First language acquisition

First language acquisition

1. First language acquisition is remarkable for the speed with it takes place

   • in addition
     • to the speed of acquisition the fact that it generally occurs, without overt instructions for all children, regardless of great differences in their circumstances.
       • provides
         • strong support for the idea that there is an inmate predisposition in the human infant to acquire language

2. Basic requirements

   • A child requieres interaction with other language -users in order to bring this general language capacity into operation with a particular language such as English
     • that is why
       • the child must also be physically capable on sending and receiving sound signals in a language.
         • in order to
           • speak a language, a child must be able to hear that language being used by itself.
         • however
           • hearing a language is not enough.
             • A boy raised by deaf parents was exposure to TV and radio programs .
               • the boy did not acquire an ability to speak or understand English.
                 • what
                   • he did learn effectively ,by the age of three was the use of American Language

3. THE ACQUISISTION SCHEDULE

   • has
     • the same basis as the biologically determined development of motor skills.
       • this biological schedule
         • is
           • tied very much to the maturation of the infant's brain.
             • for example:
               • an infant is capable of distinguishing between sounds such as (ba) and (pa)
                 • what
                   • this acquisition capacity then requires is a sufficient constant type of "input"
                     • which
                       • the basis of the regularities in a particular language can be worked out.

4. Caregiver speech

   • is characteristically simplified speech style adopted
     • by
       • someone who spends a lot of time interacting with a young child.
         • salient features of this type of speech
           • are
             • the frequent use of questions, often using exaggerated intonations, extra loudness and slower temp with longer pauses.
               • Caregiver speech is also characterized by simple sentence structures and a lot of repetition.
               • it has generally been observed that the speech of those regularly interacting with very young children changes and becomes more elaborated as the child begins using more and more language.

5. Cooing and babbling

   • the earliest use of speech-like has been describe as cooing.
     • Speech perception studies have shown that by the time they are five months old, babies can already hear
       • the
         • difference between the vowels (i) and (a) and discriminate beteen syllables like (ba) and (ga)
   • the type of sound production is described as babbling
     • is when
       • the child is sitting up and producing a number of different vowels and consonants, as well as combination such as ba-ba-ba and ga-ga-ga
   • as
     • children begin to pull themselves into a standing position during the tenth and eleventh months, they become capable of using their vocalizations to express emotions and emphasis

6. The one-word stage

   • is
     • characterized by speech in which single terms are uttered for everyday objects
       • such as
         • "milk, cookie,cat,cup,and spoon"
           • we sometimes
             • use the term holophrastic (meaning a single form functioning as a phrase or sentence)
               • to
                 • describe an utterance that could be analyzed as a word, a phrase, or a sentence.
   • The two word stage
     • can
       • around eighteen to twenty months
         • the child vocabulary moves beyond fifty words
           • as
           • the
             • the adult interpretation of such combination is of course, very tied to the context of their utterance.
               • the
                 • significant functional consequences are that the adult behaves as if communication is taking place
     • begin

7. Telegraphic speech

   • this is
     • characterized by strings of words (lexical morphemes)in phrases of sentences such as THIS SHOE, ALL WET AND DADDY GO BYE-BYE
       • by
         • the age of two-and-half, the child's vocabulary is expanding rapidly and the child is initiating more talk
           • while
             • increased physical activity includes running and jumping.
               • at this point, it is worth considering what kind of influence, if any the adults have in development of the child's speech.

8. The acquisition process

   • in this stage
     • exists a more accurate view would have the children actively constructing
       • from
         • what is said to them, possible ways of using language .The child's linguistic production appears to be mostly a matter of trying out constructions and testing whether they work or not.
           • it is simply not possible that the child is acquiring the language principally through a process of imitating adult speech.
             • one factor
               • that seems to be important in the child's acquisition process is the actual use of sound and word combination, either in interaction with others or in word play alone.

9. Developing morphology

   • By the time a child is two and a half years old, the inflectional morphemes that indicate the grammatical function of the nouns and verbs used.
     • the
       • acquisition of plural marker is often accompanied by a process of overgeneralizacion
         • the child
           • overgeneralizes the apparent rule of adding -so to plurals and will talk about foots and mans.
             • at about
               • the same time, different forms of the verb "to be", such a are and was, begin to be used.
                 • the
                   • appearance of forms such as was and, at the same time, went and came should be noted.

10. Developing syntax

    • there have been numorous studies of the development of syntax in children's speech .
      • there
        • appear to be three identifiable stages, which can vary
          • but
            • the general pattern seems to be :
              • stage 1: between 18 and 26 months
                • stage 2: beetween 22 and 30 months
                  • stage 3: beetween 24 and 40 months.

11. forming questions

    • the child has three stages wich has three procedures:
      • fisrt stage: simply ass a Whform (where,who) to the beginning of the expression
      • in the second stage, more complex expressions can be formed, but the raising intonation strategy continues to be used.
      • in the third stage, the requiered inversion of subject and verb in English questions appears (I can go-Can I go)
    • forming negatives
      • in the case of negatives, stage one seems to involve a simple strategy of putting no or not at hte beginning.
        • in the second stage the additional negative forms don't and can't appear, and with no and not , are increasingly used in front of the verb rather than at the beginning of the sentence.
          • the third stage sees the incorporation of the auxilary forms such as didn't and won't while the typical stage 1 dissapear.