2

LANE 4 2 3 - APPLI ED LI NGUI STI C S

Children have a remarkable ability to communicate:

Small babies:
1
babble - coo – cry

vocally and non-vocally send & receive messages.

CHAPTER 2: FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION End of first year:
start to imitate words & speech sounds

use their first words.

18 months:
their vocabulary in terms of words has increased

beginning to use 2-word & 3-word “sentences” (“telegraphic” utterances).

e.g. “bye-bye Daddy,” “gimme toy”

Lecturer: Haifa Alroqi

3 4

2 years: School age:

comprehending more sophisticated language start to internalize increasingly complex structures

start forming questions and negatives expand their vocabulary

e.g. “where my toy? “ and “That not red, that blue” sharpen their communicative skills

3 years: not only learn what to say, but what not to say (learn the social functions of

can comprehend an incredible quantity of linguistic input their language)

chatter nonstop
“Is this where you get safe? Cause this is Safeway and you get safe from the cold.” [3
year-old in a Safeway supermarket]

Theories of First language Acquisition

5 6

How can we explain this fantastic journey An extreme behaviortistic position would claim that:
From that first anguished cry at birth to adult competence in a language?
Children come into this world with a tabula rasa (a clean
From the first word to tens of thousands?
slate bearing no preconceived notions about the world or
From telegraphese at 18 months to the compound-complex, cognitively
about language)
precise, sociocturally appropriate sentences just a few short years later?

These are the sorts 0f questions that theories of language acquisition these children are then shaped by the environment and
attempt to answer. slowly conditioned through various schedules of

reinforcement.

1
Theories of First language Acquisition cont. Theories of First language Acquisition cont.
7 8

The rationalist/cognitivist claim that:

children come into this world with very specific innate

These positions represent opposites on a continuum,
knowledge, predispositions, and biological timetables.
with many possible positions in between.

At the other constructivist extreme is the position that

claims that

children learn to function in a language chiefly through

interaction and discourse.

Theories of First language Acquisition cont. Behavioristic Approaches

9 10

They focused on:

Three Positions in First Language Acquisition
the clear noticeable aspects of linguistic behavior
The Behavioristic Approaches
the publicly observable responses

The Nativist Approach the relationships between those responses + events in the
world surrounding them.
The Functional Approaches

Behavioristic Approaches cont. Behavioristic Approaches cont.

11 12

An effective language behavior = production of correct

responses to stimuli One of the best-known attempts to construct a behavioristic
If a particular response is reinforced, it then becomes model of linguistic behavior was embodied in B.F. Skinner's
habitual, or conditioned. classic, Verbal Behavior (1957).

Traditional behaviorists believed that language learning is

the result of imitation, practice, feedback on success, and
habit formation.

2
Behavioristic Approaches cont. Behavioristic Approaches cont.
13 14

Operant conditioning refers to conditioning in which the According to Skinner, verbal behavior, like other behavior,
organism (a human being) sends out a response, or operant (a is controlled by its consequences.
sentence or utterance), without necessarily observable stimuli; When consequences are rewarding, behavior is
that operant is maintained (learned) by reinforcement (e.g. a maintained and is increased in strength and perhaps
positive verbal or nonverbal response from another person). frequency.
If a child says "want milk" and a parent gives the child some When consequences are punishing, or when there is a
milk, the operant is reinforced and, over repeated instances, is total lack of reinforcement, the behavior is weakened and
conditioned. eventually extinguished.

Behavioristic Approaches cont. Behavioristic Approaches cont.

15 16

Skinner's theories attracted a number of critics - Today, virtually no one would agree that Skinner's model of verbal
behavior adequately accounts for the capacity to acquire language and
Noam Chomsky (1959)
for language development itself.

The behavioristic views failed to explain the fact that almost every
sentence you speak or write is novel, never before uttered either by you
or by anyone else!
but it also had people who defended it - Kenneth These novel utterances are even created by very young children as they

MacCorquodale (1970) "play" with language, and that same creativity continues on into
adulthood and throughout one's life.

Behavioristic Approaches cont. The Nativist Approach

17 18

It would appear that this position with its emphasis on The term nativist is derived from the fundamental
empirical observation and the scientific method only began assertion that:
to explain the miracle of language acquisition. language acquisition is innately determined

that we are born with a genetic capacity that predisposes

It left untouched genetic and interactionist domains that us to a systematic perception of language around us,
could be explored only by approaches that investigated resulting in the construction of an internalized system of
them more deeply. language

3
The Nativist Approach cont. The Nativist Approach cont.
19 20

Eric Lenneberg (1967) proposed that certain modes of Chomsky (1965) similarly claimed that:
perception and other language related mechanisms are the existence of innate properties of language to explain the child's

biologically determined. mastery of a native language in such a short time despite the highly
abstract nature of the rules of language.

This innate knowledge, according to Chomsky, is embodied in a "little

black box", a language acquisition device (LAD).

