Theories of Language Acquisition 1 Behaviorism 2 Innateness

Theories of Language Acquisition 1. Behaviorism 2. Innateness

Behaviorism • Language acquisition depends on human role models, imitation, rewards and practice. • The behaviorist theory of stimulus-response learning considers all learning to be the establishment of habits as a result of reinforcement and reward

Innateness • is a linguistic theory of language acquisition which holds that at least some knowledge about language exists in humans at birth

Language acquisition • Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language. • Language acquisition also looks at how people produce and use words and sentences to communicate.

Stages of Language Acquisition

The development of speech production

From vocalization to babbling to speech • Vocalization to babbling • Prior to uttering speech sounds, infants make a variety of sounds – crying, cooing, gurgling. • All infants make the same variety of sounds, even children who are born deaf.

• Infants do not learn how to utter such sounds thus appear to be unlearned. • Around the seventh month, children begin to babble, to produce repeated syllables (‘syllabic reduplication’), • Examples, • ‘baba’, ‘momo’, ‘panpan’.

• Most syllables are of the basic Consonant + Vowel type (‘baba’ and ‘momo’). • However, some consist of closed syllables Consonant + Vowel + Consonant - Example: panpan. - Children in all studied languages produce such structure of repeated syllables.

Babbling to speech q. Babbling is non-intentional. q. This stage normally occurs at around the first year of age. q. It can occur much earlier or much later. q When children begin to utter words, only some of the sounds that they have uttered in babbling appear in speech.

Acquisition order of consonants and vowels • Consonants are acquired in a front-to-back order. • ‘Front’ and ‘back’ here refer to the origin of the production of the sound.

• Sounds like /m/, /p/, /b/, /t/, and /d/ are pronounced before /k/. • Vowels are acquired in a back-to-front order. • /a/ in /tall/ preceding /i/ (meet).

Early speech stages Naming • Naming: one-word utterances Question: • When do children start to say their first words? • There is no definite age for that. • Why? • Because there are individual differences.

• The simple uttering of speech sounds by the child, as in saying ‘mama’, may or may not indicate word knowledge. • Children learn their first word when: 1. They are able to utter a recognizable speech form; and 2. In presence if an object or event in the environment.

• The speech form may be imperfect, e. g. ‘da’ for ‘daddy’. • First words have been reported as appearing in children from as young as 4 months to as old as 18 months or older. • Generally speaking, children utter their first word around the age of 10 or 12 months.

• Some of this difference is related to physical development. • Certain brain development is also involved since the creation of speech sounds.

• Normally, children first use nouns as proper nouns to refer to specific objects.

Holophrastic function: one-word utterances • Children use single words to 1. refer to objects; 2. express complex thoughts that involve those objects.

Example: • A young child who has lost its mother in a shop may cry out ‘mama’, which means ‘I want mama’.

• The young child can express a variety of semantic functions and complex ideas by the use of single words. • The child thus uses a single word to express the thought for which mature speakers will use a whole sentence. • One-word speech is often referred to as ‘holophrastic’ because one word functions as a sentence.

Next class Telegraphic speech Two- and three-word utterances