How Languages Are Learned 4th Edn

Patsy M. Lightbown & Nina Spada

Summary of Chapter 1
 How Languages Are Learned 4th Edn.

Chapter 1
Language Learning in Early Childhood
The study of child language acquisition
• Prenatal studies
– Language learning starts before the baby is born
– Hear as early as 16 weeks
– Pick up rhythm and cadences of L1 from mother’s voice
• Phonetic discrimination studies
– Can hear subtle phonetic differences very early
– Lose the ability to hear differences that are not phonemic
– Babies in bilingual environments retain the discrimination
ability longer
 Child language acquisition
• L1 acquisition is universal
– Similarities in L1 acquisition across the world’s languages→
Universal stages (e.g. crying, pointing, and responding to
frequently heard words)
– Most people ‘know’ and have a pretty good grasp of their
L1 (in contrast to their L2, where there is more variability).
• Children are able to use most syntactic patterns and
grammatical rules of their L1 before they reach school
age.
 Milestones of development
• Crying
• Cooing: between 6 and 8 weeks
• Babbling: around 6-8 months
– Consonant-vowel sounds: bababa, dadada
• Holophrastic stage: from 12 to 18 months
– One word utterances: gone, dada, teddy
• Telegraphic speech: two years old
– 50-word vocabulary. Simple sentences: Mommy play
• 3 ½ to 4: filling in the missing grammatical elements,
asking questions, adapting speech to babies or adults
 Vocabulary development: overextension

• A word is ‘extended’ to apply to other objects

that share a certain feature such as a common
property of shape, colour, or size.
– Example: ‘Dog’ is applied to other animals, or
‘moon’ to other round objects
Vocabulary development: underextension

• In this case, the word is used with a narrower

meaning than it has in the adult language.
– ‘Dog’ is applied only to the family dog,
or
– ‘shoes’ is applied only to a child’s own shoes
 Vocabulary development: mismatch
• There is no apparent basis for the wrong use
of a word by the child.
– Example: a telephone referred to as a tractor.
• There is usually no way of tracing back the
association of ideas that has caused such
misidentifications.
 Mean length of utterance: MLU
• Index of grammatical development
• Once child begins to combine words, ‘mean
length of utterance’ is a better indication of
development than age.
• Calculated by dividing the total number of
morphemes by the number of utterances
 Calculating MLU
• Hi Mommy
• Hi trucks
• Yeah
• Hi man
• Pick that up
• It dropped
• I running
• TOTAL NUMBER OF MORPHEMES =
• TOTAL NUMBER OF UTTERANCES =
• MLU =
 Calculating MLU
 Hi Mommy 2
 Hi truck s 3
 Yeah 1
 Hi man 2
 Pick that up 3
 It dropp ed 3
 I runn ing 3
 TOTAL NUMBER OF MORPHEMES = 17
 TOTAL NUMBER OF UTTERANCES = 7
 Divide the number of morphemes by the number of utterances
 MLU = 2.43
 Calculating MLU
 Up to about MLU of 4.0, this is a good index of
development. Beyond that length, the child has
more flexibility and the length of sentences is less
indicative of what the child is capable of than of
what she chooses to say.
 Grammatical Morphemes
– Present progressive (Mommy running)
– Plural –s (Two books)
– Irregular past forms (Baby went)
– Possessive ‘s (Daddy’s hat)
– Copula (Annie is happy)
– Articles the and a
– Regular past –ed (She walked)
– Third person singular simple present –s (She runs)
– Auxiliary be (He is coming)
 Negation: stages of acquisition
• Stage 1: ‘No’ alone or first word in sentence
– No. No bath.
• Stage 2: Negative word appears before the verb as utterances
become longer
– Mommy no eat cookie. Don’t close that!
• Stage 3: Other forms of negative are added (e.g. ‘can’t’, ‘don’t’)
without tense/person agreement
– He don’t want that. We can’t eat it.
• Stage 4: Negative element attached to correct form of auxiliary
verb (e.g. ‘do’ and ‘be’) but difficulty continues with features
related to negatives
– He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t have no more cookies.
 Asking Questions
• Adults ask questions about the immediate
environment (What? Who?) before they ask
about more abstract things (When? How?).
Children begin using the question words in an
order that reflects what they are asked and
their own cognitive development.
• An exception is ‘why’. Children start asking
‘why’ before they understand the answer, but
they know it elicits a response.
 Questions: Stages of acquisition
• Stage 1: Formulaic questions & words/sentences with rising
intonation
– Cookie? Daddy car? What’s that?
• Stage 2: Declarative word order + rising intonation
– You drink this? Doggie go bed?
• Stage 3: Fronting: put an element at the beginning of a
sentence without changing the internal word order.
– Is the doggie is hungry? Are you are tired?
– Why he don’t have one? What that one does?
 Questions: Stages of acquisition
• Stage 4: Subject-auxiliary inversion for yes/no
questions
– Is he going to eat now? Does he like spinach?
• Stage 5: Subject-auxiliary inversion in wh- questions
– Where did he go? Does the dog have a bone?
• Stage 6: Embedded questions; negative questions
– Ask him where is he going?
– Why doesn’t he play with the other ones?
 Metalinguistic Development
 The ability to treat language as an object, for
example, being able to define a word, or to say what
sounds make up a word
◦ Children under the age of five do not understand that
words are made up of separate sounds. Ask them, “What’s
the first sound in your name?” or “If you take the ‘s’ sound
off ‘scream’ what’s left?” and they are mystified.