The Nativist Approach cont. The Nativist Approach cont.

21 22

The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) For the LAD to work, the child needs to access only samples of a natural
language. These language samples serve as a trigger to activate the
An imaginary “black box” that exists in the brain. device.

It contains all and only the principles which are universal

to all human languages. Once it is activated, the child is able to discover the structure of the
language to be learned by matching the innate knowledge of basic
grammatical relationships to the structures of the particular language
in the environment.

The Nativist Approach cont. The Nativist Approach cont.

23 24
McNeill (1966) described LAD as consisting of four innate linguistic
properties: McNeill and other Chomskyan followers composed many
1. the ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds in the arguments for the appropriateness of the LAD proposition,
environment especially in contrast to behavioristic, stimulus-response
2. the ability to organize linguistic data into various classes that can later (S-R) theory, which was so limited in accounting for the creativity
be refined; present in child language.
3. knowledge that only a certain kind of linguistic system is possible and
that other kinds are not
Even though it was recognized that the LAD was not literally a
4. the ability to engage in constant evaluation of the developing linguistic
cluster of brain cells that could be isolated and neurologically
system so as to construct the simplest possible system out of the
located, such inquiry stimulated a great deal of fruitful research.
available linguistic input.

4
The Nativist Approach cont. The Nativist Approach cont.
25 26

More recently, researchers in the nativist tradition have continued One of the more practical contributions of nativist theories

this line of inquiry through a genre of child language acquisition is evident if you look at the kinds of discoveries that have
been made about how the system of child language works.
research that focuses on what has come to be known as Universal

Grammar.
Research has shown that the child's language, at any given
point, is a legitimate system in its own right.

The Nativist Approach cont. The Nativist Approach cont.

27 28

The child's linguistic development is Jean Berko (1958) demonstrated that children learn language not as a
not a process of developing fewer and fewer "incorrect" structures,
series of separate discrete items, but as an integrated system.
not a language in which earlier stages have more "mistakes" than later stages.
Using a simple nonsense-word test (Wug Test) , Berko discovered that
Rather, the child's language at any stage is systematic in that the child is
English-speaking children as young as four years of age applied rules
constantly:
for the formation of plural, present progressive, past tense, third
forming hypotheses on the basis of the input received
and then testing those hypotheses in speech (and comprehension). singular, and possessives.
As the child's language develops, those hypotheses are continually revised,
reshaped, or sometimes abandoned.

The Nativist Approach cont. The Nativist Approach cont.

29 30

In the test, children are shown drawings of imaginary creatures By generalizing these patterns to words they have never heard
with novel names or people performing mysterious actions. before, they show that their language is not just a list of

For example, they are told, “Here is a wug. Now there are two of memorized word pairs such as 'book/books' and 'nod/nodded'

them. There are two…….”. or “Here is a man who knows how to If a child saw one "wug" he could easily talk about two "wugs;'
bod. Yesterday he did the same thing. Yesterday, he…………”. or if he were presented with a person who knows how to "gling,"
By completing these sentences with 'wugs' and 'bodded', children the child could talk about a person who "glinged" yesterday, or
demonstrate that they know rules for the formation of plural and sometimes who "glang."
simple past in English.

5
The Nativist Approach cont. The Nativist Approach cont.
31 32

Nativist studies of child language acquisition were free to construct

It was commonly observed that the child's first two-word
hypothetical grammars of child language, although such grammars
were still solidly based on empirical data. utterances seemed to manifest two separate word classes,
Linguists started to examine child language from early one- and two- and not simply two words thrown together at random.
word forms of "telegraphic" to the complex language of five- to ten-
year-olds.

The early grammars of child language were referred to as pivot

grammars.

The Nativist Approach cont. O P+O

Pivot grammar
O+P O+O
33 34
Daddy See boy Shoe off Mommy sleep
Consider the following utterances: Hi Milk cup
Byebye See sock Shirt off Baby sit.
My cap
Pretty boat Daddy do
My horsie
Pretty fan Mommy do
All gone
My Mommy Blanket away
Linguists noted that the words on the left-hand side seemed to belong
My milk Daddy away.
to a class that words on the right-hand side generally did not belong to.
That is, my could co-occur with cap, horsie, gone, or sock, but not with Allgone shoe
that or all Allgone egg
More taxi
More melon

The Nativist Approach cont. The Nativist Approach cont.

35 36

The first class of words was called "pivot," since they could pivot All of these approaches within the nativist framework have made at
around a number of words in the second, "open" class. least three important contributions to our understanding of the L1

The first rule of the generative " grammar of the child was described as acquisition process:

follows: Freedom from the restrictions of the so-called “scientific method” to

Sentence –> Pivot word + Open word explore the unseen, unobservable, underlying, abstract linguistic

The child has a small repertoire of pivot words which can be placed first structures being developed in the child;

in the phrase "more juice" or second in the phrase "socks off". Systematic description of the child’s linguistic repertoire as either rule-

The term pivot refers to the fact these words can be used in conjunction governed or operating out of parallel distributed processing capacities;

with almost any other word, which the child has learnt, to convey the The construction of a number of potential properties of Universal

child’s intending meaning. Grammar.

