Week 2 12

Definition of Language
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary
• A systematic means of communicating ideas or
feelings by the use of conventionalized signs,
sounds, gestures, or marks having understood
meanings
Steven Pinker The language instinct (1994)
• Language is a complex, specialized skill, which
deploys in the child spontaneously, without
conscious effort of formal instruction, is deployed
without awareness of its underlying logic, is
qualitatively the same in every individual, and is
distinct from more general abilities to process
information or behave intelligently (p.18)

• Language is systematic.
• Language is a set of arbitrary symbols.
• Those symbols are primarily vocal, but may also be visual.
• The symbols have conventionalized meanings to which they refer.
• Language is used for communication.
• Language operates in a speech community or culture.
• Language is essentially human, although possibly not limited to
humans.
• Language is acquired by all people in much the same way;
language and language learning have universal characteristics.
• Language evolves within specific historical, social, and cultural
contexts.
• Language learning and use are determined by the intervention of
biological, cognitive, psychosocial, and environmental factors.
• Language, as a rule governed behavior, is described by at least five
parameters-phonologic, morphologic, syntactic, semantic, and
pragmatic.
• Language is an agreement among participants in conversation.
Languages exist because users have agreed on the symbols to be
used and the rules to be followed.

First Language Acquisition
Language learning is an amazing feat-one that has attracted the
attention of linguists and psychologists for generations.
• How do children accomplish this?
• What enables a child not only learn words, but put them together
in meaningful sentences?
• What pushes children to go on developing complex grammatical
language although their early simple communication is successful
for most purposes?
• Does the child language develop similar around the world?

The first three years: Milestones and
developmental sequences
• One remarkable thing about L1 acquisition is the
high degree of similarity in the early language of
children all over the world. Researchers have
described developmental sequences for many
aspects of first language acquisition.

The earliest vocalizations
are simply the involuntary crying that babies
do when they are hungry or
uncomfortable.Baby Crying Sound Effect
[High Quality, Free Download].mp4

• Soon, however, we hear the cooing and gurgling
sounds of contended babies, lying in their beds
looking at fascinating shapes and movement around
them. cooing.mp4
• Even though they have little control over the sounds
they make in these early weeks of life, infants are
able to hear the subtle differences between the
sounds of the human languages.
• Furthermore, in cleverly designed experiments,
researchers have demonstrated that tiny babies are
capable of very fine auditory discrimination. For
example, they can hear the difference between
sounds as similar as «pa» and «ba».

• Babbling: Babbling (also called
twaddling) is a stage in child development
and a state in language acquisition, during
which an infant appears to be
experimenting with uttering sounds of
language, but not yet producing any
recognizable words.
• Babbling begins shortly after birth and
progresses through several stages as the
infant's repertoire expands and
vocalizations become more speech-like.
Infants begin to produce recognizable
words usually around 12 months, though
babbling may continue for some time
afterward.Babbling .mp4baby talks with cat
on iPad.mp4

• It will be many months before
babies’ own vocalizations begin to
reflect the characteristics of the
language or languages they hear
and longer still before they connect
language sounds with specific
meaning.
• By the end of their first year, babies
understand quite a few frequently
repeated words in the language
spoken around them. They wave
when someone says «bye bye»;
they clap when someone says «pat
a cake».Clap.mp4

• As they reach the end of their first
year they utter their first firsts. first
words.mp4
• By the age of two, most children
reliably produce at least 50
different words and some produce
many more. About this time, they
begin to combine words into simple
sentences such as «mommy juice»
and «baby fall down».
These sentences are called
«telegraphic» because they leave
out such things as articles,
prepositions, and auxilary verbs.
telegraphic 1.mp4telegraphic.mp4

• Note: We recognize telegraphic utterances
as sentences because, even though function
words and grammatical morphemes are
missing, the word order reflects the word
order of the language they are hearing and
the combined words have a meaningful
relationship that makes them more than just a
list of words. Thus for an English speaking
child, «kiss baby» does not mean the same
thing as «baby kiss».

