Language is systematic and acquired through universal characteristics. Theories of first language acquisition include nativist and functionalist approaches. Nativist theories posit that children are born with an innate language acquisition device containing a universal grammar. Children creatively construct language rules rather than simply imitating adults. Noam Chomsky argued language is an innate faculty, that children are born with the basic rules of universal grammar wired into their brains, and use a language acquisition device to learn the parameters of their native language.

2. Language
• Language is used for communication.
• Language is systematic.
• Language is a set of arbitrary
symbols.
• Language is acquired by all people in
much the same way; language and
language learning both have universal
characteristics.

3. First Language Acquisition

4. Theories of first language acquisition
Nativist
Functional
Mediation
Theory
Behaviorist

5. The Nativist Approaches
• Innate predispositions
(LAD/UG)
• Systematic, rule-
governed acquisition
• Creative construction

6. Mother-tongue acquisition
• Children do not simply repeat the language they
hear
• Some social groups don't adapt their speech to
children - still learn it
• Children don't make mistakes, have a different
grammar to the grammar of the adults

7. Noam
Chomsky:
A New Paradigm
in Modern
Linguistics.

8. Noam Chomsky
• December 7, 1928
• From the age of two, he spent ten years
in a progressive Deweyite school in
Philadelphia.
• He attended the University of
Pennsylvania where he met Zellig Harris
• 1949: He graduated with a BA. His thesis
was about Modern Hebrew. He entered
graduate school.

9. Key Concepts:
• Some language ability is innate.
• A Universal Grammar exists for all
languages.
• Children are equipped with a
Language Acquisition Device.

10. Language is an innate faculty
• Human beings are pre-wired to learn language
and in fact are born with the basic rules for
language intact.
• Children do not know anything about grammar or
syntax but still they can produce grammatical
sentences in most of the time.

11. Universal Grammar
 is the basis upon which all human languages build.
 Children do not simply copy the language that
they hear around them.
 Children are born, then, with the Universal
Grammar wired into their brains.
 75% of the world's languages use SVO structure
or SOV

12. Setting the Parameters
• Child recognizes which kind of language the
parents are dealing with
• Child sets his grammar to the correct one
• Child has a number of hypotheses

13. Language Acquisition Device
• set of language learning tools, provided at birth.
• LAD encodes the major principles of a language
and its grammatical structures into the child’s
brain.
• Children have then only to learn new vocabulary
and apply the syntactic structures from the LAD
to form sentences.

14. Dialogue –
Parent and Child (3 years old)
Parent: What did you do today?
Child: Me drawed a cat. (applies –ed suffix rule but
gets wrong)
Parent: You drew a cat?
Child: Yeah. (understands correction)
Parent: Who did you play with at breaktime?
Child: Me played with Sarah and Helen. (wrong
pronoun – not learnt passively)
Parent: That sound fun. Now what do you want for
tea?

15. Child: Dunno. What you having?
Parent: Daddy and I are having fish.
Child: You having fishes? (incorrect use of plural noun
but shows child applying rules)
Parent: Yes. I’ll do you some fish fingers and if you’re
a good girl and eat them all you
can have a sweetie. (applying plural noun rule)

16. Child: Me want two sweeties.
Parent: Alright then. Now go and watch Postman Pat
while I start the tea.
Child: When Daddy coming home? (gets SVO order
correct all the time)
Parent: He’ll be here soon.

17. In conclusion:
• Infants are born with Language Acquisition
Device (LAD).
• Exposure to language is all that is needed
for a child to discover the system of
language.
• Exposure is critical as evidenced from cases
of children in isolation.