TOPIC: 2. First Language Acquisition from Kirsten M.

Hummel
ASSIGNMENT 2
Student: María Isabel Araúz ID: 4-813-938
a. Metaplan. You will be responsible for presenting real-life examples of the following
terms: Use the model below.

TERM EXAMPLE
1. High amplitude sucking (HAS) It is a technique in which if we put a sound like
animals for example, the baby will increase its
speed when sucking the pacifier when it is
more interested.
2. Reduplicated babbling Is when babies experiment with sounds. Babies
make sounds like “baba”, “mamamama”, or
“gagaga” repeatedly.
3. Nonreduplicated (variegated) babbling Babies vary the consonant-vowel sequencies
for example they usually say “badaga”.
4. Overextension Children use a single word to refer to several
things based on a similar characteristic, for
example, a baby may say “dog” referring to a
cat or any other four-legged animal.
5. Underextension An example of this would be when babies use
the word “cat” just to refer to the family cat,
for them this is the name of that cat. They use
of the word in narrower meaning.
6. Morphemes Is the smallest meaning-bearing unit of
language. Babies begin to use morphemes e.g.
dada, mama, dog, cup, and these represent their
first meaningful words.
7. Mean length of utterance (MLU) Is a Measurement used to calculate the
development of children’s grammar, for
example at 12-18 months babies are typically
using single words. Examples including saying
“dada” for “daddy,” “baba” for “bottle”, or
“no” to express disapproval.
8. Input Input is the language in which children are
exposed, they quickly learn everything they
hear. For example, the wug test, which
indicates that children can pluralize non-
existent words correctly just by mentioning
them to themselves.
9. Nativism Language is viewed as basically the result of
innate processes. For example, newborns seem
to be attracted to human speech sounds
compared to other noises. This suggests an
innate bias toward social interaction and
language acquisition.
10. Empiricism Emphasizes the role of the environment in
Experience. Babies can learn by
 experimenting, for example when they say cat
referring to the dog and the adult responds no,
it's dog. In this way they learn and associate the
words.
11. Behaviorism The child is a passive recipient, subjected to
environmental influences. For example, a
parent smiles and says "good job!" every time
their child says a new word or uses a word
correctly. This positive reinforcement
strengthens the behavior and makes the child
more likely to repeat it.
12. Universal Grammar (UG) Is the innate principles and properties that
characterize the grammars of all human
languages. For example, Two-year-olds
understand the concept of negation and use
words such as "no" or "not" to express it.
13. Interactionism Examples of how children benefit with
interactions: Adult can teach your child new
words by showing him objects: e.g., Holding
up a cup of juice says: What is this? and the
child responds “juice”. The parent says yes,
that's right, it's apple juice. Is it delicious? And
in this way the child expands his vocabulary.
14. Child-directed speech (CDS) Adults use different vocabulary and tones e.g.
Instead of saying, "Would you like some
milk?", an adult might ask, "Do you want
milk?" with shorter words and clearer sentence
order.
15. CHILDES An 18-month-old points at a car and asks, "Car
go?" This demonstrates an early attempt at
forming questions. CHILDES could contain
transcripts with such examples, allowing
researchers to analyze the emergence of
question structures in children's speech.
16. Emergentism For example: A young child might say "juice
cup" or "bath toy" to create a new meaning that
isn't explicitly taught.
17. Connectionism For example: A child observes adults adding "-
ed" to form past tense verbs (e.g., "walked,"
"played"). They start applying this pattern to
other verbs they know, creating forms like
"goed" or "runned".
18. Object permanence For example, if you hide his favorite toy
behind you, he will look for it, understanding
that it is still there even if it is out of sight.
They might say something like, "Where's
Teddy?" or "Teddy behind you?".
19. Metalinguistic awareness Is the ability to reflect on language as an
object. For example, children can correct
themselves by saying, no wait, I meant big, not
 small showing that they are aware of language.
20. Transfer One typical example of this is when children
apply the rule of ed to all the verbs in past,
saying “goed” instead of “went”, or “runned”
instead of “ran”.
21. Interference Children who speak Spanish and English may
have trouble with the prepositions “in” and
“on” since in Spanish we only use in for
example: they might say, "Put the food in the
plate." Or: "Put the soup on the bowl."
22. Overgeneralization For example: children use "foots" instead of
"feet" or "mouses" for "mice." The child has
grasped the concept of adding "-s" for plural
nouns and applies it consistently, even to words
with irregular plurals.
23. Formulaic sequences/expressions For example, child can understand that we use
“hello” when someone arrives, and “goodbye”
when they leave.