6
 Functional Approaches Functional Approaches cont.
37 38

More recently, with an increase in constructivist

1. Researchers began to see that language was just one
perspectives on the study of language, there has been a
manifestation of the cognitive and affective ability to deal
shift in patterns of research. The shift has not been so
with the world, with others, and with the self.
much away from the cognitive side of the continuum,
but perhaps better described as a move even more
deeply into the essence of language.

Functional Approaches cont. Cognition and Language Development

39 40

2. Moreover, the generative rules that were proposed under the nativist
framework dealt specifically with: The first social constructivist emphasis of the functional
the forms of language perspective was on Cognition and Language Development
Forms (e.g. morphemes, words, sentences, and the rules that
govern them.)

and not with the deeper functional levels of meaning constructed

from social interaction.

Functions (i.e. The meaningful, interactive purposes, within a

social (pragmatic) context, that we accomplish with the forms.)

Cognition & Language Development cont. Cognition & Language Development cont.
41 42

Lois Bloom (1971) criticized pivot grammar:

Bloom concluded that children learn underlying structures,
the relationships in which words occur in telegraphic utterances are
and not superficial word order.
only superficially similar.

For example, in the utterance "Mommy sock," which nativists would Thus, depending on the social context, “Mommy sock”
describe as a sentence consisting of a pivot word and an open word, could mean a number of different things to a child.
Bloom found at least three possible underlying relations:
Those varied meanings were inadequately captured in a
agent-action (Mommy is putting the sock on),
pivot grammar approach.
agent-object (Mommy sees the sock),

and possessor-possessed (Mommy's sock).

7
Cognition & Language Development cont. Cognition & Language Development cont.
43 44

Dan Slobin (1971, 1986, 1997), among others, demonstrated that: There are two major views to language development (involved with the poles

in all languages, semantic learning depends on cognitive of functions and forms):

development 1. On the functional level, development is measured by:

the growth of conceptual and communicative capacities,
sequences of development are determined more by semantic
operating in conjunction with innate schemas of cognition;
complexity than by structural complexity.

2. On the formal level, development is measured by:

the growth of perceptual and information-processing capacities,

operating in conjunction with innate schemas of grammar.

Social Interaction & Language Development Summary

45 46

The second social constructivist emphasis of the functional

perspective was on Social Interaction & Language
Development .

Please read pp. 34-35.

Issues in First Language Acquisition Competence & Performance

47 48

Competence and Performance Competence:

Comprehension and Production
It refers to one’s underlying knowledge of a system, event, or fact.
Nature or Nurture?
It is the non-observable ability to do something, to perform
Universals
something.
Systematicity and Variability
Performance:
Language and Thought

Imitation It is the overtly observable and concrete manifestation or realization

Practice and Frequency of competence.

Input It is the actual doing of something: walking, singing, dancing,

Discourse speaking.

8
Competence & Performance cont. Competence & Performance cont.
49 50

In reference to language, Chomsky (1965) likened competence to an "idealized"

speaker-hearer.
Competence is one's underlying knowledge of the system of
a language-its rules of grammar, its vocabulary, all the This idealized person does not display:

pieces of a language and how those pieces fit together. performance variables (e.g. memory limitations, distractions,
shifts of attention and interest, and errors,)
Performance is the actual production (speaking, writing) or
hesitation phenomena (e.g. repeats, false starts, pauses,
the comprehension (listening, reading) of linguistic events.
omissions, and additions.)

Competence & Performance cont. Competence & Performance cont.

51 52

How could one scientifically assess this unobservable, underlying level? The child obviously has no interest in – or understanding of – the adult's
Brown and Bellugi (1964) give us a rather delightful example of the difficulty of grammatical interrogation and therefore says whatever he wants to!
attempting to extract underlying grammatical knowledge from children.
The researcher is thus forced to invent indirect methods of judging
Unlike adults, who can be asked, for example, whether it is better to say "two
competence.
foots" or "two feet," children exhibit what is called the " pop-go-weasel" effect,
Among those methods are:
as witnessed in the following dialogue between an adult and a two-year old
child: the tape recording and transcription of countless hours of speech followed by
an extensive analysis
ADULT: Now Adam, listen to what I say. Tell me which is better to say ...
the direct admission of certain imitation, production, or comprehension tests,
some water, or a water.
ADAM: Pop go weasel. all with numerous disadvantages

Competence & Performance cont. Competence & Performance cont.

