What is Acquisition?

The learning skill or developing skill, habit, or quality

Importance of Language Acquisition

In an increasingly multi-cultural and globalized world, a major hindrance to communication

between cultures is language. Bridging the gap between cultures has long been a common
strategy in cross-cultural relations.

Language acquisition allows for cultural understanding, not simply by just allowing for a
greater flow of ideas and ease of communication, but also for understanding the cultural
mindset.

Theories of First Language of Acquisition

Behaviorist Approaches

Behaviorism, also known as behavioral psychology, is a theory of learning which states all
behaviors are learned through interaction with the environment through a process called
conditioning. Thus, behavior is simply a response to environmental stimuli.

Behaviorism is only concerned with observable stimulus-response behaviors, as they can be

studied in a systematic and observable manner.

The behaviorist movement began in 1913 when John Watson wrote an article entitled
'Psychology as the behaviorist views it,' which set out a number of underlying assumptions
regarding methodology and behavioral analysis:

The behaviorist theory believes that “infants learn oral language from other human role models
through a process involving imitation, rewards, and practice. Human role models in an infant's
environment provide the stimuli and rewards,” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).

The behaviorist theory believes that “infants learn oral language from other human role models
through a process involving imitation, rewards, and practice. ... When a child attempts
orallanguage or imitates the sounds or speech patterns they are usually praised and given
affection for their efforts.
Nativist Approaches

• Nativist term it is derived from the fundamental assertion that language acquisition is
innately determined.

Nativist approach says:

We born with genetic capacity that predisposes us to systematic perception of language around
us, resulting in the construction of an internalized system language.

• Nativist theorists argue that children are born with an innate ability to organize laws of
language, which enables children to easily learn a native language.

• They believe that children have language specific abilities that assist them as they work
towards mastering a language (Litchfield & Lambert, 2020.

• This theory came about as children have been observed to pick up grammar and syntax
without any formal teaching (in spoken language). They seem to learn these
fundamentals of their native language(s) purely from the input around them.

• The nativist approach in no way suggests that children are born with a lexicon, the
majority if not all linguistics agree that lexical items are learned from input and social
environment.

Noam chomsky

He said that every child is born with a biological predisposition to learn language- any language.

He came up with the idea of a language organ, which is known as the Language Acquisition
Device (LAD) that contains a set of rules common to all languages.

LAD tells babies what to look in speech they hear.

Nativist have contributed the discoveries of how system of child language works. Theory of
Chomsky and others helped us understand that a child’s language, at any given point , is a
legitimate system in its own right.
Functionalist Approaches

Researchers began to see that language was just one manifestation of the cognitive and
affective ability to deal with the world, with others, and with the self.

The generative rules that were proposed are frameworks dealt specifically with the forms of
language and not with the deeper functional levels of meaning constructed from social
interaction.

STAGES IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

• Language Acquisition is meant process whereby children achieve a fluent control of their
native language (Varshney, 2003:307).

• The ability to get and understand the language is inherited genetically but the particular
language that children speak is culturally and environmentally transmitted to them.

• Children all over the world acquire their first language without tutoring. Whereas a child
exposed to speak to an English speaking community begins to speak English fluently, the
other one exposed to a community of Indonesian speakers, begins to use Indonesia
fluently.

• Language acquisition thus appears to be different in kind from the acquisition of other
skill such us swimming, dancing, or gymnastics. Native language acquisition is much less
likely to be affected by mental retardation than the acquisition of other intellectual skill
activities.

• Every normal human child learns one or more language unless he is brought up in
linguistic isolation, and learns the essentials of his language by a fairly little age, say by
six.

• According to Chomsky (2009:101-102) language acquisition is a matter of growth and

maturation of relatively fixed capacities, under appropriate external conditions.

• The form of Acquisition and use of language the language that is acquired is largely
determined by internal factors; it is because of the fundamental correspondence of all
human languages, because of the fact that “human beings are the same, wherever they
may be”, that a child can learn any language.
 • The functioning of the language capacity is, furthermore, optimal at a certain “critical
period” of intellectual [Link] addition to that, the term „language acquisition‟
is normally used without qualification for the process which results in the knowledge of
one‟s native language (or native languages).

• It is conceivable that the acquisition of a foreign language whether it is learned

systematically at school or not, proceeds in a quite different way.

• Indeed, as we have seen, the acquisition of one‟s native language after the alleged
„critical age‟ for language acquisition may differ, for neurophysiological reasons, from
the normal child‟s acquisition of his native language. (Lyons, 1981:252).

