Alumnos: Maciel Lucila, Escobedo Xiomara, Srdos Andrea, Loto Jessica, Noelia Fogar,

Obregón Juan y Hrkach Gabriel.

First language acquisition
First language acquisition is remarkable for the speed with which it takes place. Long before a child
starts school he or she becomes an extremely sophisticated language user, and it occurs without
overt instruction. This provides strong support for the idea that there is an innate predisposition in
the human infant to acquire language. However, this inborn language capacity is not enough.

Acquisition

The process of language acquisition has some basic requirements. During the first two or three years
of development a child requires interaction with other language users, this is called cultural
transmission, because the language a child learns is not genetically inherited, but is acquired in a
particular language using environment. The child must also be physically capable of sending and
receiving sound signals in a language. All infants make cooing and babbling noises during their first
year, but congenitally 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. By itself, however hearing language sounds is
not enough.

There is a case reported in the study of the language’s book that reported a case where deaf parents
who gave their normal hearing son ample exposure to television and radio programs, the boy did not
acquire the ability to speak and understand English. What he did learn very effectively, by the age of
three was the use of American Sign Language that is the language he used to interact with his
parents, so another crucial requirement appears to be the opportunity to interact with others via
language.

Input

Under normal circumstances, human infants are helped in their normal language acquisition by older
children and adults in the home environment who provide language samples or input for the child. A
sample is a small amount of something that shows you what the rest is or should be like. Adults such
as mom, dad and grandparents tend not to address the little creature before them as if they are
involved in normal adult-to-adult conversation. The characteristically simplified speech style adopted
by someone who spends a lot of time interacting with a young child is called caregiver speech. The
salient features of this type of speech, also called mothered or child directed speech are the
frequent use of questions, exaggerated intonation, extra loudness and a slower tempo with longer
pauses. Caregiver speech is also characterized by simple sentence structures and a lot of repetition.

The acquisition Schedule

the language acquisition schedule has the same basis as the biologically determined development of
motor skills. This biological schedule is tied very much to the maturation of the infant’s brain. We
could think of the child as having the biological capacity to cope with distinguishing certain aspects
of linguistic ‘input’ at different stages during the early years of life.

What this acquisitioncapacity then requires is a sufficiently constant type of ‘input’ from which the
basis of the regularities in a particular language can be worked out. In this view, young children are
seen as actively acquiring the language by identifying the regularities in what is heard and then
applying those regularities in what they say.

Cooing and babbling

The earliest use of speech-like sounds has been described as cooing. During the first few months of
life, the child gradually becomes capable of producing sequences of vowel-like sounds, particularly
high vowels similar to [i] and [u].

By four months of age, the developing ability to bring the back of the tongue into regular contact
with the back of the palate allows the infant to create sounds similar to the velar consonants [k] and
[g], hence the common description as ‘cooing’ or ‘gooing’ for this type of production. Speech
perception studies have shown that by the time they are five months old, babies can already hear
the difference between the vowels [i] and [a] and discriminate between syllables like [ba] and [ga].

Between six and eight months, the child is sitting up and producing a number of different vowels and
consonants, as well as combinations such as ba-ba-ba and ga-ga-ga. This type of sound production is
described as babbling.

In the later babbling stage, around nine to ten months, there are recognizable intonation patterns
to the consonant and vowel combinations being produced, as well as variation in the combinations
such as ba-ba-da-da. Nasal sounds also become more common and certain syllable sequences such
as ma-ma-ma and da-dada are inevitably interpreted by parents as versions of ‘mama’ and ‘dada’
and repeated back to the child.

During the tenth and eleventh months, they become capable of using their vocalizations to express
emotions and emphasis. This late babbling stage is characterized by more complex syllable
combinations (ma-da-ga-ba), a lot of sound play and attempted imitations.

The one-word stage

This period typically occurs at the age of twelve and eighteen months.

This stage is known as holophrastic which means a word that takes the place of a phrase or a
sentence.

Children will tend to use this stage to obtain things they want or need, or just they see.

Example: milk, cookie, cat, cup and spoon (usually pronounced pun).

