Chapter 1.

Language Learning in Early

Childhood

Definitions of L1, L2, FL, TL

Patterns and sequences in L1 development

Theoretical approaches to first language

acauisition: Behaviorism, Innatism, and
Interactionism

Childhood bilingualism
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Definitions of L1 & L2

Definition of first language (L1):

The language(s) that an individual learns first.

Other terms for first language Native language or mother tongue

Definition of second language (L2):

Any language other than the first language learned (in

a broader sense).
A language learned after the first language in a context
where the language is used widely in the speech
community (in a narrower sense).
e.g., For many people in Taiwan, their L1 is
Taiwanese and L2 is Mandarin.
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Definitions of FL & TL

Definition of foreign language (FL)

A second (or third, or fourth) language learned in a

context where the language is NOT widely used in the
speech community. This is often contrasted with
second language learning in a narrower sense.
e.g., English or Japanese is a foreign language for
people in Taiwan.

Definition of target language (TL)

A language which is being learned, where it is the first

language or a second, third language.
e.g., English is a target language for you now.

Patterns in L1 Development
Characteristics of the language of children:

Their language development shows a high degree of

similarity among children all over the world. There are
predicable patterns in the L1 development and their L1
developmental patterns are related to their cognitive
development (predictability).

Their language reflects the word order of the language that

they are hearing. The combination of the words has a
meaning relationship (learning through imitation).

Their language also shows they are able to apply the rules of
the language to make sentences which they have never
heard before (creativity).
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Patterns in L1 Development
Before First Words

The earliest vocalizations

Involuntary crying (when they feel hungry or

uncomfortable)
Cooing and gurgling showing satisfaction or
happiness

Babbling

Babies use sounds to reflect the characteristics of the

different language they are learning.

Patterns in L1 Development
First Words

Around 12 months (one-word stage):

Babies begin to produce one or two recognizable words

(esp. content word); producing single-word sentences.

By the age of 2 (two-word stage):

1) at least 50 different words

2) telegraphic sentences (no function words and
grammatical morphemes)
e.g., Mommy juice, baby fall down

3) reflecting the order of the language

e.g., kiss baby, baby kiss

4) creatively combining words

e.g., more outside, all gone cookie
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L1 Developmental Sequences

Acquisition of Grammatical
morphemes

Acquisition of Negation (to deny, reject,

disagree with, and refuse something)

Acquisition of Questions

Acquisition of
Grammatical morphemes
Roger Browns study (1973):
- approximate order of acquiring grammatical
morphemes

Present progressive ing (running)

Plural s (books)
Irregular past forms (went)
Possessive -s (daddys hat)
Copula (am/is/are)
Articles (a/an/the)
Regular past ed (walked)
Third person singular simple present s (he runs)
Auxiliary be (He is coming)
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Acquisition of
Grammatical morphemes
e.g., wug test
1) Here is a wug. Now there are two of them.
There are two ______.
2) John knows how to bod. Yesterday he did the
same thing. Yesterday, he_______.

Through the tests, children demonstrate that they

know the rules for the formation of plural and
simple past in English.
By generalizing these patterns to words they have
never heard before, they show that their language is
not just a list of memorized word pairs such as
book/books and nod/nodded.
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Acquisition of Negation
Lois Blooms study (1991) four stages

Stage 1: no e.g., No go. No cookie.

Stage 2: subject + no e.g., Daddy no comb hair.

Stage 3: auxiliary or modal verbs (do/can) + not

(Yet no variations for different persons or tenses)
e.g., I cant do it , He dont want it.
Stage 4: correct form of auxiliary verbs
(did/doesnt/is/are) + not
e.g., He didnt go. She doesnt want it.
But sometimes double negatives are used
e.g., I dont have no more candies.

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Acquisition of Questions
Lois Blooms study (1991):
Order of the occurrence of wh- question words
1.

What - Whatsat? Whatsit?

2.

Where and who

3.

Why (emerging at the end of the 2nd year and

becomes a favorite at the age of 3 or 4)

4.

How and When (yet children do not fully

understand the meaning of adults responses)
e.g.,

Child:
When can we go outside?
Mother: In about 5 minutes.
Child:
1-2-3-4-5! Can we go now?
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Acquisition of Questions
Lois Blooms study (1991):
Six stages of childrens question-making

Stage 1: using single words or single two- or three-word

sentences with rising intonation
(Mommy book? Wheres Daddy?)

