This document discusses first language acquisition in children. It covers several key areas: 1. Children acquire language effortlessly from a very young age through babbling and developing their vocal abilities. 2. Phonological development follows tendencies like acquiring vowels before consonants and stops before other consonants. 3. Grammar emerges from acquisition and children progress through stages from one-word utterances to telegraphic speech to more complex sentences.

1. FIRST LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION
O’GRADY AND CHO, 2011

2. ABOUT L1 ACQUISITION
• Most important milestone in a child‟s development
• Children acquire language effortlessly giving the
impression that the entire process is simple and
straightforward.
• Grammar is the end result of L1 Acquisition

3. PHONOLOGICAL
DEVELOPMENT
A few facts:
• Children are born with a perceptual system that is
specifically designed for speech.
• Children respond differently to human voices than other
sounds.
• Children show preference for the language of their parents
than any other language by the time they are two days old.
• Children can recognize their mother‟s voice within a matter of
weeks.

4. PHONOLOGICAL
DEVELOPMENT:
BABBLING
• Around 6 months of age: the opportunity for infants to
experiment and gain control over their vocal apparatus.
• Children who - for medical reasons- are unable to babble,
can subsequently acquire normal pronunciation, but their
speech development is significantly delayed.
• Children from different languages exhibit significant
similarities in their babbling.

5. GENERAL TENDANCIES
IN SOUND ACQUISITION
• Vowels are generally acquired before consonants (as a
group – 3 yrs. old)
• Stops (p, t, k, n, d, g, m, n) tend to be acquired before
other consonants.
• Labials are often acquired first followed by alveolars,
velars and alveopalatals.
• Interdentals (ð, θ) are acquired last.
• Children produce phonemic contrasts of their language
well before they can produce them (comprehension tasks).

6. VOCABULARY
DEVELOPMENT
• 18 mts. Vocabulary: 50 words (nouns are the single largest
class in a child‟s early vocabulary).
• Verbs and adjectives are next.
• 6 yr. olds: thirteen or fourteen thousand words.

7. STRATEGIES FOR
ACQUIRING MEANING
• The Whole Object Assumption
• A new word refers to the whole subject.
• The Type Assumption
• A new word refers to a type of thing, not just a particular
thing.
• The Basic Level Assumption
• A new word refers to objects that are alike in basic ways
(appearance, behaviour etc.)

8. MORPHOLOGICAL
DEVELOPMENT
• Initially: affixes are systematically absent and most words
consist of single root morphemes.
OVERGENERALIZATION & OVERREGULATION
• Plural –s
• Past –ed

9. DEVELOPMENTAL
SEQUENCE
BOUND MORPHEMES AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES
1. -ing
2. - s (plurals)
3. -s (possessive)
4. The, a (determiners)
5. -ed past tense
6. -s (third person singular)
7. Auxiliary „be‟

10. SYNTACTIC
DEVELOPMENT
• Takes place in an orderly manner.
1. one-word stage
2. two-word stage
3. telegraphic stage
4. later development

11. THE INTERPRETATION
OF SENTENCE
STRUCTURE
PASSIVES
• Children have an easier time interpreting active sentences
than they do passive ones (although they produce
passives from around age 3)
WHY?
• Canonical Sentence Strategy
• Children expect the first NP to be the agent and the
second NP to be the theme. (NP … V … NP agent-action-
theme)

12. THE INTERPRETATION
OF SENTENCE
STRUCTURE
PRONOMINAL AND REFLEXIVES
• Children do not have a lot of trouble distinguishing
between pronominal and reflexive pronouns.
I hurt myself with the stapler.
*You hurt myself with the sapler.
*I hurt me with the stapler.
You hurt me with the stapler.

13. WHAT MAKES LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION POSSIBLE?
• The role of adult speech
• Childcare talk (motherease)
• The role of feedback
• Recasts

14. THE ROLE OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
• Considerable evidence against language acquisition as
dependent on other types of cognitive development.
• Example:
• Individuals with defficient general cognitive development
with highly developed language skills.
• People with average IQ with difficulties with inflection for
the past tense and plural.

15. THE ROLE OF INBORN
KNOWLEDGE
• Nativism: certain grammatical knowledge is inborn
• Universal Grammar: children are born with prior
knowledge of the type of categories, operations and
principles that are found in the grammar of any human
language.
• Chomsky: grammars for human languages are too
complex and abstract to be learned solely from experience
children are exposed to.

16. UNIVERSAL
PRINCIPLES
PRINCIPLE A
• A reflexive pronoun must have an antecedent that C-
commands it in the same IP.
PRINCIPLE B
• A pronominal must not have an antecedent that C-
commands it in the same IP.

17. PARAMETERS
• Not every feature in the grammar of a language can be
inborn: vocabulary, morphology and some parts of syntax
are learned.
• UG stipulates that an X constituent can include a head and
its complements, but it does not specify the order of these
elements.

18. THE CRITICAL PERIOD
• Is there a critical period?
Some examples:
• Genie (see video)
• Victor
• Death children

19. HOW DO WE STUDY L1
ACQUISITION?
1. Naturalistic observation
1. Experimentation

20. NTURALISTIC
OBSERVATION
• Observe and record children‟s spontaneous speech –
Diary Study.
• Usually longitudinal.
• CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System)

21. PROS & CONS OF
NATURALISTIC
OBSERVATION
• Provides important information of how the language
acquisition process unfolds.
• Makes it hard to test hypothesis and draw firm
conclusions (particular structures and phenomena may
occur rarely in children‟s everyday speech).

22. EXPERIMENTAL
STUDIES
• Specifically designed tasks to elicit linguistic activity
relevant to the phenomenon that is being investigated.
• Typically cross-sectional: investigates and compares the
linguistic knowledge of different children at a particular
point in development.
• What do they test?
• Comprehension
• Production
• Imitation skills

23. TESTING
COMPREHENSION
• Children judge the truth of statements being made about
particular pictures or situations presented about the
experimenter.
• Supply children with a set of toys and ask them to act out
a sentence (passives: the truck was hit by the car)

24. TESTING
PRODUCTION
• the experimenter presents the child with a situation that
calls for a particular type of statement or question.

25. IMITATION TASKS
• Children‟s ability to repeat a particular structure provides
a good indication of how well they have mastered it.
For example:
A child that has not acquired auxiliary verbs will repeat a
sentence such as “Mickey is laughing” by saying: “Mickey
laughing”