LANGUAGE LEARNING IN

EARLY CHILDHOOD

Definitions of L1, L2, FL, TL

Patterns and sequences in L1

development

Theoretical approaches to first language

acauisition: Behaviorism, Innatism, and
Interactionism

Childhood bilingualism

DEFINITIONS OF L1 & L2

Definition of first language (L1):

The language(s) that an individual learns first.

Other terms for first language- Native language or mother
tongue

Definition of second language (L2):

Any language other than the first language learned (in a

broader sense).
A language learned after the first language in a context where
the language is used widely in the speech community (in a
narrower sense).
e.g. You move to Britain and English is your second language.

Fall 2004

DEFINITIONS OF FL & TL

Definition of foreign language (FL)

A second (or third, or fourth) language learned in a

context where the language is NOT widely used in the
speech community. This is often contrasted with second
language learning in a narrower sense.
e.g., English is a foreign language in Slovenia.

Definition of target language (TL)

Fall 2004

A language which is being learned, where it is the first

language or a second, third language.
e.g., English is a target language for you now.

PATTERNS IN L1 DEVELOPMENT
Characteristics of the language of children:

Their language development shows a high degree of similarity

among children all over the world. There are predicable
patterns in the L1 development and their L1 developmental
patterns are related to their cognitive development
(predictability).
Their language reflects the word order of the language that they
are hearing. The combination of the words has a meaning
relationship (learning through imitation).
Their language also shows they are able to apply the rules of
the language to make sentences which they have never heard
before (creativity).

Fall 2004

PATTERNS IN L1 DEVELOPMENT
Before First Words The

to coo: to make a sound like the low soft cry of a

pigeon

earliest vocalizations

Involuntary

crying (when they feel hungry or

uncomfortable)
Cooing and gurgling showing satisfaction or
happiness

Babbling
Babies

To babble: to talk or say

something in a quick, confused,
excited or silly way

use sounds to reflect the characteristics of

the different language they are learning.

To gurgle: (of babies) to make a happy sound with the back of

the throat, or (of water, especially small streams) to flow quickly
Fall
2004 a low, pleasant sound
while
making

PATTERNS IN L1 DEVELOPMENT
First Words

Around 12 months (one-word stage):

Babies begin to produce one or two recognizable words
(esp. content word); producing single-word sentences.

By the age of 2 (two-word stage):

1) at least 50 different words

2) telegraphic sentences (no function words and
grammatical morphemes)
e.g., Mommy juice, baby fall down
3) reflecting the order of the language
e.g., kiss baby, baby kiss
4) creatively combining words
e.g., more outside, all gone cookie

Fall 2004

L1 DEVELOPMENTAL SEQUENCES
Acquisition

of Grammatical morphemes

Acquisition

of Negation (to deny, reject,

disagree with, and refuse something)

Acquisition

Fall 2004

of Questions

ACQUISITION OF GRAMMATICAL

MORPHEMES

Roger Browns study (1973): approximate order of acquiring grammatical

morphemes

Present

progressive ing (running)

Plural s (books)
Irregular past forms (went)
Possessive -s (daddys hat)
Copula (am/is/are)
Articles (a/an/the)
Regular past ed (walked)
Third person singular simple present s (he runs)
Auxiliary be (He is coming)
Fall 2004

ACQUISITION OF GRAMMATICAL

e.g., wug

MORPHEMES

test

1) Here is a wug. Now there are two of them.

There are two ______.
2) John knows how to bod. Yesterday he did the
same thing. Yesterday, he_______.

Through the tests, children demonstrate that they

know the rules for the formation of plural and
simple past in English.

By generalizing these patterns to words they

have never heard before, they show that their
language is not just a list of memorized word pairs
such as book/books and nod/nodded.

Fall 2004

ACQUISITION OF NEGATION
Lois Blooms study (1991) four stages
Stage

1: no e.g., No go. No cookie.

Stage

2: subject + no e.g., Daddy no comb hair.

3: auxiliary or modal verbs (do/can) + not

(Yet no variations for different persons or tenses)

Stage

e.g., I cant do it , He dont want it.

4: correct form of auxiliary verbs
(did/doesnt/is/are) + not
e.g., He didnt go. She doesnt want it.
But sometimes double negatives are used
e.g., I dont have no more candies.
Fall 2004

Stage

ACQUISITION OF QUESTIONS
Lois Blooms study (1991):
Order of the occurrence of wh- question words
1.
2.
3.
4.

