This document provides an overview of theories and research on first language acquisition. It discusses the stages of acquisition from cooing and babbling to the one-word, two-word, and telegraphic speech stages. The document also examines the development of morphology, syntax, and semantics in a child's first language. Several theories on language acquisition are presented, including behaviorism, innatism, cognitive/developmental approaches, and sociocultural perspectives. The document concludes by advising the reader to consider multiple theories when seeking to understand language development.

1. First Language
Acquisition

2. Objective
Explain the theories and research of
first language acquisition.

3. 1.
First Language Acquisition

4. Language
Acquisition
❏ The process by which humans acquire the
capacity to perceive and comprehend language,
as well as to produce and use words and
sentences to communicate1
❏ Refers to first language (L1) and second
language (L2)
❏ Not to be confused with language learning
❏ Acquisition is an unconscious process that does
not presuppose teaching
1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition

5. First Language Acquisition
Requirements:
▷ A language-using environment
▷ Interaction with other language-
users
▷ Ability to send and receive sound
signals in a language

6. First Language Acquisition
Schedule:
▷ All normal children develop language at
roughly the same time, along the same
schedule
▷ The biological schedule is related to the
maturation of the child’s brain to cope with
the linguistic input
▷ Young children acquire language by
identifying the regularities in what is heard
and applying those regularities to what
they say

7. 2.
Stages of First Language
Acquisition

8. Cooing and Babbling
Cooing:
▷ Few weeks: cooing and gurgling
▷ They seem to be discovering phonemes at this
point
▷ Producing sequences of vowel-like sounds:
high vowels [i] and [u]
▷ 4 months: sounds similar to velar consonants
[k] and [g]
▷ 5 months: distinguish between [a] and [i] and
syllables [ba] and [ga], so their perceptions
skills are good

9. Cooing and Babbling
Babbling:
▷ Different vowels and consonants ba-ba-ba and ga-ga-ga
▷ 9-10 months: intonation patterns and combination of
ba-ba-ba-da-da
▷ Nasal sounds also appear ma-ma-ma
▷ 10-11 months- use of vocalization to express emotions
▷ Late stage- complex syllable combination (ma-da-ga-ba)
▷ Even deaf children babble
▷ The most common cross-linguistic sounds and patterns
babbled the most, but later on they babble less
common sounds

10. One-Word Stage
▷ 12-18 months.
▷ Recognizable single-unit utterances.
▷ Single terms are uttered for everyday
objects “milk”, “cookie”, “cat”, “cup”, and
“spoon” [pun].
▷ Holophrastic (wasa = what's that)
▷ Produce utterances such as “Sarah bed” but
not yet capable of producing a more
complex phrase

11. Two-Word Stage
▷ Vocabulary moves beyond 50 words
▷ By 2 years old, children produce utterances ‘baby chair’,
‘mommy eat’
▷ Interpretation depends on context
▷ Adults behave as if communication is taking place.
▷ The child not only produces speech, but receives
feedback confirming that the utterance worked as a
contribution to the interaction.
▷ By this age, whether the child is producing 200 or 300
words, he or she will be capable of understanding 5
times as many
▷ This stage is also called telegraphic speech because its
brevity and clarity is like that of a telegram

12. Growth of Telegraphic Speech
2-2½ years:
▷ The child produces “multiple-word” speech.
▷ The child has already developed sentence-building
capacity & can get the word order correct (“cat drink
milk”, “daddy go bye-bye”)
▷ A number of grammatical inflections begin to appear.
▷ Simple prepositions (in, on) are also used
▷ Vocabulary is expanding rapidly.
3 years:
▷ Vocabulary has grown more
▷ Better pronunciation
▷ Can comprehend an incredible quantity of linguistic input

13. School Age
▷ Children start to internalize increasingly
complex structures, expand their
vocabulary and sharpen their
communication skills
▷ They also learn the social functions of
their language

14. The First Language Acquisition
Process
▷ A child does not acquire the language by simply
imitating adults- but also by trying out constructions
and testing them:
CHILD: my teacher holded the baby rabbit and we
patted them
MOTHER: did you say your teacher held the baby
rabbit?
CHILD: yes. she holded the baby rabbit and we
patted them
MOTHER: Did you say she held them tightly?
CHILD: no, she holded them loosely

