Chapter 10 Language Acquisition.doc

Chapter 10 Language AcquisitionLanguage acquisition refers to the childs acquisition of his mother tongue, i.e. how the child comes to understand and speak the language of his community.Theories of child language acquisitionA behaviorist view of language acquisition 行为主义论 Habit-forming Imitation, practice preliminary Discrimination, generalization key to language development Burrhus Frederick Skinner (1904-1990) American psychologist. A leading behaviorist, Skinner influenced the fields of psychology and education with his theories of stimulus-response behavior. His books include Walden Two (1961) and Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971). Only some regular and routine aspects of languageAn innatist view of language acquisition 语言天赋论 Noam Chomsky: biologically programmed Language Acquisition Device LAD Principles be activated by the access to natural language samples Universal Grammar (UG) One language: particular use of the principles Logical problem: children can discover the underlying rules with confusing information and without guidance and correctionAn interactionist view of language acquisition 身心交感论 The complex interplay between the human characteristics of the child and environment in which the child develops. Special speech: motherese, child directed speech, caretaker talk. Comprehensible language samples: right level conversation can facilitate FLA In addition to the “motherese” or “caretaker talk”, parents provide children with direct linguistic training by correcting ill-formed utterances, i.e. to offer “feedback” and “recasts”. Such recasts provide the children with potentially useful information adding a missing verb, changing the form of a pronoun and so on.语言习得 语言学中指儿童如何掌握本族语的过程。这问题涉及语言是天生就有的，还是后天获得的。行为主义心理学认为语言习得过程就是刺激和强化的过程，主张后天说。认知心理学认为语语言能力是天生的，主张先天说。先天说的代表任务乔姆斯基认为有如下特点：（1）儿童生来就有特殊的语言能力；（2）儿童无需教语言，也无需改正他们的言语错误；（3）他们通过接触语言学语言；（4）他们的语言规则是无意识发展起来的。语言习得研究一般从出生后开始，按年龄或月龄分“习得阶段”，并就每一阶段探讨儿童获得语言技能之途径及方式。Language environment in the three views. The Behaviorist: model and feedback. The Innatist: stimulus to activate UG. The Interactionist: modified and adjusted samples.Cognitive development in child language developmentIt seems that childrens cognitive development closely relates to their language development (Different views of Piaget and Vygotsky.)The controversies about how first language is acquired also revolves around cognitive factors. The cognitive factors relate to language acquisition mainly in two ways. First, language development is dependent on both the concepts children form about the world and what they feel stimulated to communicate at the early and late staged of their language development. Secondly, the cognitive factors determine how the child makes sense of the linguistic system himself instead of what meanings the child perceives and expresses.Example in Page146Language environment and Critical Period HypothesisAll child language acquisition theories talk about the roles of two factors to different degrees: (1) the linguistic environment children are exposed to and (2) the age they start to learn the language.Three different veiws (1) Behaviorist approach (2) Innatist view (3) Interactionist viweEric Lenneberg, a biologist argued that LAD works successfully only when it is stimulated at the right time a specific and limited time period for language acquisition which is referred to as the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH). (临界期假说) Strong hypothesis: must acquire their first language by puberty then never will. Weak hypothesis: language learning will be more difficult and incomplete after puberty. Related experiments. Stages in child language developmentPhonological developmentThe sequence in which the sounds are acquired works like a system of pre-requisites, that is to say, the child must pass each stage before ha can proceed to the next one.There is no clear line between a childs babbling and speech. Most children produce their first words such as “papa”, “dada” and “nana” typically between the age of nine and twelve months.Now it is believed adults can increase the amount of babbling by paying attention to the sounds, they can change the sounds baby make.Vocabulary developmentThe most obvious fact about vocabulary development is that it goes hand-in-hand with the childs environment. First words are labels for things in the environment. When the child learns a word, he learns not only how to pronounce the word but also the meaning of each form and how each form is different in meaning from every other form. In other words, he must learn the features of meaning associated with each word.a Under-extension 外延缩小 b Over-extension 过分延伸 In addition to the above semantic features analysis, lexical contrast and prototype theories are also proposed to explain how children acquire their vocabulary or lexicon.a the lexical contrast theory 词汇对比理论b the prototype theory 原型理论Grammatical developmentAround the age of two, children begin to produce two-word utterances. They are typically the examples of telegraphic speech. This kind of speech contains content words which give us the information and lacks the function elements or function words which by themselves tell us nothing.About 6 months later, the 2-word utterances phase will develop into sentences which contain three main elements. Children acquire their first morphemes in a predictable order. This order is to a large extent determined by the linguistic complexity rather than the frequency of input. While children are increasing their mastery of grammatical morphemes, they are also increasing their ability to carry out “transformations” of the basic sentence structure so as to produce a matter of growing “competence” and partly matter of increasing “performance” capacity. Some subtle grammatical distinctions may not be mastered much before the age of ten. Children acquire their first morphemes in a predictable order. This order is to a large extent determined by the linguistic complexity rather than the frequency of input. (example in Page 151)It is until they have acquired auxiliary words that they can use the questions correctly. It is worth mentioning that during the process coordination is also required in each stage and depends on the semantic contexts.Pragmatic development While children are acquiring morpho-syntax and vocabulary, they are also acqui