Language acquisition is the process by which humans learn to perceive, comprehend, produce and use language. It begins at birth and progresses through distinct stages. In the first stage, infants learn to pay attention to speech sounds before producing sounds themselves through babbling. Next, children begin using single words and then two-word combinations to communicate. Their vocabulary and grammar develops through a telegraphic stage using short phrases and early morphology. Question formation and negatives also progress through stages as syntax develops. Semantics involves initially over-extending words before narrowing meanings, first learning lexical and later antonymous relations.

1. Laily
Laily

2. What is language acquisition?
Language acquisition is the process by which humans
acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend
language, as well as to produce and use words and
sentences to communicate.
first-language acquisition, which studies infants'
acquisition of their native language
Laily

3. Language acquisition has some basic requirements;
Children require interaction with language-users
Particular language-using environment
Physical capability of sending&receiving sound
signals.
Laily

4. The acquisition schedule
All normal children develop language roughly at
the same time.
The language acquisition schedule has the same
basis as the development of motor skills.
Laily

5. Stages in first language acquisition:
Pre-speech:
• Infants learn to pay attention to speech, intonation and the rhythm of
speech long before they begin to speak.
• Respond to speech more keenly than to other sounds.
• Children learn to recognize the distinctive sounds, the phonemes of the
language they hear from birth long before they are able to pronounce
them.
Babbling stage:
• Begins at several months of age.
• Many native speech sounds may be absent. Very few consonant
clusters and repeated syllables are common.
Laily

6.  Prelinguistic Sounds (goo-goo-gaa-gaa)
 Cooing Stage
 0-1 month (sleep, eat, cry)
 1-4 months
Intonational patterns
 Babbling Stage
 5-12 months
 Sounds – enviorement
Internal behaviour – not a response
6-9 months
 different – select – sounds - enviorement
Stages in first language acquisition:
Laily

7. Stages in first language acquisition:
 One-word Stage (holophrastic)
1 year
emergence of first word
Sounds relate to meanings (functions)
 own action or desire action
 to convey emotions
Naming function
 single word – a whole sentences – meaning
 ‘Fis’ phenomenon
 perception of phonemes ocurrs earlier than
the ability to produce those phonemes.
Laily

8. Two-word Stage
2 years
 Two words, different combination of word order
 Three possible interpretations
Subject-verb ‘Mary go.’
Verb-modifier ‘Push truck.’
Possessor-possesed ‘Mommy sock’
 Words lack morphological and syntactic markers –
there is a word order
Stages in first language acquisition:
Laily

9.  Telegraphic Stage
 2 years
 2-5 words with little extra morphology
 Morphological overgeneralization
 Easier, more productive morphemes first
 Inflectional morphemes appear
 Use of simple prepositions
 Pronunciation is closer to adult one
Stages in first language acquisition:
Laily

10. The Acquisition Process
Roughly 4 year old child
Repeat what they heard in a different versions
Adopt lots of vocabulary from the speech they
hear
Do not correct the child
Laily

11.  2,5 years old – telegraphic speech forms
 Inflectional morphemes
 First – ing form
 Next – plural s (overgeneralization)
 Possessive inflection –’s
 Different forms of the verb ‘to be’
 First regular past tense forms
 Later irregular past tense forms
 The regular –s marker on third person singular
present tense verbs
Developing Morphology
Laily

12.  In the formation of questions and the use of
negatives,
 There are three stages
 1. stage ( 18-26 months)
 2. stage ( 22-30 months)
 3. stage ( 24-40 months)
Developing Syntax
Laily

13.  The child’s first stage
has two procedures.
 Simply add Wh form
( Where, Who)
 Rise in intonation
 In the second stage,
more complex expressions
 In the third stage ,
the required movement
of auxiliary (Can I have..)
Forming Question ..
Laily

14. Stage 1
 Where Momy ?
 Where horse go ? Sit chair ?
Stage 2
 Why you smiling ? See my doggie?
Stage 3
 Can I have ?
 Why kitty can’t ( It doesn’t spread to all Wh questions
automatically)
Example,,
Laily

15.  Stage 1 : putting no or
not at the beginning
(No sit here , no teddy bear)
 In the second stage ,
the additional negative forms
don’t and can’t appear ,with no or not
( He no bite you I don’t want it)
 Third stage : incorporation
of other auxiliary forms
( didn’t , won’t )
 Children operate their own rules by forming
negatives. Adult correction is useless.
Forming Negative ..
Laily

16.  Over extension
 Followed by a gradual process of narrowing down
the application of each term as more words are
learned.
 Lexical relations
( animal-dog-poodle)
 Antonymous relations are acquired quite late.
Developing Semantics
Laily

17. Laily
Laily