come to be known as principles and paraments, this mean that the child's task of language is manageable because of certain naturally occuring constraints.

Systematicity and variability.

One of the assumptions of a good deal of current research on child language is the systematicity of the process of acquisition.

But in the midst of all this systematicity there is an equally remarkable amount of variability in the process of learning. Researchers do not agree on how to define various stages” of language acquisition, even in English. 

Language and Thought

For years researchers have probed the relationship between language and cognition. Piaget who claimed that cognition development is at the very center of the human organism and that language is dependent upon and springs from cognitive development.

Others emphasized the influence of language on cognitive development. Vigotsky through language, is a prerequisite to cognitive development. Vigotsky’s zone of proximal development is the distance between a child’s actual cognitive capacity and the level of potential development.

Imitation

It is common that informal observation saids that children are good imitators; theimitation is one of the important strategies a child uses in the global level. Indeed, researches has shown that echoing is a particularly salient strategy in early language learning and an important aspect of early phonological acquisition.

Practice

Repetition and association are the key to the formation of habits by operant conditioning. Practice is usually thought of as referring to speaking only. But one can also think in term of comprehension practice, which os often considered under the rubric of the frequency og linguistic input to the child.

Input

The role of input in the child’s acquisition of language is underiably crucial. Whatever one’s position is one the innateness of language, the speech that young children hear is primarily the speech of older siblings.

The importance of the issue lies in the fact that it is clear from more recent research that adult and peer input to the child is far more important than Nativists earlier believed.

Discourse.

A subfield of research that is occupying the attention of an increasing number of child language researchers, especially in an era of social constructivist research, is the area of conversation or discourse analysis. It is only one aspect, as the child also interacts with peers and, of course, with other adults.

Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) proposed that conversations be examined in terms of initiations and responses.

«  As a conclusion we can admitted that a large number of theories and issues in child language have been explored with the only purpose of briefly characterizing the current state of child language research, and the other purpose is to highlighting a few of the key concepts that emerge in the formation of an understanding of how babies learn to talk and eventually become sophisticated linguistic beings.«

In the classroom:

Gouin and Berlitz -- The First Reformers

Gouin and Berlitz they were the first two reformers in the history of “modern” language teaching.

In The Art of Learning and Studying Foreign Languages (1880), François Gouin describes a set of experiences that finally led to his insights about language teaching.

On the other hand we have Berlitz’s method; his method was that second language learning should be more like first and second languages, and little or no analysis of grammatical rules.