53 54

How is one, for example, to infer some general competence about the On the surface it might appear that this child is severely impaired in her
linguistic system of a five-year-old, monolingual, English-speaking girl attempts to communicate.
whose recounting of an incident viewed on television is transcribed In fact, we usually comprehend such strings of speech very well by
below: focusing on the underlying meaning of the utterance and by not
... they heared 'em underground ca-cause they went through a hoyle – a hole – allowing ourselves to be distracted by a number of performance
and they pulled a rock from underground and then they saw a wave going in – variables.
that the hole – and they brought a table and the wave brought 'em out the k-
tunnel and then the – they went away and then – uh – m – ah – back on top
and it was – uh – going under a bridge and they went – then the braves hit the
– the bridge – they – all of it – th-then they looked there – then they – then
they were safe.

9
Competence & Performance cont. Competence & Performance cont.
55 56

If we were to record many more samples of girl’s speech, we would still Adult talk is not any better, as we can see in the following
be faced with the problem of inferring her competence. What is her
word-for-word transcription of comments made on a talk
knowledge of the verb system? of the concept of a "sentence"?
show by golfer Tony Jacklin:
Even if we make tests of comprehension or production to a child, we
are still left with the problem of inferring, as accurately as possible, Concentration is important. But uh – I also – to go with this of course if
the child's underlying competence. you're playing well – if you're playing well then you get up tight about

Often these inferences are mere guesses, and what research is all about your game. You get keyed up and it's easy to concentrate. You know

is converting the guesswork to accurate measurement you're playing well and you know ... in with a chance than it's easier,
much easier to – to you know get in there and – and start to ... you
don't have to think about it. I mean it's got to be automatic.

Competence & Performance cont. Comprehension and Production

57 58

Criticism of the competence-performance model: Not to be confused with the competence/performance distinction,

Major criticisms of the model focus on the notion that competence, as comprehension and production can be aspects of both

defined by Chomsky, consists of the abilities of an "idealized" hearer- performance and competence.

speaker who does not make any performance variables. One of the myths that has crept into some foreign language teaching

Stubbs (1996), reviewing the issue, reminded us of the position of materials is that:

British linguists Firth and Halliday: dualisms are unnecessary, and the comprehension (listening, reading) = competence

only option for linguists is to study language in use. production (speaking, writing) = performance.

It is important to recognize that this is not the case: production is of

course more directly observable, but comprehension is as much
performance as production is.

Comprehension and Production cont. Comprehension and Production cont.

59 60

In child language, most observational and research evidence W. R. Miller (1963, p. 863) gave us a good example of this
points to the general superiority of comprehension over phenomenon in phonological development: “Recently a
production: children seem to understand "more" than they three-year-old child told me her name was Litha. I
actually produce. answered 'Litha?' 'No, Litha: 'Oh, Lisa.' 'Yes, Litha.”

For instance, a child may understand a sentence with an The child clearly perceived the contrast between English’s
embedded relative in it (e.g., "The ball that's in the sandbox [s] and [θ], even though she could not produce the contrast
is red") but not be able to produce one. herself.

10
Comprehension and Production cont. Comprehension and Production cont.
61 62

How are we to explain this difference between comprehension and

We know that even adults:
production?
understand more vocabulary than they ever use in speech
Could it be that the same competence accounts for both modes of
perceive more syntactic variation than they actually performance (production and comprehension)?
produce. Or can we speak of comprehension competence and production
competence?

Because comprehension for the most part runs ahead of production,

is it more completely indicative of our overall competence?

Is production indicative of a smaller portion of competence?

Comprehension and Production cont. Comprehension and Production cont.

63 64

A theory of language must include some accounting, of the Perhaps an even more compelling argument for the separation of

separation of two types of competence. competencies comes from research that appears to support the superiority of
production over comprehension.
In fact, linguistic competence no doubt has several modes
Gathercole (1988) reported on a number of studies in which children were
or levels, at least as many as four, since speaking, listening,
able to produce certain aspects of language they could not comprehend.
reading, and writing are all separate modes of performance. For example, Rice (1980) found that children who did not previously know
terms for color were
able to respond verbally to such questions as "What color is this?"

not able to respond correctly (by giving the correct colored object) to “Give me the
[color] one.”

Comprehension and Production cont. Nature or Nurture?

65 66

While lexical and grammatical instances of production-before- Nativists argued that a child is born with an innate knowledge of or
comprehension seem to be few in number, they still prevent us from predisposition toward language, and that this innate property (the LAD
concluding that all aspects of linguistic comprehension precede, or or UG) is universal in all human beings.
facilitate, linguistic production. The innateness hypothesis was a possible resolution of the
contradiction between the behavioral notion that language is a set of
habits that can be acquired by a process of conditioning and the fact
that such conditioning is much too slow and inefficient to account for
the acquisition of a phenomenon as complex as language.

