First Language

Acquisition
Dr. Mustafa A. Abdulkareem
 Key Concepts
❑ First language acquisition
• Acquisition
• Input
• The acquisition schedule
➢ Cooing and babbling: The one-word stage, The two-word stage, and Telegraphic
speech
• The acquisition process
➢ Developing morphology
➢ Developing syntax: Forming questions and Forming negatives
➢ Developing semantics
 First Language Acquisition
❖ CHILD: Want other one spoon, Daddy.
❖ FATHER: You mean, you want the other spoon.
❖ CHILD: Yes, I want other one spoon, please Daddy.
❖ FATHER: Can you say “the other spoon”?
❖ CHILD: Other … one … spoon.
❖ FATHER: Say “other.”
❖ CHILD: Other.
❖ FATHER: “Spoon.”
❖ CHILD: Spoon.
❖ FATHER: “Other spoon.”
❖ CHILD: Other … spoon. Now give me other one spoon? Braine (1971)
 First Language Acquisition
❖ First language acquisition is remarkable for the speed

❖ Acquisition generally occurs, without overt instruction, for all children, regardless
of great differences in their circumstances,

❖ There is an innate predisposition in the human infant to acquire language. We can

think of this as a special capacity for language with which each newborn child is
endowed.

❖ However, this inborn language capacity is not enough.

 First Language Acquisition
❖ The process of language acquisition has some basic requirements:

1. During the first two or three years of development, a child requires interaction with other
language-users in order to bring the general language capacity into contact with a particular
language such as English .
2. A child who does not hear or is not allowed to use language will learn no language.
3. The particular language a child learns is not genetically inherited, but is acquired in a
particular language-using environment.
4. The child must also be physically capable of sending and receiving sound signals in a
language (Being able to speak and hear).
➢ All infants make “cooing” and “babbling” noises during their first year, but deaf infants stop
after about six months. So, in order to speak a language, a child must be able to hear that
language being used.
➢ However, hearing language sounds is not enough. A crucial requirement appears to be the
opportunity to interact with others via language.
 Input
❖ Input is the language that an acquirer/ learner is exposed to, in contrast to output.
❖ Caregiver speech (also called ‘motherese’ or ‘child-directed speech’) is the characteristically
simplified speech style adopted by someone (the older children and adults) who spends a lot
of time interacting with a young child

❑ Characteristics of Caregiver Speech

1. The frequent use of questions
2. Exaggerated intonation
3. Extra loudness
4. Slow rhythm with long pauses
5. Simple sentence structure
6. A lot or of repetition
7. Babytalk forms:
➢ Simplified words (tummy, nana)
➢ alternative forms, with repeated simple sounds and syllables for things in the child’s
environment (nanna, nono, pee-pee, poo-poo, dada, haw-haw, cocococo, choo-choo)
 The Acquisition Schedule
❖ All normal children develop language at roughly the same time, along much the same
schedule.
❖ the same thing for sitting up, crawling, standing, walking, using the hands and many other
physical activities, it would seem that the language acquisition schedule has the same basis as
the biologically determined development of motor skills.

❖ Children go at different stages during the early years of life.

❖ Long before children begin to talk, they have been actively processing what they hear.
❖ At one month, for example, an infant is capable of distinguishing between sounds such as
[ba] and [pa]. During the first three months, the child develops a range of crying styles, with
different patterns for different needs, produces big smiles in response to a speaking face, and
starts to create distinct vocalizations.
 Early Stages of Acquiring Language: Cooing
Cooing is the earliest use of speech-like sounds.

The first few months: the child gradually becomes capable of producing sequences of vowel-
like sounds (particularly high vowels [i] and [u])

4 months: the ability to bring the back of the tongue into regular contact with the back of the
palate – producing sounds similar to velar consonants [k] & [g] (cooing & gooing)

5 months: hear the difference between the vowels [a] and [i] and the syllables [ba] and [ga] -
perception skills.
 Early Stages of Acquiring Language: Babbling
Babbling is the stage in which the child produces a number of sounds.

6-8 months: sitting up & producing a number of different vowels, consonants, and combinations like
ba-ba-ba and ga-ga-ga.

9-10 months:
▪ recognizable intonation patterns to the consonant and vowel combinations being produced
▪ Variation in the combinations (ba-ba-da-da)
▪ Nasal sounds become common
▪ Certain syllable sequences also appear (ma-ma-ma & da-da-da)

10-11months:
▪ Standing position
▪ Capable of using vocalization to express emotions & emphasis.
▪ More complex syllable combination (ma-da-ga-ba)
▪ A lot of sound play & attempted imitations.
 The One-word Stage and The Two-word Stage
1. The one-word stage is a period between twelve and eighteen months, children begin to produce a
variety of recognizable single-unit utterances.
❖ It 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.
❖ For example, produce utterances such as ‘Sara bed’ but not yet capable of producing a more
complex phrase.