Stage 2: using the word order of the declarative sentence

(You like this? Why you catch it?)
Stage 3: fronting - putting a verb at the beginning of a
sentence
(Is the teddy is tired? Do I can have a cookie?)

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Acquisition of Questions
Lois Blooms study (1991) six stages (II)

Stage 4: subject-auxiliary inversion in yes/no questions

but not in wh-questions
(Do you like ice cream? Where I can draw?)

Stage 5: subject-auxiliary inversion in wh-questions, but

not in negative wh-questions
(Why can he go out? Why he cant go out?)

Stage 6: overgeneralizing the inverted form in

embedded questions
(I dont know why cant he go out.)
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Patterns in L1 Development

By the age of 4:

Most children are able to ask questions, give commands,

report real events, and create stories about imaginary
ones with correct word order and grammatical markers
most of the time.
They have mastered the basic structures of the
language or languages spoken to them in these early
years.
They begin to acquire less frequent and more complex
linguistic structures such as passives and relative
clauses.
They begin to develop ability to use language in a
widening social environment.
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Development of
Metalinguistic Awareness

Metalinguistic awareness refers to the ability to treat

language as an object, separate from the meaning it
conveys.
A dramatic development in metalinguistic awareness
occurs when children begin to learn to read. They see
words represented by letters on a page and start to
discover that words and sentences have multiple
meaning.
e.g., drink the chair (5 year-olds reaction: silly)
cake the eat (5 year-olds reaction: wrong)
Why is caterpillar longer than train? (a riddle)
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Development of Vocabulary

One of the most impressive language developments in the early

school years is the astonishing growth of vocabulary.
Vocabulary grows at a rate between several hundred and more
than a thousand words a year, depending mainly on how much
and how widely children read.

Vocabulary growth required for school success is likely to come

from both reading for assignments and reading for pleasure.
Reading a variety of text types is an essential part of vocabulary
growth.
Reading reinforces the understanding that language has form as
well as meaning and a word is separate from the thing it
represents.
Another important development in the school years is the
acquisition of different language registers.
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Theoretical Approaches to
L1 Acquisition

Behaviorism: Say what I say

Innatism: Its all in your mind

Interactionist/Developmental
perspectives: Learning from inside and
out

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Behaviorism: Say what I say

Skinner: language behavior is the production of correct

responses to stimuli through reinforcement.
Language learning is the result of 1) imitation (word-forword repetition), 2) practice (repetitive manipulation of
form), 3) feedback on success (positive reinforcement),
and 4) habit formation.
The quality and quantity of the language that the child
hears, as well as the consistency of the reinforcement
offered by others in the environment, would shape the
childs language behavior.
(*Do the activity on p. 10 imitation and practice)
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Behaviorism: Say what I say

Childrens imitations are not random:

Their imitation is selective and based on what they are
currently learning. They choose to imitate something they
have already begun to understand, rather than simply
imitating what is available in the environment.
(see example on p. 11, Peters & Cindys case)

Childrens practice of new language forms

The way they practice new forms is very similar to the

way foreign language students do substitution drills.
Their practice of language forms is also selective and
reflects what they would like to learn. They are often in
charge of the conversation with adults.
(see example on p. 12, Kathryns case)
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Behaviorism: Say what I say

However, children do use language creatively, not just repeat what

they have heard. (see examples on pp. 13-14)

Patterns in language
Mother: Maybe we need to take you to the doctor.
Randall (36 months): Why? So he can doc my little bump?
(showing the understanding of the suffix er/or)
Son: I putted the plates on the table!
Mother: You mean, I put the plates on the table.
Son: No, I putted them on all by myself.
(showing the understanding of using ed to make the past
tense for a verb and the focus on the meaning, not form)
Unfamiliar formulas
Father: Id like to propose a toast.
Child: Id like to propose a piece of bread.
Mother:
I love you to pieces.
Child:
I love you three pieces.

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Behaviorism: Say what I say

Question formation
Are dogs can wiggle their tails?
Are those are my boots?
Are this is hot?

Order of events
You took all the towels away because I cant dry my
hands.

Imitation and practice alone cannot explain some of

the forms created by children. Children appear to pick
out patterns and then generalize or overgeneralize
them to new contexts. They create new forms or new
uses of words.