b. VIDEO ANALYSIS
1. Amazing point #1: We are the only ones on the planet that can talk.
Reason (s) why it is amazing: This point is amazing for me because, as the video says, it is what
distinguishes us from all other species.
2. Amazing point #2: We possess such a sophisticated ability; we can think and transmit those
thoughts in different languages.
Reason (s) why it is amazing: For me it is amazing because communication is something
fundamental in the life in society and it is incredible the capacity that the human being must
communicate, there are people that manage a great number of languages, and this is amazing.
3. Amazing point #3: Despite decades of research, how we learn to speak remains a mystery.
Reason (s) why it is amazing: I find it interesting how we learn to speak, how after so many years of
research still no answer is found, and how some babies learn faster than others and have greater
facility for language, it is amazing.
4. Amazing point #4: Where language comes from?
Reason (s) why it is amazing: How is it that there are so many languages in the world, how did they
come about, the bible tells us about the tower of Babel and how God confused people's speech, but
is this really the origin of all languages?
5. Amazing point #5: How children learn so quickly, starting with babbling, then single words,
then single words, then single words, and quickly begin to use complex grammatical structures.
Reason why it is amazing: It is amazing how children's brains can acquire so much learning and
become capable of using complex language in a short time.
6. Amazing point #6: When a baby says its first word, adult speech evolves into the use of
sentences that reflect the child's development.
Reason why it is amazing: It is amazing how parents, once the baby uses its first word, begin to
unconsciously simplify their language by speaking to the baby so that the baby can understand
them.
7. Amazing Point #7: As children grow older, they learn as many as 3,000 new words per year.
Adults speak more than 15,000 words every day.
Reason why it is amazing: It is incredible the learning capacity that we human beings have, our
brain is impressive, I didn't know that we use so many words daily.
8. Amazing Point #8: Babies listen from the uterus where they are already gathering information
about language.
Reason why it is amazing: It is incredible because even before they are born, human beings are
already listening and trying to understand language through the different tones of voice they hear.
9. Amazing Point #9: The ability to speak is not only a result of our intelligence in general we have
an unconscious understanding about things like sentence structure, order and meaning and we are
able to use it from the age of two years old.
Reason why it is amazing: It's amazing how a child so young knows the correct ways to use words
in a sentence, and he doesn't know grammar but unconsciously uses them.
10. Amazing Point #10: Linguists believe that the birth of language coincided with the
proliferation of man-made objects some 50,000 years ago.
Reason why it is amazing: For me this information is amazing because it means that we have been
developing language for many thousands of years and I am impressed that despite the antiquity
people were looking for a way to communicate.
c. PROJECT
1. Using the guidelines found below based on Brown (1973), calculate the MLU for one of
the CHILDES transcripts found online. Select a transcript involving a child between the
ages of 1 and 3 years of age (ages are indicated at the beginning of each transcript). (Note
that a sample shorter than 100 utterances may be used, although Brown recommends a
100-utterance length.)

How to count morphemes:

1. Use 100 intelligible utterances of a child language transcript.
2. Count the morphemes as indicated in the guidelines below.
3. Add the total number of morphemes and divide by the total number of utterances (100)
to get the MLU
2. Count as separate morphemes grammatical markers such as the “–s” plural marker (e.g.,
“cat-s”), the past tense marker “–ed” (e.g., “talked”), the “–ing” present participle marker (e.g.,
“throw-ing”), the 3 rd person singular marker (e.g., “she drinks milk”).
3. Count as one morpheme plurals that do not occur in the singular (e.g., “clothes”).
4. Contractions are counted as two morphemes (e.g., “can’t, “we’ll”).
5. Compound words and proper names count as single morphemes (e.g., BigBird, policeman).
6. Irregular past forms and irregular plurals count as one morpheme (e.g., “went,” “geese”).
7. Diminutives (e.g., “horsie”) and concatenatives (e.g., “gonna,” “hafta”) count as one
morpheme.
8. Do not count hesitations, filler words (“um,” “hum”), false starts, or repetitions, unless the
repetition is for emphasis (e.g., “No! No! No!” would count as three morphemes).

MLU

SAMPLE 3
1. Hit = 1
2. I hit it = 3
3. Mine = 1
4. That mine = 2
5. I ate breakfast =3
6. I play = 2
7. I want go to play ball = 6
8. I play with daddy = 4
9. I like jump = 3
10. I want toy s = 4
11. Go to sleep = 3
12. I love Mummy = 3
13. I love daddy = 3
14. I Like Cookie s = 4
15. I like Chocolate =3
16. I like Cake = 3
17. I like pie = 3
18. Want cookie = 2
19. I´m happy = 3
20. My Birthday = 2
21. I play = 2
22. Give me = 2
23. Hit = 1
24. I hit It = 3
25. No hit it = 3
26. Go = 1
27. Go fast = 2
28. Playing Mike = 3
29. Mike my brother = 3
30. He is my brother = 4
31. I got it = 3
32. I want chocolate = 3
33. I want orange = 3
34. Orange Juice = 2
35. My car = 2
36. Two cars = 3
37. Cars go fast = 4
38. My car fast = 3
39. No car = 2
40. No my car = 3
41. Go out = 2
42. Car go = 2
43. No sleep = 2
44. I like TV = 3
45. No TV = 2
46. Yes movie = 2
47. I like movie = 3
48. Thank you = 2
49. Daddy sit = 2
50. I love you = 3

Number of morphemes: 133

Number of utterances: 50
MLU ( 133 divided by 50 )
MLU= 2.66

According to the MLU analysis I obtained 133 morphemes divided by 50 utterances which
means that the MLU is 2.66 and according to Brown it means that he is a 22 month old child.