• By two years of age, children begin to
understand more sophisticated language
and they even start to form questions and
negatives
Ex: where my mitten?, what Jeff doing? Why
not me sleeping?, I don’t need pants off
• By about three, children can comprehend
an amazing quantity of linguistic input.
Their speech and comprehension
capacity increases. They start to play with
language but sometimes they may
produce funny or silly sentences.
Ex: Erase the window, headlights are lights
that go in the head
• This fluency and creativity continues into
school age. Children learn what to say but
also what not to say. They learn the social
functions of their language.

Grammatical Morphemes
• In 1960s, several researchers focused on how children
acquire grammatical morphemes in English. Roger
Brown found that grammatical morphemes were
acquired in a similar sequence
1. Present progressive –ing (mommy running)
2. Plural-s (two books)
3. Irregular past forms (Baby went)
4. Possesive-s (Daddy’s hat)
5. Copula (mommy is happy)
6. Articles the and a
7. Regular past –ed (she walked)
8. Third person singular simple present –s (she runs)
9. Auxiliary be (he is coming)

• Grammatical Morphemes
The Wug Test
The Wug tests proved that by
generalizing the patterns to
words they have never heard
before, children show that their
language is more than just a list of
memorized word pairs. Wug
Test.mp4wug test 2.mp4

• Negation
Children learn the functions of negation very
early. That is, they learn to comment on the
disappearance of objects, to refuse a
suggestion, or to reject an assertion, even at
a single word stage.

• Negation
Stage 1
Negation is usually expressed by word
«no», either all alone or as the first word in
the utterance.
Ex: No. No cookie. No comb hair. no.mp4

• Negation
Stage 2
Utterance grow longer and the
sentence subject may be
included. The negative verb
appears just before the verb.
Sentences expressing rejection or
prohibition often use «don’t».
Ex: Daddy no comb hair. Don’t
touch that.

• Negation
Stage 3
The negative element is inserted into a more
complex sentence. Children add forms of
the negative other than «no», including
words like «can’t», and «don’t». However
children do not yet vary these forms for
different persons or tenses.
Ex: I can’t do it. He don’t want it.

• Negation
Stage 4
Children begin to attach the negative element to the
correct form of auxiliary verbs such as «do» and
«be».
Ex: you didn’t have supper. She doesn’t want it.
Even though their language system is now quite
complex, they may still have difficulty with some
other features related to negatives.
Ex: I don’t have no more candies.

• Questions
• Wh- questions
There is a predictable order in which
the wh- words emerge.
What is the first wh- question word to
be used.
Where and who emerge very soon.
Identfying and locating people and
objects are within the child’s
understanding of the world.
Furthermore adults tend to ask children
just these types of questions in the early
days of language learning. For
example: «where is mommy?» or «who
is that».

• Questions
• Wh- questions
Why emerges around the end of the second
year and becomes a favorite question for the
next two years. why.mp4
Children probably discover that asking
questions beginning why gets adults to engage
in conversations and thus they ask endless
number of questions beginning with why.

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
 Questions
Wh- questions
Finally, when the child has a better understanding of
manner and time, «how» and «when» emerge.
Note: The ability to use wh- question words is at
least tied to children’s cognitive development.

 Word order in questions
Stage 1
Children’s earliest questions are single words or simple
two-three word sentences with rising intonation:
Cookie? Mommy book?

• Word order in questions
Stage 2
As they begin to ask more questions, children use
the word order of the declarative sentece, with
rising intonation.
You like this? I have come?

FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
 Word order in questions
Stage 3
Gradually, children notice that the structure of questions is
different and begin to produce questions such as:
Can I go? Are you happy?
Note: Although some questions at this stage match adult
pattern, they may be right for the wrong reason. To describe this,
we need to see the pattern from the child’s perspective rather
than from the perspective of the adult grammar. We call this
stage fronting because the child’s rule seems to be that
questions are formed by putting something (verb or question
word) at the front of a sentence, leaving the rest of the
sentences in its statement form.
Ex: Is the teddy tired? Do I can have cookie?
Why you don’t have one? Why you catched it?