What - Whatsat? Whatsit?

Where and who

Why (emerging at the end of the 2nd year and becomes a

favorite at the age of 3 or 4)

How and When (yet children do not fully

understand the meaning of adults responses)
Child: When can we go outside?
Mother: In about 5 minutes.
Child: 1-2-3-4-5! Can we go now?

Fall 2004

ACQUISITION OF QUESTIONS
Lois Blooms study (1991):
Six stages of childrens question-making

Stage 1: using single words or single two- or three-word

sentences with rising intonation
(Mommy book? Wheres Daddy?)

Stage 2: using the word order of the declarative sentence

(You like this? Why you catch it?)
Stage 3: fronting - putting a verb at the beginning of a
sentence
(Is the teddy is tired? Do I can have a cookie?)

Fall 2004

ACQUISITION OF QUESTIONS
Lois Blooms study (1991) six stages (II)

Stage 4: subject-auxiliary inversion in yes/no questions

but not in wh-questions
(Do you like ice cream? Where I can draw?)

Stage 5: subject-auxiliary inversion in wh-questions, but

not in negative wh-questions
(Why can he go out? Why he cant go out?)

Stage 6: overgeneralizing the inverted form in embedded

questions
(I dont know why cant he go out.)

Fall 2004

PATTERNS IN L1 DEVELOPMENT
By the age of 4:
Most

children are able to ask questions, give

commands, report real events, and create stories
about imaginary ones with correct word order and
grammatical markers most of the time.
They have mastered the basic structures of the
language or languages spoken to them in these early
years.
They begin to acquire less frequent and more
complex linguistic structures such as passives and
relative clauses.
They begin to develop ability to use language in a
widening social environment.
Fall 2004

DEVELOPMENT OF METALINGUISTIC AWARENESS

Metalinguistic awareness refers to the ability to treat

language as an object, separate from the meaning it
conveys.

A dramatic development in metalinguistic awareness

occurs when children begin to learn to read. They see
words represented by letters on a page and start to
discover that words and sentences have multiple
meaning.
drink the chair (5 year-olds reaction: silly)
cake the eat (5 year-olds reaction: wrong)
Why is caterpillar longer than train? (a riddle)

Fall 2004

DEVELOPMENT OF VOCABULARY
One

of the most impressive language developments

in the early school years is the astonishing growth
of vocabulary.
Vocabulary grows at a rate between several hundred
and more than a thousand words a year, depending
mainly on how much and how widely children read.
Vocabulary growth required for school success is
likely to come from both reading for assignments
and reading for pleasure. Reading a variety of text
types is an essential part of vocabulary growth.

Fall 2004

 Reading

reinforces the understanding

that language has form as well as
meaning and a word is separate
from the thing it represents.

Another

important development in the

school years is the acquisition of
different language registers.

Fall 2004

THEORETICAL APPROACHES TO L1
ACQUISITION

Behaviorism:
Innatism:

Say what I say

Its all in your mind

Interactionist/Developmental

perspectives: Learning from inside

and out

Fall 2004

Fall 2004

B. F. Skinner Modelagem

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm5FGrQEyBY

Fall 2004

BEHAVIORISM: SAY WHAT I SAY

Skinner: language behavior is the production of correct

responses to stimuli through reinforcement.

Language

learning is the result of

1) imitation (word-for-word repetition),
2) practice (repetitive manipulation of form),
3) feedback on success (positive
reinforcement), and
4) habit formation.
when something is made stronger

Fall 2004

BEHAVIORISM

The

quality and quantity of the

language that the child hears, as

well as the consistency of the
reinforcement offered by others in
the environment, would shape the
childs language behavior.

Fall 2004

BEHAVIORISM: SAY WHAT I SAY

Childrens

imitations are not random:

Their imitation is selective and based on what

they are currently learning. They choose to
imitate something they have already begun to
understand, rather than simply imitating what
is available in the environment.

Fall 2004

Childrens practice of new language forms

The

way they practice new forms is very

similar to the way foreign language
students do substitution drills.

Their

practice of language forms is also

selective and reflects what they would
like to learn. They are often in charge of
the conversation with adults.

Fall 2004
BEHAVIORISM

BEHAVIORISM: SAY WHAT I SAY

children do use language creatively,

not just repeat what they have heard.

However,

Patterns

in language

Mother: Maybe we need to take you to the doctor.