COGNITIVE THEORY

• Cognitive theorists believe that language is subordinate part of cognitive development,

dependent on the attainment of various concepts (Gleason 1998:383). According to this
view, children learn about the world first, and then map language onto that prior
experience.

• Additionally, cognitive theorists believe that language is just one aspect of human
cognition.

• According to Piaget and his followers in Gleason (1998:384), infants must learn about
world around them, which they do through active experimentation and construction.

For example, the infant crawls around the floor, observes object from all angels, and slowly
develops a sensorimotor (literally, “through the senses and more activity) understanding of the
space in which she lives.
STAGES IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

• When human are born, he does not have suddenly the grammatical of his first language
in his brain and completely with its rules.

The native language is acquired through some stages, and every stage is passed near to adult‟s
language. There are six stages in children‟s first language acquisition, namely:  

1. Pre-talking stage / Cooing (0-6 months)

According to Bolinger (2002:283) pre-talking stage or cooing is the vowel-like sound

responding to human sounds more definitely, turns head, eyes seem to search for speaker
occasionally some chuckling sounds.

For example, Miles (at the age of 4 months) demonstrating the cooing stage of language
acquisition.

He is producing vowel-like sounds (especially, the back vowels [u] and [o])in the sounds of “oh”,
“uh”, and “ah”, typical of "cooing".He still finds difficulties in producing the vowel sound [i]
except when he is screaming in “hiii”. Moreover in producing the consonant sounds like [b], [p],
or [m], she is not able to produce them yet.

2. Babbling stage (6-8 months)

Babbling is the sounds which infants produce as consonant-vowel combinations, Steinberg

(2003:147).

The sounds which are produced by infants but not all the speech sounds are same in language
of the world such as [ma-ma-ma] or [da-da-da] and [ba-ba-ba] or [na-na-na].
3. Holophrastic stage (9-18 months)

• Fromkin (1983:328) defined holophrastic from holo “complete” or “undivided” plus

phrase “phrase” or “sentence”. So holophrastic is the children‟s first single word which
represent to a sentence.

Children using one word to express particular emotional state. For example, Debby‟s mother
recorded the words she had pronounced during the 8 months after the appearance of her first
word at 9 months (this was [adi], used both for her "daddy")During the two weeks from 17
months - 17 months and a half, she more than doubled her vocabulary.

4. The two-word stage (18-24 months)

• Two-word stage is the mini sentences with simple semantic relations. As Fromkin
(1983:329) states that children begin to form actual two-word sentences, with the
relations between the two words showing definite syntactic and semantic relations and
the intonation contour of the two words extending over the whole utterance rather
than being separated by a pause between the two words.

The following “dialogue” illustrates the kinds of patterns that are found in the children‟s
utterances at this stage. Basically, a child at this age is already able to produce the consonant
sounds like [j], [p], [b], [d], [t], [m], and [n].

5. Telegraphic stage (24-30 months)

• Telegraphic is merely a descriptive term because the child does not deliberately leave
out the non-content words, as does an adult sending a telegram, Fromkin (1983:330).

• When the child begins to produce utterances that ere longer than two words, these
utterances appear to be “sentence-like”; they have hierarchical, constituent structures
similar to the syntactic structures found in the sentences produced by adult grammar.

6. Later multiword stage (30+months)

• According to Bolinger (2002:283) at this stage is fastest increase in vocabulary with

many new additions everyday; no babbling at all; utterances have communicative
intent.

• There is a great variation among children, seems to understand everything said within
hearing and directed to them.
ISSUES IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE

COMPETENCE refers to oNe’s underlying of a system, event, or fact; non observable, ability to
do something.

PERFORMANCE is the overtly observable and concrete manifestation or realization

[Link] is the actual doing of something.

COMPREHENSION AND PRODUCTION

 They both can be aspect of PERFORMANCE and COMPETENCE. It is thought that

COMPREHENSION (listening and reading)

 Can be associated with competence, While PRODUCTION ( Speaking and writing) are
associated with performance.

NATURE OR NURTURE

 Nativists contend that a child is born with an innate knowledge of a language, and that is
the innate property is universal.
 However, it hasn’t been proven that there are “language genes” in our genetic
information.
 Environmental factors cannot be ignored.


LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT

The issue at stake is to determine how thought affects language, how language affects
thoughts, and how linguists can best describe and explain the interaction of the two.