Stage 4
Some questions are formed by subject-auxiliary inversion. The
questions resemble those of stage 3, but there is more variety in the
auxiliaries that appear before the subject.
Ex: are you going to play with me?
At this stage, children can have «do» in their questions in which there
would be no auxiliary in the declerative version of the sentence.
Ex: Do dogs like ice cream?
Even at this stage, however, children seem to be able to use either
inversion or a wh- word, but not both (for ex: «ıs he crying?» but not «
why is he crying?».
Thus, we may find inversion in yes/no questions but not in wh-
questions .

Stage 5
Both wh- and yes/no questions are formed
correctly
Ex: Are these your boots?
Why did you do that?
Negative questions may still be a bit too much.
Ex: Why the teddy bear can’t go outside?

Stage5
Even though performance on most questions is
correct, there is still one more problem. When
wh- words appear in subordinate clauses or
embedded questions, children overgeneralize
the inverted form that would be correct for
simple questions and produce sentences such
as:
Ask him why can’t he go out.

Stage 6
They are able to correctly form all question
types, including negative and complex
embedded questions.

The pre-school years
By the age four, most children can ask questions,
give commands, report real events, and create
stories about imaginary ones, using correct word
order and grammatical markers most of the time.
They begin to acquire less frequent and more
complex structures such as passives and relative
clauses.

• They develop their ability to use language in a
widening social environment.
• They use language in a greater variety of situations.
• They interact more often with unfamiliar adults.
• They begin to talk sensibly on the phone to invisible
grandparents.

• They begin to develop
metalinguistic awareness, the
ability to treat language as an object
seperate from the meaning it
conveys.
• If children are awake for ten or
twelve hours a day, we estimate that
they are in contact with the language
of their environment for 20,000 hours
or more by the time they go to
school.

The School Years
• The ability to understand others and to use language grows.
• Learning to read gives a great boost to metalinguistic awareness.
• Reading reinforces the understanding that a word is seperate from
the thing it represents.
• They learn and practice ambiguity and make jokes about it.
• Growth of vocabulary. Vocabulary grows at a rate between several
hundred and more than a thousand words a year.
• Children learn registers.

First Language Acquisition Theories
• Behaviorism
- Behaviorism is a psychological
theory of learning which was very
influential in the 1940s and 1950s,
especially in the United States.
- The primary tenet of behaviorism is
that psychology should concern
itself with the observable behavior
of people and animals, not with
unobservable events that take
place in their minds.

Four of the principal protagonists in
behaviorism
Ivan Pavlov Edward L. Thorndike John. B. Watson B.F. Skinner

Basic Tenets of the Theory
• Psychology should be seen as a science. Theories need to be supported
by empirical data obtained through careful and controlled
observation and measurement of behavior. Behaviorism is primarily
concerned with observable behavior, as opposed to internal events like
thinking and emotion. Observable (i.e. external) behavior can be
objectively and scientifically measured.
• People have no free will – a person’s environment determines their
behavior.
• When born our mind is 'tabula rasa' (a blank slate).
• There is little difference between the learning that takes place in
humans and that in other animals. Therefore research can be carried
out on animals as well as humans.
• Behavior is the result of stimulus – response (i.e. all behavior, no
matter how complex, can be reduced to a simple stimulus – response
association). Learning is viewed as the development of stimulus-
response associations through habit formation, habits being
developed by practice and reinforcement.
• All behavior is learnt from the environment. We learn new behavior
through classical or operant conditioning.

a)Classical Conditioning (Ivan
Pavlov)
• Learning is seen as a question of developing connections
(known as stimulus-response bonds) between events. The
process of developing connections is called conditioning.
• Classical conditioning focuses on the learning of involuntary
emotional or physiological responses such as fear, increased
heartbeat, salivation, or sweating, which are sometimes called
the respondents because they are automatic responses to
stimuli. Through the process of classical conditioning, humans
and animals can be trained to react involuntarily to a stimulus
that previously has no effect or a very different effect on them.
Pavlov’s dogs are the best known example of the conditioning
process. Classical Conditioning [cc].mp4Classical
Conditioning at BGSU.mp4Classical Conditioning - AP Psych
Video (1).mp4

• Neutral Stimulus: Stimulus not connected to a response.
• Unconditioned Stimulus (US): Stimulus that automatically
produces an emotional or physiological response.
• Unconditioned response (UR): Naturally occuring emotional or
physiological response.
• Conditioned Stimulus (CS): Stimulus that evokes an emotional
or pyhsiological response after conditioning.
• Conditional Response (CR): Learned response to a previously
neutral stimulus.