A child may use the world dada to mean “I see daddy” or water to mean “give me water”.

The words are usually simple and refer to everyday objects or help children identify their basic
needs.

The two-word stage

This stage can begin around eighteen to twenty months, as the child´s vocabulary moves beyond
fifty words.

Children start using two words instead of one, combining words they learned during the
holophrastic stage.
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. 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.

Whatever it is that the child actually intends to communicate through such expressions, the adult
behaves as if communication is taking place. That is, the child not only produces speech, but also
receives feedback confirming that the utterance worked as a contribution to the interaction.
Moreover, by the age of two, whether the child is producing 200 or 300 distinct “words”, he or she
will be capable of understanding five times as many.

Telegraphic speech

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.

Telegraphic speech is characterized by strings of words in phrases or sentences such as this shoe all
wet, cat drink milk and daddy go bye-bye. This child has clearly developed some sentence-building
capacity by this stage and can get the word order correct.

A telegram, which uses simple phrases to get a message across quickly. When your toddler uses
telegraphic speech, he’s using only the most necessary words to tell you what he needs, sees, or is
thinking, like “I hungry.” His sentences will usually contain a noun (“I”) and a verb (“hungry”), or an
adjective and a noun, like “more play.” Although the phrases are short, there’s a lot of meaning
packed into them.

By the age of two- and-a-half, the child´s vocabulary is expanding rapidly and the child is initiating
more talk while increased physical activity includes running and jumping. Y three, the vocabulary has
grown to hundreds of words and pronunciation has become closer to the form of adult language.

At this point, it is worth considering what kind of influence the adults have in the development of
the child´s speech.

The acquisition process

As the linguistic repertoire of the child increases, it is often assumed that the child is, in some sense,
being “taught” the language. This idea is not really supported by what the child actually does. For
the vast majority of children, no one provides any instruction on how to speak the language. Nor
should we picture a little empty head gradually being filled with words and phrases. A more accurate
view would have the children actively constructing, from what is said to them, possible ways of using
the language. The child’s linguistic production appears to be mostly a matter of trying out
constructions and testing whether they work or not.

It is simply not possible that the child is acquiring the language principally through a process of
imitating adult speech. Certainly, children can be heard to repeat versions of what adults say on
occasion and they are clearly in the process of adopting a lot of vocabulary from the speech they
hear. However, adults simply do not produce many of the expressions that turn up in children’s
speech.

NOAH: (picking up a toy dog) This is Woodstock.

(He bobs the toy in Adam’s face)

ADAM: Hey Woodstock, don’t do that. (Noah persists)

ADAM: I’m going home so you won’t Woodstock me.

It is also unlikely that adult “corrections” are a very effective determiner of how the child speaks. A
lot of very amusing conversational snippets, involving an adult’s attempt to correct a child’s speech,
seem to demonstrate the hopelessness of the task. Even when the correction is attempted in a more
subtle manner, 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 (quoted in Cazden, 1972) 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.

One factor that seems to be important in the child’s acquisition process is the actual use of sound
and word combinations, either in interaction with others or in wordplay, alone.

Developing morphology:

By the time a child is two-and-a-half years old, he or she is incorporating some of the inflectional
morphemes that indicate the grammatical function of nouns and verbs used. The first to appear is
usually the -Ing Form in expressions such as cat sitting and mommy reading book. The next
morphological development is typically the marking of regular plurals with the -5 form, as in boys
and cats. The child overgeneralizes the apparent rule of adding- -5 form plurals and will talk about
foots and mans.

At the same time as this overgeneralization is taking place, some children also begin using irregular
plurals such as men quite appropriately for a while, but then try out the general on the forms,
producing expressions like some mens and two feets or even two feetses. Not long after, the use of
the possessive inflection- is happens in expressions such as Mummy's book girl's dog and At about
the same time, different forms of the verb to be,such as "Are and was", and also went and came
begin to be used. These are irregular past-tense forms...
Once the regular past tense forms. "Walked-played" begin appearing in the child child's speech, the
regular forms may disappear for a while replaced by overgeneralized versions such as "goed" and
"comed" (this continues for a time) Finally the regular- S marker on third person singular present -
tense verbs appears. It happens first with full verbs "comes - looks" and the with auxiliaries doe's-
has Throughout this sequence there is a great deal of variability.