Innatism: Its all in your mind

Chomskys viewpoints:

Children are biologically programmed for language and

language develops in the child in just the same way
that other biological functions develop.
The environment makes only a basic contribution, that
is, the availability of people who speak to the child.
Therefore, the childs biological endowment (LAD) will
do the rest.
Children are born with a specific innate ability to
discover for themselves the underlying rules of a
language system on the basis of the samples of a
natural language they are exposed to.

Innatism: Its all in your mind

Chomsky argues that behaviorism cannot provide sufficient

explanations for childrens language acquisition for the
following reasons:
1.

Children come to know more about the structure of

their language than they could be expected to learn on
the basis of the samples of language they hear.

2.

The language children are exposed to includes false

starts, incomplete sentences and slips of the tongue,
and yet they learn to distinguish between grammatical
and ungrammatical sentences.

3.

Children are by no means systematically corrected or

instructed on language by parents.
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Innatism: Its all in your mind

LAD (an imaginary black box existing

somewhere in the brain):

LAD contains the principles which are universal to all

human languages (i.e.. Universal Grammar UG).
For the LAD to work, children need access only to
samples of a natural language, which serve as a trigger
to activate the device.
Once the LAD is activated, children are able to discover
the structure of the language to be learned by matching
the innate knowledge of basic grammatical principles
(UG) to the structures of the particular language in the
environment.

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Innatism: Its all in your mind

Evidence used to support Chomskys innatist position:

1.

Virtually all children successfully learn their native language at

a time in life when they would not be expected to learn
anything else so complicated (i.e. biologically programmed).

2.

Language is separate from other aspects of cognitive

developments (e.g., creativity and social grace) and may be
located in a different module" of the brain.

3.

The language children are exposed to does not contain

examples of all the linguistic rules and patterns.

4.

Animals cannot learn to manipulate a symbol system as

complicated as the natural language of a 3- or 4-year-old child.

5.

Children acquire grammatical rules without getting explicit

instruction. Therefore, childrens acquisition of grammatical
rules is probably guided by principle of an innate UG which
could apply to all languages.
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Innatism: Its all in your mind

The biological basis for the innatist

position:

The Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH)

Lenneberg: There is a specific and limited
time period (i.e., critical period) for the
LAD to work successfully.
The best evidence for the CPH is that
virtually every child learns language on a
similar schedule in spite of different
environments.
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Innatism: Its all in your mind

Three case studies of abnormal language

development - evidence of the CPH
(Read the case studies on pp. 19-21).

1.Victor a boy of about 12 years old (1799)

2.Genie a girl of 13 years old (1970)
3.Deaf signers (native signers, early learners,
vs. late learners)

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Interactionist/developmental Perspectives:
Learning from inside and out

Problems of Innatism:

The innatists placed too much emphasis on the

final state (i.e. the linguistic competence of adult
native speakers), but not enough on the
developmental aspects of language acquisition.
Language acquisition is an example of childrens
ability to learn from experience. What children
need to know is essentially available in the
language they are exposed to.

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Interactionist/developmental Perspectives:
Learning from inside and out

This position views that language develops as a result of

the interplay between the innate learning ability of
children and the environment in which they develop.

Developmental psychologists attribute more importance to

the environment than the innatists, though they also
recognize a powerful learning mechanism in the human
brain.

They see language acquisition as similar to and influenced

by the acquisition of other kinds of skill and knowledge,
rather than as something that is largely independent of
the childs experience and cognitive development.

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The Interactionist Position

Piaget: Language is dependent upon and springs from

cognitive development. That is, childrens cognitive
development determines their language development.
(e.g., the use of words as bigger or more depends on
childrens understanding of the concepts they represent.)

He argued that the developing cognitive understanding is

built on the interaction between the child and the things
which can be observed, touched, and manipulated.

For him, language was one of a number of symbol

systems developed in childhood, rather than a separate
module of the mind. Language can be used to represent
knowledge that children have acquired through physical
interaction with the environment.
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The Interactionist Position

Vygotsky: sociocultural theory of human mental

processing. He argued that language develops primarily
from social interaction.

Zone of proximal development (ZPD): a level that a child is

able to do when there is support from interaction with a
more advanced interlocutor. That is, a supportive interactive
environment enables children to advance to a higher level of
knowledge and performance than s/he would be able to do
independently.
He observed the importance of conversations which children
have with adults and with other children and saw in these
conversations the origins of both language and thought.
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The Interactionist Position

How Piagets view differs from Vygotskys:

Piaget hypothesized that language developed as a

symbol system to express knowledge acquired

through interaction with the physical world.

