First language acquisition

Chapter II H. D. Brown

In this chapter we are going to talk about a first language acquisition which is a complex process and system of communication, the one that researchers are trying to discover how it works and acquire it.

Theories of first language acquisition

§  Behavioristic Approaches

Language is consider a human behavior where the Behavioristic approach is focus on the immediately perceptible aspects of linguistic behavior – the observable responses – and the relationships between those responses, language behavior as the production of correct responses to stimuli. One learns to comprehend an utterance by responding appropriately to it and by being reinforced for that response. If the response is reinforced we can say that is conditioned. (Language is a set of habits acquired by a process of conditioning)

-          Verbal behavior: (B. F. Skinner, 1957) refers to conditioning in which the human being emits a response or operant, a sentence without stimuli, that operant is maintained (learned) by reinforcement.

-          Mediation theory: meaning was accounted for by the claim that the linguistic stimulus (a word or a sentence) elicits a mediating response that is self stimulating.

§  The nativist approach

Language acquisition is innately (genetically) determined, and human beings are therefore predisposed to a systematic perception of language.

-          Language acquisition device: an innate, metaphorical “mechanism” in young children’s brain that predisposes them to acquire language.(human capacity to acquire language)

-          Universal grammar: what children bring through the environment to their language when they are speaking, regarding grammar.

-          Pivot grammar: the early grammars of child language.

-          Parallel distributed processing or connectionism: the receiving, storing, or recalling of information at several levels of attention simultaneously.

§  Functional approach

Social, linguistic, biological factors affect language acquisition, and these factors are mutually dependent upon, interact with, and modify one another.

-          Cognition language developments: Language developments of children depend on the cognitive underpinnings of language what children know will determine what they learn about the code for speaking and understanding of language.

-          Social interaction and language development: Language depends on cognitive thought and memory structure, the interaction between the child´s language acquisition and the learning of how social systems operate in human behavior.

Issues in first language acquisition

Competence and Performance

Competence is the non-observable knowledge or the ability to do something, and when we show or perform what we know, through the spoken or written language is what we called performance, the overtly observable and concrete manifestation of competence, competence is the rules of grammar, vocabulary, all pieces and how they fit.

Comprehension and Production

All aspects of linguistic comprehension precede, or facilitate, linguistic production. There is a general superiority of comprehension over production: children seem to understand “more” than they actually produce.

Nature or Nurture?

Nativists contend that a child is born with an innate knowledge of or predisposition toward language, and that this innate property is universal in all human beings.

Derek Bickerton proposed that human beings are “bioprogrammed” to proceed from stage to stage.

LAD    -------->     Nature = innate

Conditioning    ------>    behaviour   -------->  nurture = environmental provided

Universals

Language is universally acquired in the same manner, and moreover, that the deep structure of language at its deepest level may be common to all languages.

Sistematicity and Variability

Children exhibit a remarkable ability to infer the phonological, structural, lexical, and semantic system of language.

Researchers do not agree on how to define various “stages” of language acquisition. Certain “typical” patterns appear in child language.

Language and thought

Language is dependent upon and springs from cognitive development, which is claim that is at the very center of human organism. (Piaget, 1972)

The influence of language on cognitive development. (Bruner, Olver, & Greenfield 1996)

Thought and language were seen as two distinct cognitive operations that grow together. (Schinke-Llano, 1993)

Language is a way of life which interacts simultaneously with thought and feelings, we have to discover how language can affects thought and how thought affects language.

Imitation

It is one of the important strategies a child uses in the acquisition of language. The first type is surface – structure imitation, where a person repeats or mimics the surface strings, attending to a phonological code rather than a semantic code. The second type is a deep structure imitation, children forget surface imitation and concentrate in the feelings that they want to express forgetting grammar.

 

Practice

Children practice language constantly, especially in the early stage of single – word and two – word utterances. There is evidence that certain very frequent forms are acquired first: what questions, irregular past tense, forms, certain common household items and persons.

Input

Adult input seems to shape the child’s acquisition, and the interaction patterns between child and parent change according to the increasing language skills of the child.

Discourse analysis or conversational

Interaction, rather than exposure, is required; children do not learn language from overhearing the conversations of others, and must, instead, acquire it in the context of being spoken to.

First language acquisition insights applied to language teaching.

“Direct method” of Berlitz consists in the second language learning should be more like first language learning: lots of active oral interaction, spontaneous use of the language, no translation between first and second language, and little or no analysis of grammatical rules.