Randall (36 months): Why? So he can doc my little
bump? (showing the understanding of the suffix er/or)
Son: I putted the plates on the table!
Mother: You mean, I put the plates on the table.
Son: No, I putted them on all by myself.

(showing the understanding of using ed to make the past tense

for a verb and the focus on the meaning, not form)

Fall 2004

Unfamiliar formulas
Father: Id like to propose a toast.
Child: Id like to propose a piece of
bread.
Mother:

I love you to pieces.

Child: I love you three pieces.

Love sb very much

Fall 2004

BEHAVIORISM:

Question

SAY WHAT I SAY

formation

Are dogs can wiggle their tails?

Are those are my boots?

Are this is hot?

Order

of events

took all the towels away because I cant dry

my hands.

You

Imitation

and practice alone cannot explain some

of the forms created by children. Children appear
to pick out patterns and then generalize or
overgeneralize them to new contexts. They
create new forms or new uses of words.

Fall 2004

INNATISM: ITS ALL IN YOUR MIND

Chomskys

viewpoints:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EksuA4IAQIk&feature=player_embed
ded#

Children

are biologically programmed for

language and language develops in the child in

just the same way that other biological
functions develop.

Fall 2004

The

environment makes only a basic

contribution, that is, the availability of
people who speak to the child. Therefore,
the childs biological endowment (LAD=
language acquisition device) will do the
rest.
ssomething that you have

Children

from birth, often a quality

are born with a specific innate

ability to discover for themselves the
underlying rules of a language system on
the basis of the samples of a natural
language they are exposed to.

Fall 2004

INNATISM: ITS ALL IN YOUR MIND

Chomsky argues that behaviorism cannot provide

sufficient explanations for childrens language acquisition
for the following reasons:

1.

Children come to know more about the structure of

their language than they could be expected to learn
on the basis of the samples of language they hear.

2.

The language children are exposed to includes false

starts, incomplete sentences and slips of the tongue,
and yet they learn to distinguish between
grammatical and ungrammatical sentences.

3.

Children are by no means systematically corrected or

instructed on language by parents.
Fall 2004

INNATISM: ITS ALL IN YOUR MIND

LAD (an imaginary black box existing somewhere in the

brain):
LAD

contains the principles which are universal to

all human languages

For

the LAD to work, children need access only to

samples of a natural language

Once

the LAD is activated, children are able to

discover the structure of the language to be learned
by matching the innate knowledge of basic
grammatical principles to the structures of the
particular language in the environment.

Fall 2004

INNATISM: ITS ALL IN YOUR MIND

Evidence used to support Chomskys innatist position:

Virtually all children successfully learn their

native language at a time in life when they
would not be expected to learn anything else so
complicated (i.e. biologically programmed).
Language is separate from other aspects of
cognitive developments (e.g., creativity and
social grace) and may be located in a different
module" of the brain.

Fall 2004

The language children are exposed to does not

contain examples of all the linguistic rules and
patterns.
Animals cannot learn to manipulate a symbol
system as complicated as the natural language
of a 3- or 4-year-old child.

Children acquire grammatical rules without

getting explicit instruction.

Fall 2004

INNATISM: ITS ALL IN YOUR MIND

The biological basis for the innatist position:

The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)

Lenneberg: There is a specific and limited
time period (i.e., critical period) for the LAD
to work successfully.
The best evidence for the CPH is that
virtually every child learns language on a
similar schedule in spite of different
environments.
Fall 2004

INNATISM: ITS ALL IN YOUR MIND

Three

case studies of abnormal language

development - evidence of the CPH

1.Victor a boy of about 12 years old (1799)

2. Genie a girl of 13 years old (1970)

3. Deaf signers (native signers, early learners,

vs. late learners)

Fall 2004

Victor of Aveyron (also The Wild Boy of Aveyron)

was a wild child who apparently lived his entire
childhood naked and alone in the woods before being
found wandering the woods in France in 1797. He was
captured, but soon escaped. However, on January 8,
1800, he emerged from the forests on his own. His age
was unknown but citizens of the village estimated that
he was about twelve years old. His lack of speech,

as well as his food preferences and the

numerous scars on his body, indicated that he
had been in the wild for the majority of his life.
Fall 2004

INTERACTIONIST/DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVES:
LEARNING FROM INSIDE AND OUT

This

position views that language develops

as a result of the interplay between the
innate learning ability of children and the
environment in which they develop.

Developmental

psychologists attribute
more importance to the environment than
the innatists, though they also recognize a
powerful learning mechanism in the
human brain.

