Language Acquisition later stages Morpheme Syntax Acquisition Steinberg

Language Acquisition later stages Morpheme & Syntax Acquisition (Steinberg & Sciarini, pp. 10 -20)

Acquisition Determinants Brown (1973): semantic & syntactic complexity Dulay et al. (1982): a predetermined order in the child’s mind Steinberg & Sciarini (2006): (a) observability, meaningfulness, distinctiveness (b) memory, logical thinking (pp. 11 -17, 34 -36)

Later Acquisition: Negation Rule Formation Stages: I. no/not + X (noun, verb) (e. g. , “No money, ” “Not a teddy bear”) II. Negatives appear in the middle. (e. g. , “I don’t want it, ’ “He no bite you”) III. ‘am not, ’ ‘will not (=won’t), ’ ‘don’t, ’ and ‘didn’t, ’ and ‘can’t’ emerge. (e. g. , “Paul can’t have one, ” “You didn’t caught me, ” “I not hurt him”)

Role of the environment (input) • The mother’s speech sounds were found to reach the ear of the fetus above the background sounds (heartbeat and blood flow) • Mothers’ reading of a story to their newborns

Comprehension vs production • Comprehension develops before speech production. Huttenlocher 1974 Sachs and Truswell study • Thought as the basis of speech comprhension (pp. 24 -27)

Parentese (motherese) • The sort of speech that children receive when they are young • Highly grammatical and simplified • Short and simple structures • Simple and short vocabulary • Exaggerated intonation and stress

Baby talk • A form of parentese but with its own characteristics. • Involves the use of vocabury and syntax that is overly simplified and reduced. • Vocabulary: ‘bow-wow, ’ ‘choo-choo’

Role of imitation, rule learning, and correction • Children seem to enjoy imitating the sounds that they hear • Imitation of the sounds can apply only to speech production and not to speech comprehension. • Productivity by rule *sheeps, *mouses, Conclude: Parents corrections are rare and do not play a role in grammar learning. (pp. 31 -32)