15. The First Language Acquisition
Process: Developing Morphology
▷ By 2-and-a-half years old- use of some inflectional
morphemes to indicate the grammatical function of
nouns and verbs.
▷ The first inflection to appear is –ing after it comes the –
s for plural.
▷ Overgeneralization: the child applies –s to words like
‘foots’ ‘mans’ and later ‘feets’ ‘mens’

16. The First Language Acquisition
Process: Developing Morphology
▷ The use of possessive ‘s’ appears ‘mommy’s bag’
▷ Forms of verb to be appear ‘is’ and ‘are’
▷ The –ed for past tense appears and it is also
overgeneralized as in ‘goed’ or holded’
▷ Finally –s marker for 3rd person singular present tense
appears with full verbs first then with auxiliaries (does-
has)

17. The First Language Acquisition
Process: Developing Syntax
▷ A child was asked to say the owl who eats candy runs fast
and she said the owl eat candy and he run fast.
▷ The development of two syntactic structures- three
stages
▷ Forming questions
▷ Forming negatives

18. The First Language Acquisition
Process: Developing Syntax
FORMING QUESTIONS:
First Stage:
▷ Insert where and who to the beginning of an expression
with rising intonation
E.g. sit chair? Where horse go?
Second Stage:
▷ More complex expression
E.g. why you smiling? You want eat?
Third Stage:
▷ Inversion of subject and verb
E.g. will you help me? What did I do?

19. The First Language Acquisition
Process: Developing Syntax
FORMING NEGATIVES:
First Stage:
▷ Putting not and no at the beginning
E.g. not teddy bear, no sit here
Second Stage:
▷ Don’t and can’t appear but still use no and not before
VERBS
E.g. he no bite you, I don’t want it
Third Stage:
▷ didn’t and won’t appear
E.g. I didn’t caught it, she won’t go

20. The First Language Acquisition
Process: Developing Semantics
▷ During the two-word stage children use their limited
vocabulary to refer to a large number of unrelated
objects.
▷ Overextension: overextend the meaning of a word on
the basis of similarities of shape, sound, and size.
▷ e.g. use ball to refer to an apple, and egg, a grape and a
ball.
▷ This is followed by a gradual process of narrowing
down.

21. The First Language Acquisition
Process: Developing Semantics
▷ Antonymous relations are acquired late
▷ The distinction between more/less, before/after seem
to be later acquisition.

22. “These stages of first language
acquisition are just some of the
ways that linguists have tried to
explain language development.
There are also theoretical
explanations that merit our
attention

23. 3.
Theories of First Language
Acquisition

24. Theoretical
Approaches
Different researchers/linguists developed different
theories (explanations) about language acquisition
based on different perspectives:
❏ Behaviorism: say what I say
❏ Innatist: it’s all in your mind
❏ Cognitive/Developmental: learning from inside
out
❏ Sociocultural: environment facilitates learning
Lightbow, P. & Spada, N. (1993) How languages are learned. 4th Ed. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press

25. Behaviorist Perspective
▷ Individuals are born without built-in mental content
and their knowledge comes from experience and
perception (tabula rasa).
▷ Assumes a learner is essentially passive, responding
to environmental stimuli.
▷ Behavior is shaped through positive reinforcement or
negative reinforcement.
▷ Consider effective language behavior to be the
production of correct responses to stimuli. If a
particular response is reinforced, it then becomes
habitual, or conditioned.

26. Innatist Perspective
▷ We have an innate predisposition to learn language,
and learning is in our genetics.
▷ All human beings are genetically equipped with the
ability that enables them to acquire language. (a
system of universal linguistic rules or Universal
Grammar)

27. Cognitive/Developmental
Perspective
▷ Stresses the importance of making learning
relevant to the experience of learners and
their work context.
▷ The learning of new information is
facilitated by making it possible for the
learner to relate it to knowledge already
possessed and transform old knowledge
into new knowledge.

28. Sociocultural Perspective
▷ Emphasize on the social interactions that
are a necessary function of language
▷ Discourse has a special meaning in that
language is used for interactive
communication.

29. “Now that you know the different
theoretical perspectives. Read this
week’s assigned chapter and learn
about the specific theories of first
language acquisition.
And don’t forget...

30. “All of these theories have truth to
them. Don’t fall under the trap of
thinking that only one theory will
explain everything. You need to
take the best bits from each of them
in order to understand language
acquisition.
--David Crystal