11
Nature or Nurture? cont. Nature or Nurture? cont.
67 68

Environmental factors cannot be ignored. An interesting line of research on innateness was pursued by

For years linguists, psychologists, and educators have been Derek Bickerton (1981), who found evidence, across a number

caught up in the "nature-nurture" controversy: of languages, of common patterns of linguistic and cognitive

What are those behaviors that "nature" provides innately, in development.

some sort of predetermined biological timetable, He proposed that human beings are "bio-programmed" to
and what are those behaviors that are, by environmental proceed from stage to stage.
exposure – by "nurture," by teaching – learned and
internalized?

Nature or Nurture? cont. Universals

69 70

Like flowering plants, people are innately programmed to

"release" certain properties of language at certain
developmental ages.

Just as you can not make a geranium bloom before its "time,“

so human beings will "bloom" in predetermined,

preprogrammed steps.

Universals Universals cont.

71 72

Closely related to the innateness controversy is the claim Slobin (1986, 1992, 1997) and his colleagues gathered data on

that language is universally acquired in the same manner, language acquisition in, among others, Japanese, French, Spanish,
German, Polish, Hebrew, and Turkish.
and moreover, that the deep structure of language at its
Interesting universals of pivot grammar and other telegraphese
deepest level may be common to all languages.
emerged.
Research on UG continues to this day.
Maratsos (1988) listed some of the universal linguistic categories under
One of the keys to such inquiry lies in research on child investigation by a number of different researchers: word order,

language acquisition across many different languages in morphological marking tone, agreement (e.g., of subject and verb),
reduced reference (e.g., pronouns, ellipsis), nouns and noun classes,
order to determine the commonalities.
verbs and verb classes, predication, negation, and question formation.

12
Universals cont. Systematicity and Variability
73 74

Much of current UG research is centered around what have come to be

One of the assumptions of many current researches on
known as principles and parameters.
child language is the systematicity of the process of
Principles are invariable characteristics of human language that apply
acquisition.
to all languages universally.

Cook (1997, pp. 250-251) offered a simple analogy: From pivot grammar to three- and four-word utterances,

Rules of the road in driving universally require the driver to keep to and to full sentences of almost indeterminate length,
one side of the road; this is a principle. children exhibit a remarkable ability to infer the
But in some countries you must keep to the left (e.g. UK & Japan) phonological, structural, lexical, and semantic system of
and in others keep to the right (e.g. USA & Taiwan); this is a
language.
parameter.

Systematicity and Variability cont. Systematicity and Variability cont.

75 76

Ever since Berko's (1958) “wug” study, we have been discovering For example,
more and more about the systematicity of the acquisition it has been found that young children who have not yet mastered
process. the past-tense morpheme (-ed) tend first to learn past tenses as
But in the midst of all this systematicity, there is an equally separate items (“walked,” “broke,” “drank”) without knowledge
remarkable amount of variability in the process of learning! of the difference between regular and irregular verbs.

researchers do not agree on how to define various “stages” of Then, around the age of 4 or 5, they begin to perceive a system in
language acquisition. even in English. which the -ed morpheme is added to a verb, and at this point

Certain “typical” patterns appear in child language. all verbs become regularized (“breaked,” “drinked,” “goed”).

Systematicity and Variability cont. Language and Thought

77 78

Finally, after school age, children perceive that there are For years researchers have investigated the relationship between
language and cognition.
two classes of verbs, regular and irregular, and begin to
The behavioral view that cognition is too mentalistic to be studied by
sort out verbs into the two classes, a process that goes
the scientific method is the opposite of such positions as that of Piaget
on for many years and in some cases persists into young
(1972).
adulthood. Piaget claimed that cognitive development is at the very center of the
human organism and that language is dependent upon and springs

from cognitive development.

13
 Language and Thought cont. Language and Thought cont.
79 80

Others emphasized the influence of language on cognitive Vygotsky (1962, 1978) also differed from Piaget in claiming that social

development. interaction, through language, is a prerequisite to cognitive

development.
Jerome Bruner (Bruner, Olver, & Greenfield, 1966), for example,
Thought and language were seen as two distinct cognitive operations
talked about:
that grow together (Schinke-Llano 1993).
intellectual development caused by language
As demonstrated in Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development
words shaping concepts
(ZPD), every child reaches his or her potential development through
dialogues between parent and child or teacher and child serving to
social interaction with adults and peers.
orient and educate

Language and Thought cont. Language and Thought cont.

81 82

One of the champions of the position that language affects The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (SWH) (also known as the
thought was Benjamin Whorf, who with Edward Sapir formed Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis) suggests a systematic
the well-known Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity. relationship between the language a person speaks and how that

Namely, that each language imposes on its speaker a particular person both understands the world and behaves in it.

“world view.” The hypothesis suggests that:

a particular language's nature influences the habitual thought of its
speakers

different language patterns yield different patterns of thought

Edward Sapir Benjamin Whorf

Language and Thought cont. Language and Thought cont.