Fall 2004

INTERACTIONIST/DEVELOPMENTAL PERSPECTIVES:
LEARNING FROM INSIDE AND OUT

They

see language acquisition as similar to and

influenced by the acquisition of other kinds of

skill and knowledge, rather than as something

that is largely independent of the childs
experience and cognitive development.

Fall 2004

THE INTERACTIONIST POSITION

Piaget: Language is dependent upon cognitive

development. That is, childrens cognitive development

determines their language development. (e.g., the use of words
as bigger or more depends on childrens understanding of the
concepts they represent.)

He argued that cognitive understanding develops in the

interaction between the child and the things which can be
observed, touched, and manipulated.
For him, language was one of a number of symbol systems
developed in childhood, rather than a separate module of
the mind. Language can be used to represent

knowledge that children have acquired through

physical interaction with the environment.
Fall 2004

THE INTERACTIONIST POSITION

Vygotsky: sociocultural theory of human mental processing.

He argued that language develops primarily from social
interaction.

Zone of proximal development (ZPD): a level that a child

is able to do when there is support from interaction with a
more advanced interlocutor. supportive interactive
environment enables children to advance to a higher level of
knowledge and performance than s/he would be able to do
independently.

He observed the importance of conversations which

children have with adults/other children and saw in these
conversations the origins of both language and thought.
Fall 2004

THE INTERACTIONIST POSITION

How

Piagets view differs from Vygotskys:

Piaget

hypothesized that language developed as

a symbol system to express knowledge acquired

through interaction with the physical world.
Vygotsky

hypothesized that thought was

essentially internalized speech, and speech

emerged in social interaction.

Fall 2004

THE INTERACTIONIST POSITION

Child-directed Speech (modified language interaction):

Phonological

modification: a slower rate of

delivery, higher pitch, more varied intonation
Syntactical modification: shorter, simpler
sentence patterns, frequent repetition, and
paraphrase.
Limited conversation topics: e.g., the here
and now and topics related to the childs
experiences.
More important than modification is the
conversational give-and-take.
Fall 2004

THE INTERACTIONIST POSITION

The interaction between a language-learning

child and an interlocutor who responds in some
way to the child is important.
Exposure to impersonal sources of language such
as television or radio alone are not sufficient for
children to learn the structure of a particular
language.
One-on-one interaction gives children access to
language that is adjusted to their level of
comprehension.
Once children have acquired some language,
however, television can be a source of language
and cultural information.

Fall 2004

CHILDHOOD BILINGUALISM
Simultaneous
Children

bilinguals

who learn more than one language from

birth.
Sequential
Children

bilinguals

who begin to learn a second language

after they have acquired the first language.

Fall 2004

CHILDHOOD BILINGUALISM
Is
1.

2.

3.

it difficult for children to cope with 2 language?

There is little support for the myth that learning

more than one language in early childhood slows down
the childs linguistic development or interferes with
cognitive and academic development.
Bilingualism can have positive effects on abilities that
are related to academic success, such as
metalinguistic awareness.
The learning of languages for bilingual children is more
related to the circumstances in which each language is
learned than to any limitation in the human capacity to
learn more than one language.
Fall 2004

CHILDHOOD BILINGUALISM

Language

attrition for bilinguals Subtractive bilingualism (Lambert, 1987)

When children are submerged in a second

language for long periods in early schooling, they may
begin to lose their native language (L1) before they
have developed an age-appropriate mastery of the L2.

It can have negative consequences for

childrens self-esteem.
In some cases, children continue to be caught
between two languages; not having mastered
the L2, but not having continued to develop the
L1.
Fall 2004

CHILDHOOD BILINGUALISM

Solution for subtractive bilingualism is

to strive for additive bilingualism

Parents

should continue speaking the L1 to

their children to maintain the home
language, while the L2 is being learned at
school.

Maintaining

the family language also creates

opportunities for the children to continue
both cognitive and affective development
in a language they understand easily while they
are still learning the L2.

Fall 2004

SUMMARY

Each of the three theoretical approaches explains a

different aspect of first language acquisition.

1.

Behaviorists (learning through imitation, practice,

reinforcement, habit-formation) the acquisition of
vocabulary and grammatical morphemes.

2.

Innatists (LAD/UG/CPH) the acquisition of

complex grammar (structure of the language).

3.

Interactionists (social interaction) the acquisition

of how form and meaning are related, how
communicative functions are carried out, and how
language is used appropriately.

Fall 2004