Vygotsky hypothesized that thought was

essentially internalized speech, and speech
emerged in social interaction.

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The Interactionist Position

Language socialization framework: observed from

childrearing patterns (parent-child interaction)

Child-directed Speech (modified language interaction):

Phonological modification: a slower rate of delivery,

higher pitch, more varied intonation
Syntactical modification: shorter, simpler sentence
patterns, frequent repetition, and paraphrase.
Limited conversation topics: e.g., the here and now
and topics related to the childs experiences.
More important than modification is the conversational
give-and-take.
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The Interactionist Position

The interaction between a language-learning child and

an interlocutor who responds in some way to the child
is important (Jims case).

Exposure to impersonal sources of language such as

television or radio alone are not sufficient for children
to learn the structure of a particular language.

One-on-one interaction gives children access to

language that is adjusted to their level of
comprehension.

Once children have acquired some language, however,

television can be a source of language and cultural
information.
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Connectionism

Though both innatism and connectionism look at the

cognitive aspect of language acquisition, yet they differ
in the following:
Connectionists hypothesize that language acquisition
dose not require a separate module of the mind but
can be explained in terms of learning in general.
Connectionists argue that what children need to know
is essentially available in the language they are
exposed to. They attribute greater importance to the
role of the environment than to any innate knowledge
in the learner.
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Connectionism

Connectionism views language as a complex system of

units which become interconnected in the mind as they
are encountered together. The more often units are
heard or seen together, the more likely it is that the
presence of one will lead to the activation of the other.

Language acquisition is not just a process of

associating words with elements of external reality. It
is also a process of associating words and phrases with
the other words and phrases that occur with them, or
words with grammatical morphemes that occur with
them.
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The Interactionist Position

Watch the video clip Baby Talk from the Interactionist

position. Read the following questions first:

1.

According to Bruner, in what ways do children learn syntax,

semantics, and pragmatics?

2.

Why do many researchers think Chomskys innatism is not sufficient?

3.

According to Berko-Gleason, how do parents or caretakers help

children with their verbal development?

4.

What is the purpose for parents to play the thank-you game with
children?

5.

Interactionists stress that language use is not only referential but it

can be used for social purposes. Can you give examples for these two
types of purposes?

6.

Why is it too simplistic to think children either memorize or analyze

things they hear and then they produce language? What example did
Berko-Gleason give to support her points?

7.

How do children learn routinized phrases?

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Childhood bilingualism

Simultaneous bilinguals

Children who learn more than one language

from birth.

Sequential bilinguals

Children who begin to learn a second

language after they have acquired the first
language.

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Childhood bilingualism

Is it difficult for children to cope with 2 language?

1.

There is little support for the myth that learning more than
one language in early childhood slows down the childs
linguistic development or interferes with cognitive and
academic development.

2.

Bilingualism can have positive effects on abilities that are

related to academic success, such as metalinguistic
awareness.

3.

The learning of languages for bilingual children is more

related to the circumstances in which each language is
learned than to any limitation in the human capacity to
learn more than one language.
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Childhood bilingualism

Language attrition for bilinguals Subtractive bilingualism (Lambert, 1987)

When children are submerged in a second language
for long periods in early schooling, they may begin to
lose their native language (L1) before they have
developed an age-appropriate mastery of the L2.
It can have negative consequences for childrens selfesteem.
In some cases, children continue to be caught between
two languages; not having mastered the L2, but not
having continued to develop the L1.
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Childhood bilingualism

Solution for subtractive bilingualism:

to strive for additive bilingualism

Parents should continue speaking the L1 to their

children to maintain the home language, while the L2
is being learned at school.
Maintaining the family language also creates
opportunities for the children to continue both
cognitive and affective development in a language
they understand easily while they are still learning the
L2.

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Summary

Each of the three theoretical approaches explains

a different aspect of first language acquisition.
1.

Behaviorists (learning through imitation, practice,

reinforcement, habit-formation) the acquisition of
vocabulary and grammatical morphemes.

2.

Innatists (LAD/UG/CPH) the acquisition of

complex grammar (structure of the language).

3.

Interactionists (social interaction) the acquisition

of how form and meaning are related, how
communicative functions are carried out, and how
language is used appropriately.
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