83 84

Example: Example:
The Inuit have many words for snow because it is so crucial to their The Arabic language doesn’t have a single word for compromise, which
everyday lives. In addition, the Inuit actually see snow differently from some has said is the reason that Arabs seem to be unable to reach a
others whose lives are not as dependent on snow. Whereas English compromise!!!
speakers simply see it as solid white stuff. Yet the Arabic language does provide several ways to articulate the
This was criticized by saying that while other languages might not have as concept of compromise, the most common is an expression that
many words for the different varieties of snow as the Inuit has, but they translates in English to “we reached a middle ground” (Nunberg,
allow their speakers to perceive these varieties using phrases and 2003).
adjectives (e.g. fluffy, slushy, and so forth)

Geoffrey Nunberg

14
Language and Thought cont. Imitation
85 86

The issue at stake in child language acquisition is to determine: It is a common, informal observation that children are good imitators

how thought affects language, We think of children typically as imitators and mimics, and then

how language affects thought, conclude that imitation is one of the important strategies a child uses in
the acquisition of language
and how linguists can best describe and account for the interaction
That conclusion is not inaccurate on a global level. Indeed, research has
of the two.
shown that echoing is :
an important strategy in early language learning

an important aspect of early phonological acquisition.

Moreover, imitation matches well with behavioral principles of

language acquisition- principles relevant, at least, to the earliest stages.

Imitation cont. Imitation cont.

87 88

There are two types of imitation: Surface structure imitation

It is this level of imitation that enables an adult to repeat random

Surface structure imitation: where a person repeats or mimics numbers or nonsense syllables, or even to mimic unknown languages.

the surface strings, attending to a phonological code rather than The semantic data, if any, underlying the surface output are neither

a semantic code. internalized nor attended to.

Deep structure imitation: where a person concentrates on In foreign language classes, rote pattern drills often evoke surface
imitation: a repetition of sounds by the student without understanding
language as a meaningful and communicative tool.
of what the sounds might possibly mean.

Imitation cont. Imitation cont.

89 90

The earliest stages of child language acquisition may manifest a They engage in deep-structure imitation. In fact, the imitation of
good deal of surface imitation since the baby may not possess the deep structure of language can literally block their attention
the necessary semantic categories to assign "meaning" to to the surface structure so that they become, on the face of it,
utterances. poor imitators.

Deep structure imitation

But as children perceive the importance of the semantic level of

language, they attend primarily if not exclusively to that
meaningful semantic level – the deep structure of language.

15
Imitation cont. Imitation cont.
91 92

Consider the following conversation as recorded by McNeill (1966): You can imagine the frustration of both mother and child, for
the mother was attending to and focusing on surface
Child: Nobody don't like me
grammatical distinction,
Mother: No, say, "Nobody likes me."
but the child was attending to and focus on the meaning value.
Child: Nobody don't like me.
Finally the child perceived some sort of surface distinction between
[Eight repetitions of this dialogue]
what she was saying and what her mother was saying and made what
Mother: No, now listen carefully: say, "Nobody likes me." she thought was an appropriate change “Oh! Nobody don't likes me.”
Child: Oh! Nobody don't likes me.

Imitation cont. Imitation cont.

93 94
A similar case occurred one day when the teacher of an elementary school
The teacher's purpose was lost on this child because he too
class asked her students to write a few sentences on a piece of paper, to
which one rather shy student responded, was attending to language as a meaningful and
"Ain't got no pencil." = I have not got no pencil communicative tool and not to the question of whether
Disturbed at this nonstandard response, the teacher embarked on a certain forms were "correct" and others were not.
barrage of corrective models for the child: "I don't have any pencils, you
The child, like all children, was attending to the truth
don't have a pencil, they don't have pencils.
value of the utterance.
When the teacher finally ended her monologue of patterns, the
intimidated and confused child said, "Ain't nobody got no pencils?" =
Haven't nobody got no pencils?

Imitation cont. Practice and Frequency

95 96

Research has also shown that children, when directly asked to Do children practice their language? If so, how? What is the role
repeat a sentence in a test situation, will often repeat the correct of the frequency of hearing and producing items in the
underlying deep structure with a change in the surface. acquisition of those items?
For example, sentences such as: It is common to observe children and conclude that they
“The ball that is rolling down the hill is black” “practice” language constantly, especially in the early stages of

“The boy who's in the sandbox is wearing a red shirt” single-word and two-word utterances.

tend to be repeated back by preschool children as A behavioral model of L1 acquisition would claim that practice

"The black ball is rolling down the hill" (repetition and association) is the key to the formation of habits
by operant conditioning.
"The red boy is in the sandbox".

