First Language Acquisition

First Language Acquisition

1. Process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language.

   • Speed with which it takes place
   • Without over instruction
   • Innate predisposition

2. is

3. Basic requirements

   • 2 or 3 years old, child requires interaction with other language users

4. THE ACQUISITION SCHEDULE

   • 1 Month: Infant is capable of distinguishing sounds [ba] and [pa]
   • CAREGIVER SPEECH
     • Is
       • Type of conversational structure to assign an interactive role to the young child
         • Infants helped by older children and adults
         • speech style adopted by someone that spends a lot of time interacting
         • Simplified words (tummy, nana)
         • Repeated simple sounds and syllables
   • COOING AND BABBLING
     • COIING:: Earliest use of speech-like sounds
       • First few months of life
         • Gradually becomes capable of producing high vowels (i) and (u)
         • 4 months of age
           • The ability to bring the back of the tongue with the back of the palate
             • Sounds similar to the velar consonants
             • Create
           • 5 months of age
             • Can already hear the difference between the vowels (i) and (a) and discriminate syllables (ba) and (ga)
     • BABBLING: Producing a number of different vowels and consonants
       • 6 and 8 months of age
       • 9 and 10 months of age
         • There are
           • Recognizable intonation patterns to the consonant and vowel combinations.
           • Nasal sounds
             • Syllable sequences
               • ma-ma-ma / da-da-da
       • 10 and 11 months of age
         • Express emotions and emphasis through vocalizations

5. The one-word stage (Holophrastic)

   • 12 and 18 months of age
     • Children begin to produce
       • A variety of recognizable utterances
   • Characterized by
     • Single terms for everyday objects
       • [milk, cookie, cat, cup, spun]

6. The two-word stage

   • 18 to 20 months of age
     • Two words, different combination of word order
     • Three possible interpretations
       • Subject-Verb
       • Verb-Modifier
       • Possessor-Possesed

7. TELEGRAPHIC SPEECH

   • 2 and 2 years and half
     • Producing a ''multiple word'' speech
     • Strings of words
       • Vocabulary is expanding rapidly
     • Phrases or sentences
     • Can get the word order correct

8. DEVELOPING MORPHOLOGY

   • Appear -ing form
   • Marking of regular plurals with the -s

9. DEVELOPING SYNTAX

   • Imitation = child's speech production
   • Child understands what adult is saying

10. FORMING QUESTIONS

    • 1st stage: Add Wh-form to the beginning of the expression
    • 2nd stage: Complex expressions can be formed
    • 3rd stage: Inversion of subject and verb = I can go - Can I go?

11. FORMING NEGATIVES

    • 1st stage: putting no or not at the beginning.
    • 2nd stage: forms don't and can't
    • 3rd stage: Incorporation of other auxiliary forms (didn't and won't)

12. DEVELOPING SEMANTICS

    • During the holophrastic
      • Children use their limited vocabulary to refer to a large number of unrelated objetcs
        • Process is called
          • OVEREXTENSION
            • Shape, sound and size, movement ante texture