2. The two-word stage is the period that can begin around eighteen to twenty months, as the child’s
vocabulary moves beyond fifty words. By the time the child is two years old, a variety of
combinations, similar to baby chair, mommy eat, cat bad, will usually have appeared.
❖ The adult interpretation of such combinations is, of course, very much tied to the context of their
utterance. Fore example,
❖ The phrase baby chair may be taken as an expression of possession (= this is baby’s chair), or as
a request (= put baby in chair), or as a statement (= baby is in the chair), depending on different
circumstances.
 Telegraphic Speech
❖ Telegraphic speech is the period between two and two-and-a-half years old, the
child begins producing a large number of utterances that could be classified as
“multiple-word” speech.
❖ The salient feature of these utterances ceases to be the number of words, but the
variation in word forms that begins to appear.
❖ This is characterized by strings of words (lexical morphemes) in phrases or
sentences such as this shoe all wet, cat drink milk and daddy go bye-bye.
❖ The child has clearly developed some sentence building capacity by this stage and
can get the word order correct.
❖ A number of grammatical inflections begin to appear in some of the word forms
and simple prepositions (in, on) are also used.
❖ By the age of three, the vocabulary has grown to hundreds of words and
pronunciation has become closer to the form of adult language.
 The Acquisition Process
❖ For the vast majority of children, no one provides any instruction on how to speak the language.
❖ The child is acquiring the language principally through a process of imitating adult speech, by
repeating what adults say.
❖ However, they may produce expressions adults never produced.
❖ Adult “corrections” are a very effective determiner of how the child speaks.
❖ Even when the correction is attempted, the child will continue to use a personally constructed form,
despite the adult’s repetition of what the correct form should be.

❖ Note that in the following dialog the child, a four-year-old, is neither imitating the adult’s speech
nor accepting the adult’s correction.
❖ CHILD: My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
❖ MOTHER: Did you say your teacher held the baby rabbits?
❖ CHILD: Yes.
❖ MOTHER: What did you say she did?
❖ CHILD: She holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
❖ MOTHER: Did you say she held them tightly?
❖ CHILD: No, she holded them loosely.
 Developing Morphology
❖ At the age of two-and-a-half years old, a child begins to incorporate some of the inflectional
morphemes that indicate the grammatical function of the nouns and verbs used.
1. The first inflection to appear is the-ing form in expressions such as cat sitting and mommy reading
book.
2. The marking of regular plurals with the -s form, as in boys and cats.
3. The use of the possessive -’s occurs in expressions such as girl’s dog and Mummy’s book.
4. At about the same time, forms of verb to be appear (is, are, was)
5, At about the same time of the appearance of was, irregular verbs (went, came) appear.
6. Then, the -ed for past tense appears (played, walked).
7. Finally, the -s marker for 3rd person singular present tense verbs appears with full verbs first (comes,
looks) then with auxiliaries (does, has)

❖ The acquisition of the plural marker and past tense is often accompanied by a process of
overgeneralization which occurs when a child overgeneralizes the rule of adding –s or -ed to form
plurals or past form when they talk about irregular nouns (foots and mans) or verbs (goed, comed).
❖ Some children also begin using irregular plurals (men) or verbs (wnt) appropriately for a while, but then
overgeneralize again and producing expressions (like some mens and two feets, or even two feetses), or
verbs (like walkeded and wented).
 Developing Syntax
A. Forming questions
The first stage
1. Simply add a Wh-form (Where, Who) to the beginning of the expression.
➢ For example: Where kitty? Where Doggie? Where horse go?
2. Utter the expression with a rise in intonation towards the end.
➢ For example: Sit chair?
The second stage
More complex expressions can be formed:
1. The rising intonation strategy continues to be used.
2. More Wh-forms come into use.
➢ For example: What book name? You want eat? Why you smiling? See my doggie?
The third stage
1. The required inversion of subject and verb in English questions appears (e.g., I can go → Can I go?)
2. but the Wh-questions do not always undergo the required inversion.
3. The 3rd stage questions are generally quite close to the adult model
➢ For example: Can I have a piece? Did I caught it? Will you help me? How that opened? What did
you do? Why kitty can’t stand up?
 Developing Syntax
B. Forming negative
The 1 st stage
Involves a simple strategy of putting no or not at the beginning
➢ For example: not a teddy bear, no sit here, no fall
The 2nd stage:
1. The additional negative forms don’t and can’t appear
➢ For example: I don’t want it, You can’t dance
2. no and not are increasingly used in front of the verb rather than at the beginning of the sentence
➢ For example: He no bite you
The 3rd stage
The incorporation of other auxiliary forms such as didn’t and won’t
➢ For example: I didn’t caught it, She won’t let go
1. The typical stage 1 forms disappear.
2. A very late acquisition is the negative form isn’t, with the result that some stage 2 forms (with not
instead of isn’t) continue to be used for quite a long time.
➢ For example: He not taking it, This not ice cream
 Developing Semantics
❖ During the two-word stage children use their limited vocabulary to refer to a large number
of unrelated objects.

❖ Overextension occurs when the child overextends the meaning of a word on the basis of
similarities of shape, sound and size, and, to a lesser extent, movement and texture. For
example, ball is extended to all kinds of round objects, including an apple, an egg, a grape,
and the moon.
❖ This is followed by a gradual process of narrowing down.

❖ Antonymous relations are acquired late (After the age of 5)

❖ The distinction between more/less, before/after seems to be later acquisition.
Thanks