- Individual children may produce good forms one day and odd forms the next!

Developing syntax

Evidence of "imitation" has been found as the basis of the child’s speech production.

There have been numerous studies of the development of syntax in children’s speech. We will look
at the development of two structures. In the formation of questions and the use of negatives, there
appear to be three identifiable stages.

Forming questions

In forming questions, the child’s first stage has two procedures. Simply add a Wh-form (Where,
Who) to the beginning of the expression or utter the expression with a rise in intonation towards the
end, as in these examples:

Where kitty? Doggie?

Where horse go? Sit chair?

In the second stage, more complex expressions can be formed, but the rising intonation strategy
continues to be used. It is noticeable that more Wh-forms come into use, as in these examples:

What book name? You want eat?

Why you smiling? See my doggie?

in the third stage, the required movement of the auxiliary in English questions (I can have … ⇒ Can I
have …?) becomes evident in the child’s speech, but doesn’t automatically spread to all Wh-question
types.

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?

Forming negatives

Stage 1 seems to involve a simple strategy of putting No or Not at the beginning, as in these
examples:

no mitten not a teddy bear no fall no sit there

In the second stage, the additional negative forms don’t and can’t appear, and with no and not, are
increasingly used in front of the verb rather than at the beginning of the sentence, as in these
examples:

He no bite you I don’t want it

That not touch You can’t dance

The third stage sees the incorporation of other auxiliary forms such as didn’t and won’t while the
typical Stage 1 forms disappear.

I didn’t caught it He not taking it

She won’t let go This not ice cream

The study of the developing use of negative forms has produced some delightful examples of
children operating their own rules for negative sentences. One famous example (from McNeill, 1966)
also shows the futility of overt adult “correction” of children’s speech.

CHILD: Nobody don’t like me.

MOTHER: No, say “nobody likes me.”

CHILD: Nobody don’t like me. (Eight repetitions of this dialog)

MOTHER: No, now listen carefully; say “nobody likes me.”

CHILD: Oh! Nobody don’t likes me.

Developing semantics

It seems that during the holophrastic stage many children use their limited vocabulary to refer to a
large number of unrelated objects. One child first used bow-wow to refer to a dog and then to a fur
piece with glass eyes, a set of cufflinks and even a bath thermometer. The word bow-wow seemed
to have a meaning like “object with shiny bits.” Other children often extend bow-wow to refer to
cats, cows and horses. This process is called overextension and the most common pattern is for the
child to overextend the meaning of a word on the basis of similarities of shape, sound and size, and,
to a lesser extent, movement and texture. Thus the word ball is extended to all kinds of round
objects, including a lampshade, a doorknob and the moon. Or, a tick tock is initially used for a watch,
but can also be used for a bathroom scale with a round dial.

Although overextension has been well-documented in children’s speech production, it isn’t

necessarily used in speech comprehension. One two-year-old used apple, in speaking, to refer to a
number of other round objects like a tomato and a ball, but had no difficulty picking out the apple,
when asked, from a set of round objects including a ball and a tomato.

In terms of hyponymy, the child will almost always use the “middle”-level term in a hyponymous set
such as animal – dog – poodle. It would seem more logical to learn the most general term (animal),
but all evidence indicates that children first use dog with an overextended meaning close to the
meaning of “animal.”

It also seems that antonymous relations are acquired fairly late (after the age of five). In one study, a
large number of kindergarten children pointed to the same heavily laden apple tree when asked
Which tree has more apples? and also when asked Which tree has less apples? They just seem to
think the correct response will be the larger one, disregarding the difference between more and less.
The distinctions between a number of other pairs such as before/after and buy/sell also seem to be
later acquisitions.
Is normally assumed that, by the age of five, the child has completed the greater part of the basic
language acquisition process.