16
Practice and Frequency cont. Practice and Frequency cont.
97 98

One unique form of practice by a child is recorded by Ruth Weir (1962). Practice is usually thought of as referring to speaking only. But one
She found that her children produced rather long monologues in bed at can also think in terms of comprehension practice, (the frequency of
night before going to sleep.
linguistic input to the child.)
Here is one example: “What color ... What color blanket ... What color
Is the acquisition of particular words or structures directly
mop ... What color glass ... Mommy's home sick ... Mommy's home sick ...
attributable to their frequency in the child's linguistic environment?
Where’s Mommy home sick ... Where's Mikey sick ... Mikey sick.”
There is evidence that certain highly frequent forms are acquired
Such monologues are not uncommon among children, who tend to "play"
with language just as they do with all objects and events around them. first. Like what?

Children's practice seems to be a key to language acquisition. Like questions, irregular past-tense forms, certain common
household items and persons.

Practice and Frequency cont. Practice and Frequency cont.

99 100

Brown and Hanlon (1970), for example, found that the frequency The frequency issue may be summed up by noting that
of occurrence of a linguistic item in the speech of mothers was an nativists who claim that the frequency of stimuli is of little
overwhelmingly strong predictor of the order of emergence of importance in language acquisition might, in the face of
those items in their children's speech.
evidence now available, be more cautious in their claims.

It would appear that frequency of meaningful occurrence

may well be a more precise refinement of the notion of
frequency.

Input Input cont.

101 102

The role of input in the child's acquisition of language is Linguists once claimed that:
undeniably crucial. most adult speech is basically semigrammatical (full of
Whatever one's position is on the innateness of language, the performance variables),
speech that young children hear is primarily the speech heard in children are exposed to a chaotic sample of language that can not
the home, and much of that speech is parental speech or the properly instruct them on grammar.
speech of older siblings. only their innate capacities can account for their successful
acquisition of language.

17
Input cont. Input cont.
103 104

However, Labov (1970) studies showed that the presumed At the same time, we should remember :
ungrammaticality of everyday speech appears to be a myth. that children react very consistently to the deep structure and the
communicative function of language,
Bellugi and Brown (1964) and Drach (1969) found that the speech
and they do not react overtly to grammatical corrections as in the "nobody likes
addressed to children was carefully grammatical and lacked the
me" dialogue.
usual hesitations and false starts common in adult-to-adult speech.
Such input is largely ignored unless there is some truth or falsity
Landes's (1975) summary of a wide range of research on parental that the child can attend to.
input supported their conclusions.
Thus, if a child says "Dat Harry" and the parent says "No, that's
John, " the child might readily self-correct and say "Oh, dat John."
William Labov

Input cont. Input cont.

105 106

But what Landes (1975) and others showed is that in the The importance of the issue lies in the fact that it is clear from

long run children will, after consistent, repeated models in more recent research that adult and peer input to the child is far

meaningful contexts, eventually transfer correct forms to more important than nativists earlier might have believed.

their own speech and thus correct "dat" to "that's." Adult input seems to shape the child's acquisition, and the
interaction patterns between child and parent change according
to the increasing language skill of the child.

Nurture and environment in this case are very important.

Discourse Discourse cont.

107 108

A subfield of research that is occupying the attention of an Berko-Gleason (1982) described the perspective:
increasing number of child language researchers is the area “While it used to be generally held that mere exposure to language is

of conversational or discourse analysis. sufficient to set the child's language generating machinery in motion, it
is now clear that, in order for successful L1 acquisition to take place,
While parental input is a significant part of the child's
interaction, rather than exposure, is required; children do not learn
development of conversational rules, it is only one aspect, language from overhearing the conversations of others or from
as the child also interacts with peers and, of course, with listening to the radio, and must, instead, acquire it in the context of

other adults. being spoken to.”

18
Discourse cont. Discourse cont.
109 110

While conversation is a universal human activity performed At a relatively young age, children learn that utterances have both a
routinely in the course of daily living, the means by which children literal and an intended or functional meaning.
learn to take part in conversation appear to be very complex.

Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) proposed that conversations be Thus, in the case of a question “Can you go to the movies tonight?,”
examined in terms of initiations and responses. the response “I'm busy,” is understood correctly as a negative
The child learns not only how to initiate a conversation but how to response (“I can't go to the movies”).
respond to another's initiating utterance.

Questions are not simply questions but are recognized functionally

as requests for information, for action, or for help.

Discourse cont. The Direct Method

111 112

How do children manifest the development of discourse

rules?

What are the key features the child attends to?

How do they detect pragmatic and intended meaning?

Francois Gouin Maximilian Berlitz
How are gender roles acquired?
were the first two reformers of modern language teaching.
These and other questions about the acquisition of
Their perspective observations about language teaching helped
discourse ability are being researched.
set the stage for the development of language teaching
methodologies for the century following.

The Direct Method cont. The Direct Method cont.