◦ Children tend to believe that words are mystically

connected to the things they name – a cat for instance, has
to be called ‘cat’; it would be unthinkable to call it anything
else. Interestingly bilingual children tend to learn earlier
than monolinguals that the name is not inherent in the
object.
Metalinguistic Development (cont.)
• Even at four or five years of age, most children
confuse the word with the thing it names. So,
if a child were asked
– “Is car a real word?” , he will happily concur,
perhaps adding, “Yes, you can drive it” BUT if
asked ...
– “Is is a real word?”, the child is likely to say “No,
it’s not anything”.
Metalinguistic Development (cont.)
• Learning to read marks a major change in
children’s ability to treat language as an
object, separate from the meaning it conveys.
 Child-directed speech
In the past this has been referred to as motherese and
later, as caretaker speech. The characteristics of
child-directed speech that have been observed in
some communities include:
– slower rate of delivery
– higher pitch
– more varied intonation
– shorter, simpler sentence patterns
– frequent repetition and paraphrase
– topics related to the child’s experience
 Child-directed speech (cont.)
Child-directed speech is not observed in all societies.
Children are not considered ‘conversation partners’ in
some societies and their early attempts at language
are ignored. They learn by listening and observing.
 Language development of young children

• Pre-school children have substantial control over

their L1
• Children of three, four, and five already understand
what language is for and know a good deal about
how their first language works. They have:
– an extensive vocabulary
– ability to use all basic grammatical structures
– begun to learn when, where, and with whom it is
appropriate to use certain language forms
 Language disorders and delays
• Most children move through the stages of
language development without any difficulty
or delay
• Some experience difficulties: dyslexia,
deafness, articulatory problems
 Range for ‘normal’ is wide

• Some children may not speak before the age

of three; most children produce a ‘first word’
around 12 months.
• A child who understands but doesn’t speak is
probably okay.
• Some children learn to read easily as if by
‘magic’; others need instruction that includes
systematic attention to sound/letter
correspondences. Both groups are ‘normal’
 Particular challenges

• Some children experience great challenges in

reading and need special help beyond what is
offered in a regular classroom. Professional
assessment is important to identify the problem.
• Children from minority-language or immigrant
groups who do not have an age appropriate
knowledge of the language (or language variety)
of the school are often misdiagnosed as having
language delays or cognitive disorders. Again,
proper assessment is essential.
 Childhood bilingualism

• Development of bilingual or second language

learning children is of enormous importance.
• Simultaneous bilingualism: children who are
exposed to more than one language virtually from
birth.
• Sequential bilingualism: children who are exposed
to a second language after they have acquired a
first language.
 The behaviourist perspective
• Language learning is the result of imitation, practice,
feedback on success, and habit formation.
• Child is rewarded for correct imitation. Stimulus-
response theory: stimulus of praise, approval,
provokes response of more & better imitation.
• The data seem to contradict this simple hypothesis, as
shown in the examples on the next slide.
 Feedback and L1 Learning
• Child: Nobody don’t like me.
• Mother: No, say « Nobody
likes me »
• Child: Nobody don’t like me.
• (dialogue repeated eight
times)
• Mother: Now, listen carefully
« nobody likes me »
• Child: Oh! Nobody don’t likes
me.
• C: Want other one spoon, daddy.
• F: You mean, you want « the
other spoon ».
• C: Yes I want other one spoon,
please, daddy.
• F: Can you say « the other
spoon »?
• C: other … one… spoon.
• F: Say « other »
• C: other
• F: spoon
• C: spoon
• F: other … spoon
• C: other … spoon. Now give me
other one spoon.
 ‘The logical problem’
of language acquisition
Chomsky (1959), in an early critique of
behaviourism, argued that:
• Input is limited and can be misleading. It
contains false starts, incomplete sentences,
slips of the tongue.
• Parental corrections are either non-existent or
inconsistent.
 Innatism: Language acquisition is based on
internal, language-specific cognitive abilities

Input LAD = UG Language acquisition

LAD = Language acquisition device

UG = Universal Grammar
 The innatist perspective
• The basic structure of language is inborn (LAD or
UG). Language acquisition is the triggering of what
the child already ‘knows’. Input is needed only to
trigger language acquisition.
• The fundamental structural properties of all human
languages are ‘hard-wired’ into the infant brain and
emerge through maturation.
• What needs to be learned? Properties peculiar to
individual languages (e.g. vocabulary, inflectional
endings). Chomsky sees these as relatively minor
aspects of language.
 Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)
• There is a specific and limited time period when
languages can be learned by the ‘language
acquisition device’.
• Evidence from ‘wild child’ studies were once used to
support this hypothesis.
• It is now considered by most linguists that the
evidence from deaf signers is more credible as
support for the CPH than the cases of such isolated
children.
 Interactionist perspective
• Differs from Innatists’ view
– Emphasis on development not end state
– Hypothesizes that language learning is
based on the same cognitive processes as
the learning of any other knowledge or skill
– Language develops as a result of the
interaction between internal (general
cognitive) characteristics of the child and
the external environment.
 Interactionist positions
• Piaget – Language development has close ties
to the child’s cognitive development acquired
through interaction with the world. As child
comes to understand the world, the language
follows.
• Vygotsky – Language development is tied to
social interaction. Language is acquired
through dialogue.
Connectionism/Usage-based Perspectives

• Language acquisition is the result of exposure

to input. Input frequency is powerful predictor
of what will be learned.
• Language acquisition is based on the same
cognitive mechanisms that allow the child to
learn many other things. There is no dedicated
‘language acquisition device’.
Connectionism/Usage-based Perspectives

• Child’s language behaviour looks rule-

governed but it mainly reflects the ability to
learn language in chunks and formulas and to
combine those appropriately.
• In acquiring language, the child’s brain makes
connections between things that go
together—whether those ‘things’ are
language form and meaning or different
language forms that go together.