There have been some positions on this such as that of Piaget, who claimed that cognitive
development is at the center of human organisms and that language depends on cognitive
development.

IMITATION
  Reseach has shown that echoing is a particularly salient strategy in early language
learning and an important aspect of early phonological acquisition.
 Children imitate structure of the language.

PRACTICE

 Children like to play with language.

 Practicing a language involves speaking and comprehension practice.

INPUT

 The speech that young children hear is primarily the speech heard at home.
 Also, children acquire the language from overhearing the conversations of others, from
listening to the radio, watching TV or work with some objects.

DISCOURSE

 The child will learn how to initiate a conversation and give responses.
 The child will identify whether he is being requested for information, for an action, or
for help.

LANGUAGE AS IMPLICATURES
Herbert Paul Grice

The Gricean Theory

Herbert Paul Grice developed a theory designed to explain and predict conversational
implicatures and to describe how they are understood. He asserted,It is common knowledge,
that people generally follow these rules for efficient communication.

Cooperative Principle. Contribute what is required by the accepted purpose of the

conversation.

Maxim of Quality. Make your contribution true; so do not convey what you believe false or
unjustified.

Maxim of Quantity. Be as informative as required.

Maxim of Relation. Be relevant.

Maxim of Manner. Be perspicuous; so avoid obscurity and ambiguity, and strive for brevity and
order.

For example:
If Jane is helping Kelly build a house, she will hand Kelly a hammer rather than a tennis
racket (relevance), more than one nail when several are needed (quantity), and straight
nails rather than bent ones (quality); she will do all this quickly and efficiently (manner).

Implicatures

 denotes either the act of meaning or implying one thing by saying something else, or the
object of that act.

 serves a variety of goals: communication, maintaining good social relations, misleading

without lying, style, and verbal efficiency.
There are two types of Implicature:
1. Conversational Implicature

 They depend on features of the conversational context, and are not determined by the
conventional meaning of the sentences uttered.

 Recognized common forms of conversational implicature are figures of speech (tropes)

and modes of speech (non-figurative forms of implicature)

 Example:

Alan: Are you going to Paul’s party?

Barb: I have to work.

If this was a typical exchange, Barb meant that she is not going to Paul’s party by saying
that she has to work. She did not say that she is not going to Paul’s party, and the
sentence she uttered does not mean [Link] Barb implicated that she is not going;
that she is not going was her implicature.

Example:

a. The queen is English and therefore brave.

b. The queen is English and brave.

c. Being brave follows from being English.

So (c) is the sentence “Being brave follows from being English” and [c] is the proposition
that being brave follows from being English. By using (a) to say and mean [a], speakers
implicate [c]. That is, by using (a) to say and mean that the queen is English and
therefore brave, speakers implicate that being brave follows from being English. They
imply rather than say that being brave follows from being English. In contrast, (b) would
rarely if ever be used to implicate [c]. The meaning of “therefore” generates the
implicature of (a).

In another example:
 “Have you cheated again?”

The question presupposes that you cheated before. The question is inappropriate, and
cannot be given a straight “Yes” or “No” answer, unless you did cheat before.

SPEECH ACT THEORY

 PROPOSED BY:

JOHN LANGSHAW AUSTINE

SPEECH ACT THEORY

ATTEMPTS TO EXPLAIN HOW SPEAKERS USE LANGUAGE TO ACCOMPLISH INTENTED ACTIONS

AND LISTENERS DETERMINE THE INTENTED MEANING FROM WHAT IS SAID.

3 CATEGORIES OF SPEECH ACT THEORY

LOCUTIONARY ACTS- WHAT IS ACTUALLY SAID BY THE SPEAKER

ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS- WHAT IS VERBALLY ACCOMPLISHED BY WHAT IS SAID

PERLOCUTIONARY ACTS- WHAT A SPEAKER INTENDS FOR THE LISTENER TO DO IN REPONSE

FOR THE UTTERANCE (THE EFFECT TO THE HEARER)

LOCUTIONARY ACTS

This is the act of saying something. It has a meaning and it creates an understandable utterly to
convey or express

The example of the locutionary speech act can be seen in the following sentences

1. It’s so dark in this room.

2. The box is heavy

3. The above two sentences represent the actual condition.

4. The first sentence refers to the lighting of the room and the second sentence refers to
the weight of the box.

ILLOCUTIONARY ACTS

It is performed as an act of saying something or as an act of opposed to saying something. The

illocutionary utterance has a certain force of it. It well well-versed with certain tones, attitudes,
feelings, or emotions. There will be an intention of the speaker or others in illocutionary
utterance. It is often used as a tone of warning in day today life
Illocutionary act can be the real description of interaction condition.