Operant Conditioning (B .F.
Skinner)
• Operant conditioning was developed by B.F
Skinner in 1937 and deals with the modification of
"voluntary behavior" or operant behavior. His
work was based on Thorndike’s law of effect.
• Operant behavior operates on the environment
and is maintained by its consequences.
• Reinforcement and punishment, the core tools
of operant conditioning, are either positive
(delivered following a response), or negative
(withdrawn following a response).Changing
Behavior with Operant Conditioning.mp4

• Reinforcement: Use of consequences to
strengthen behavior. Behavior which is
reinforced tends to be repeated (i.e.
strengthened); behavior which is not
reinforced tends to die out-or be extinguished
(i.e. weakened).There are two types of
reinforcement.
1. Positive reinforcement: Strengthening
behavior by presenting a desired stimulus
after the behavior.
2. Negative reinforcement: Strengthhening a
behavior by removing an aversive stimulus.

The Differences Between Classical and Operant Conditioning
• One of the simplest ways to remember the differences between
classical and operant conditioning is to focus on whether the
behavior is involuntary or voluntary. Classical conditioning
involves making an association between an involuntary response
and a stimulus, while operant conditioning is about making an
association between a voluntary behavior and a consequence.
• In operant conditioning, the learner is also rewarded with
incentives, while classical conditioning involves no such
enticements. Also remember that classical conditioning is passive
on the part of the learner, while operant conditioning requires the
learner to actively participate and perform some type of action in
order to be rewarded or punished. The difference between
classical and operant conditioning - Peggy Andover.mp4

Example Number 1
• Every time someone flushes a toilet in the apartment
building, the shower becomes very hot and causes the
person to jump back. Over time, the person begins to
jump back automatically after hearing the flush, before
the water temperature changes.
• This example is classical conditioning because
jumping away from hot water is an automatic
response.
• The hot water is the US
• The jumping back is the UR
• The toilet flush is the CS
• The jumping back to the flush alone is the CR

• Example Number 2
• Your father gives you a credit card at the
end of your first year in college because
you did so well. As a result, your grades
continue to get better in your second year.
• This example is operant conditioning
because school performance is a
voluntary behavior.

• You eat a new food and then get sick because of
the flu. However, you develop a dislike for the food
and feel nauseated whenever you smell it.
• This example is classical conditioning because
nausea is an automatic response.
• The flu sickness is the US.
• The nausea is the UR.
• The new food is the CS.
• The nausea to the new food is the CR.

• A lion in a circus learns to stand up on a chair
and jump through a hoop to receive a food
treat.
• This example is operant conditioning
because standing on a chair and jumping
through a hoop are voluntary behaviors.
• The food treat is a positive reinforcement
because it is given and it increases the
behavior.

• A professor has a policy of exempting students
from the final exam if they maintain perfect
attendance during the quarter. His students’
attendance increases dramatically.
• This example is operant conditioning because
attendance is a voluntary behavior.
• The exemption from the final exam is a negative
reinforcement because something is taken away
that increases the behavior (attendance).

Behaviorism and first language
acquisition
• Children learn language through a
process of stimulus (hearing, input) and
response (our trials). Correct responses
are rewarded, as is our correct language
use, which increases over time.
• Language learning is the result of
imitation, practice, feedback on
success, and habit formation.

Behaviorism and first language
acquisition
• Traditional behaviorists hypothesized that when children
imitated the language produced by those around them,
their attempts to reproduce what they heard received
«positive reinforcement». This could take the form of
praise or just successful communication. Thus
encouraged by their environment, children would
continue to imitate and practice these sounds and
patterns until they formed habits of correct language
use. According to this view, the quality and quantity of
the language the child hears, as well as the consistency
of the reinforcement offered by others in the
environment, would shape the child’s language. This
theory gives great importance to the environment.

Week 2 12

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