X Language Acquisition

1
X
X Language Acquisition

• X Language Acquisition

2

• 10.1 Introduction
• Language acquisition refers to the childs
  acquisition of his mother tongue, i.e. how the
  child comes to understand and speak the language
  of his community.
•  
• 10.2 Theories of child language acquisition
• 10.2.1 A behaviorist view of language acquisition
• Traditional behaviorists view language as
  behavior and believe that language learning is
  simply a matter of imitation and habit formation.
  A child imitates the sounds and patterns of the
  people around him people recognize the childs
  attempts and reinforce the attempts by responding
  differently, the child repeats the right sounds
  or patterns to get the reward. The child learns
  the language gradually in much the same way as
  habit-forming. So imitation and practice are
  preliminary, discrimination and generalization
  are key to language development in this theory.
• The behaviorist theory of child language
  acquisition offers a reasonable account of how
  children acquire some of the regular and routine
  aspects of the language, yet how they acquire
  more complex grammatical structures of the
  language requires a different explanation.
• 10.2.2 An innatist view of language acquisition
• The linguist Noam Chomsky, claims that human
  beings are biologically programmed for the
  language and that the language develops in the
  child just as other biological functions such as
  walking.

3

• Originally Chomsky referred to this innate
  ability as Language Acquisition Device. The LAD
  was described as an imaginary black box
  existing somewhere in the human brain. The black
  box is said to contain principles that are
  universal to all human languages. Children need
  access to the samples of a natural language to
  activate the LAD, which enables them to discover
  his languages structure by matching the innate
  knowledge of basic grammatical system to that
  particular language. Later Chimksy prefers to
  this innate endowments as Universal Grammar and
  holds that if children are pre-equipped with UG,
  then what they have to learn is the ways in which
  their own language makes use of these principles
  and the variations ion those pronciple which may
  exist in the particular language they are
  learning.
•  
• 10.2.3 An interactionist view of language
  acquisition
• The interactionist view holds that language
  develops as a result of the complex interplay
  between the human characteristics of the child
  and the environment in which the child develops.
  Integrated with the innatist view, the
  interactionist further claims that the modified
  language which is suitable for the childs
  capability is crucial in his language
  acquisition.
• 10.3 Cognitive factors in child language
  development
• The cognitive factors relate to language
  acquisition mainly in two ways. First,
• language development is dependent on the concepts
  children form about the world and what they feel
  stimulated to communicate at the early and later
  stages of their language development.

4

• For example, children at early stage can use two
  word utterances o express a wide range of
  meanings but they may not use English perfect
  tense until they have acquired the underlying
  concept of present relevance around the age of
  four and a half. Meanwhile, the present
  relevance embodied in the perfect tense helps to
  stimulate the English-speaking children to form
  that concept. Thus, as childrens conceptual
  development leads to their language development,
  it is likely that their language development also
  helps in the formation and enhancement of the
  concept.
• Secondly, the cognitive factors determine how the
  child makes sense of the linguistic system
  himself instead of what meanings the child
  perceives and expresses. Many careful studies of
  childrens acquisition sequences and errors in
  various language have revealed that children have
  some operating principles for making sense
  language data.
• 10.4 Language environment and the Critical Period
  Hypothesis
• A specific and limited time period for language
  acquisition us referred to as Critical Period
  Hypothesis.
• There are two versions of the CPH. While the
  strong one suggests that children must acquire
  their first language by puberty or they will
  never be able to learn from subsequent exposure,
  the weak holds that language learning will be
  more difficult and incomplete after puberty.
• 10.5 Stages in child language development

5

• 10.5.1 Phonological development
• 10.5.2 Vocabulary development
• a)      Under-extension
• Children do not learn the meaning of a word all
  at once. When a child learns a new word, he may
  well under-extend it or overextend it.
• b)      Over-extension
• Overextension happens when a child a takes a
  property of an object and generalizes it. Later
  rather than immediately following the acquisition
  of a word. It is likely to occur.
•  
• 10.5.3 Grammatical development
• Around the age of two, children begin to produce
  two-word utterances. They are typically the
  examples of telegraphic speech. This kind of
  speech contains content words which give us the
  information and lacks the function elements, or
  function words which by themselves tell us
  nothing.
•  
• 10.5.4 Pragmatic development
• While children are acquiring morpho-syntax and
  vocabulary, they are also acquiring pragmatics,
  or how to speak to others in an appropriate
  manner. These include, for example, the greetings
  to be use, the taboo words, the polite forms of
  address and the various styles appropriate to
  different speech situations of his community.

6

• 10.6 Atypical development
• The atypical language development includes
• hearing impairment (which may cause a delayed
  language acquisition),
• mental retardation (which may cause a delayed
  language acquisition),
• autism (language impairment from the very
  beginning),
• stuttering (repetition of sounds, syllable, or
  phrases where the speaker can not release the
  words),
• aphasia (partial or total loss of language due to
  brain damage) and dyslexia and dysgraphia
  (disorders in reading and writing which may be
  acquire or developmental).
• Reference books
• G oodluck, H. Language Acquisition A
  Linguistic Introduction
• Peccei, J. S. Child Language New
• The
  End