For example:

1. It’s so dark in this room.

2. The box is heavy

Based on the examples above, the first sentence shows a request to switch the light on and the
second sentence shows a request to lift up the box.

PERLOCUTIONARY ACTS

It normally creates a sense of consequential effects on the audiences. The effects may be in the
form of thoughts, imaginations, feelings or emotions. The effect upon the addressee is the main
charactership of perlocutionary utterance.

The example of the perlocutionary speech act can be seen in the following sentences

1. It’s so dark in this room.

2. The box is heavy

Based on the example it can be inferred that the first sentence is uttered by someone
while switching the light on and the second sentence is done by someone while lifting
up the box.

Classifications of Speech Acts

Representative

are speech acts that the utterances commit the speaker to the truth of the expressed
proposition. The utterances are produced based on the speaker’s observation of certain things
then followed by stating the fact or opinion based on the observation. It also states what the
speaker believes to be the case or not. Statements of fact, assertions, conclusions, and
descriptions are all examples of the speaker representing the world as he or she believes it is

For example when someone says “The earth is flat ”

It represents the speaker’s assertions about the earth. The speaker has opinion that the earth is
flat.

Directives
are speech acts that speaker uses to get someone else to do something. These speech acts
include requesting, questioning, command, orders, and suggesting.

For example “Could you lend me a pencil, please?”

The utterance represents the speaker requests that the hearer to do something which is to lend
him a pencil.

Commissives

are speech acts that the utterances commit the speaker to some future course of action, these
include promising, threatening, offering, refusal, pledges.

For example when someone says “I’ll be back”,

Represents the speaker’s promise that he/she will be back.

Expressives

are speech acts that the utterances express a psychological state. These speech acts include
thanking, apologizing, welcoming, and congratulating.

For example “don’t be shy, my home is your home.”

The utterance represents the speaker’s expression that he/she welcomes someone.

Declarations

are speech acts that the utterances effect immediate changes in the institutional state of affairs
and which tend to rely on elaborate extra- linguistic institutions. These speech acts include
excommunicating, declaring war, christening, firing from employment.

For example “Class Dismissed.”

LANGUAGE AS DISCOURSE
N. Fairclough

-Norman Fairclough is an emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Department of Linguistics and

English Language at Lancaster University. He is one of the founders of critical discourse analysis
as applied to sociolinguistics. CDA is concerned with how power is exercised through language.

-Fairclough introduced the concepts that are now viewed as vital in CDA such as "discourse,
power, ideology, social practice and common sense." He argues that language should be
analyzed as a social practice through the lens of discourse in both speaking and writing. (Critical
Discourse Analysis)

Critical Discourse Analysis

• Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a branch of linguistics which aims to reveal the implicit
ideological forces at work in spoken or written texts.

• Critical Discourse Analysis is concerned with : How power is exercised through language.

• CDA is an approach to the study of language as a form of social practice.

Fairclough's 3D Model of Critical Discourse Analysis

The model consists of three categories called Dimensions :

Dimension 1: Text (or inner layer)

Dimension 2: A Discursive Practice (or middle layer)

Dimension 3: Social Practice (or outer layer)

Dimension 1
TEXT

• Text is any piece of work which in term of communicative meaning, is complete in itself. It is
the observable product of a writer's or speaker's discourse.

• Text can be speech, writing, images or a mixture of all three forms of communication.

• Text is almost always a subject to interpretations.

Dimension 2

A DISCURSIVE PRACTICE

• In literal sense, discursive means relating to discourse or modes of discourse.

• Discursive Practice involves production of texts or construction of texts.

• The analysis takes place at a text level.

Dimension 3

SOCIAL PRACTICE

• Social Practice about standards of society or the organization of social structures.

• Fairclough's analytical approach assumes that language helps to create change and can be
used to change behavior.

• Societal ang institutional power relations construct discourse and the same discourse
contributes to institutional struggles.

Conclusion

-Discourse is one of the four systems of language, the others being vocabulary, grammar and
phonology. Discourse has various definitions but one way of thinking about it is as any piece of
extended language, written or spoken, that has unity and meaning and purpose.

-It is the way in which language is used socially to convey broad historical meanings. It is
language identified by the social conditions of its use, by who is using it and under what
conditions. Language can never be 'neutral' because it bridges our personal and social worlds,