113 114
Francois Gouin’s story
In his The Art of Learning and Studying Foreign Languages He did this in a matter of only ten days and then hurried to "the

(1880), François Gouin described a painful set of experiences that academy" (the university) to test his new knowledge. "But alas!" he

finally led to his insights about language teaching. Having decided wrote, I could not understand a single word, not a single word!"

in his midlife to learn German, he took up residency in Hamburg Gouin was undaunted. He returned to the isolation of his room,

for one year. But rather than attempting to converse with the this time to memorize the German roots and to rememorize the

natives he engaged in a rather bizarre sequence of attempts to grammar book and irregular verbs. Again he emerged with

"master" the language. Upon arrival in Hamburg he felt he should expectations of success. "But alas! " – the result was the same as

memorize a German grammar book and a table of the 248 irregular before.

German verbs!

19
The Direct Method cont. The Direct Method cont.
115 116

But there is a happy ending. Upon returning home Gouin

In the course of the year in Germany Gouin memorized books,
discovered that his three-year-old nephew had, during that year,
translated Goethe and Schiller, and even memorized 30,000
gone through that wonderful stage of first language acquisition in
words in a German dictionary – all in the isolation of his room,
which he went from saying virtually nothing at all to become a real
only to be crushed by his failure to understand German
chatterbox of French. How was it that this little child succeeded so
afterwards. Only once did he try to "make conversation" as a
easily in a task, mastering a L1, that Gouin, in a second language,
method, but this caused people to laugh at him and he was too
had found impossible? The child must hold the secret to learning a
embarrassed to continue that method. At the end of the year,
language! So Gouin spent a great deal of time observing his nephew
Gouin, having reduced the classical method to absurdity, was
and other children and came to the following conclusions:
forced to return home, a failure.

The Direct Method cont. The Direct Method cont.

117 118

Gouin’s conclusions: So Gouin set about devising a teaching method that would
Language learning is primarily a matter of transforming perceptions follow from these insights.
into conceptions.
And thus the Series Method was created,
Children use language to represent their conceptions.
a method that taught learners:
Language is a means of thinking, of representing the world to oneself.
directly (without translation)

These insights, remember, are being formed by a language conceptually (without grammatical rules and explanations)

teacher over a century ago! a "series" of connected sentences that are easy to perceive.

The Direct Method cont. The Direct Method cont.

119 120

The first lesson of a foreign language would thus teach the The 15 sentences have a large number of grammatical
following series of 15 sentences: properties, vocabulary items, word orders, and complexity.
I walk toward the door. I draw near to the door. I draw nearer Gouin was successful with such lessons because the
to the door. I get to the door. I stop at the door.
language was so easily understood, stored, recalled, and
I stretch out my arm. I take hold of the handle. I turn the
related to reality.
handle. I open the door. I pull the door.

The door moves. The door turns on its hinges. The door turns
and turns. I open the door wide. I let go of the handle.

20
 The Direct Method cont. The Direct Method cont.
121 122

The “naturalistic” approaches of Gouin and a few of his The basic theory of Berlitz's method was that L2 learning should

contemporaries did not take hold immediately. be more like L1 learning.

A generation later, largely through the efforts of Charles How?

Berlitz, applied linguists finally established the credibility lots of active oral interaction,

of such approaches in what became known as the Direct spontaneous use of the language,

Method. no translation between L1 and L2,

and little or no analysis of grammatical rules.

The Direct Method cont. The Direct Method cont.

123 124

Richards and Rodgers (1986) summarize the principles of the

5. New teaching points were introduced orally.
Direct Method:
6. Concrete vocabulary was taught through demonstration,
1. Classroom instruction was conducted exclusively in the target
objects, and pictures; abstract vocabulary was taught by
language.
association of ideas.
2. Only everyday vocabulary and sentences were taught.
7. Both speech and listening comprehension were taught.
3. Oral communication skills were built up in a carefully graded
progression organized around question-and-answer exchanges 8. Correct pronunciation and grammar were emphasized.
between teachers and students in small, intensive classes.

4. Grammar was taught inductively.

The Direct Method cont. The Direct Method cont.

125 126

To this day "Berlitz" is a well known word; Berlitz language schools are
The Direct Method enjoyed considerable popularity through the
thriving in every country of the world. But almost any "method" can
end of the 19th century and well into the 20th.
succeed when clients are willing to pay high prices for small classes,
It was most widely accepted in private language schools where
individual attention, and intensive study.
students were highly motivated and where native-speaking
The Direct Method did not take well in public education.
teachers could be employed.
Why??

The constraints of budget, classroom size, time, and teacher

background made such a method difficult to use.

Moreover, the Direct Method was criticized for its weak theoretical
foundations.

21
The Direct Method cont.
127 128

By the end of the first quarter of this century the use of the Direct
Method had declined both in Europe and in the United States.

Most language curricula returned to the Grammar Translation

Method or to a "reading approach" that emphasized reading skills Thank You
in foreign languages.

But interestingly enough, by the middle of the 20th century the

Direct Method was revived and redirected into what was probably
the most visible of all language teaching in the modern era, the
Audiolingual Method .

22