Language Acquisition in Children

12 Key excerpts on "Language Acquisition in Children"

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  Applied Cognitive Linguistics for Language Teachers

  • Jorg Roche, Moiken Jessen(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • LIT Verlag

    (Publisher)

  Afterwards, we will introduce the solution which usage-based grammar proposes and point out how this the- ory can explain the acquisition of syntactic constructions. The final section, Chapter 6.3, deals with primary language acquisition in a multilingual con- text. You will become familiar with the typical steps in the development of simultaneous bilingual children. Finally, we will discuss the possible explanations which various approaches propose. 225 6.1 Children and Language: The Early Years Helen Engemann In the previous chapters, you have received an overview of what consti- tutes language according to cognitive linguistics. In this chapter, you will see how children unscramble the various aspects of language and what skills they call on to this end. In the first part, we will show, on the basis of sound development, how receptive infant perception is with regard to the linguistic features of their target language(s). The second part of this chapter focuses on how children begin to assign the forms of their L1 language to a certain function and on this basis are able to deduce word meaning. Developmental phenomena and stages will illustrate how even the youngest of children are masters at recognizing patterns. Study Goals By the end of this chapter, you will be able to: − acquire an awareness of the common and contrasting features of the learning processes of second and first language acquisition − describe important milestones and phenomena of first language acquisition in the areas of sound development and lexical devel- opment − understand and describe how cognitive, social, and linguistic abilities are connected − explain testing methods for researching the cognitive and lin- guistic abilities of small children. 6.1.1 Terminological Tangle: Does a Child ‘Acquire’ or ‘Learn’ Languages? You have probably already noticed how academic literature uses a large variety of different terms to refer to the acquisition of a mother tongue.

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  South and Southeast Asian Psycholinguistics

  • Heather Winskel, Prakash Padakannaya(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Part I Language acquisition (i) Spoken language 1 Studying language acquisition cross-linguistically Sabine Stoll and Elena Lieven Introduction One of the fundamental questions in the enterprise of cognitive science is what enables children to learn any of the approximately 7000 languages spoken today and how they cope with the extreme variation exhibited in the structures of these languages? On the one hand, there must be human-specific universals that allow a child to learn any language. On the other, we know from research on linguistic relativity that language influences the way we characterize and categorize the world. Thus the way children learn language sheds light on the question of how language and cognition interact. Prelinguistic children show a similar development of the abilities relevant to producing and understanding language (Callaghan et al., 2011). Some of these abilities are joint attention, pattern recognition, imitation and role reversal. They also show an approximately similar timetable for major land- marks such as babbling and first words. However, as soon as children start producing language, many aspects of development across languages and also, within languages, diversify radically due to the different demands on the learner exhibited by the structures of the language a child is learning and the cultural and social environments a child grows up in. All acquisition theories assume that language learning involves the inter- play of biological and environmental factors but the nature of this interaction is hotly debated. To answer these theoretical issues, empirical acquisition research on a wide range of languages is mandatory. One of the main challenges is to explain how children are able to cope with such a wide variation both of structures and of cultural traditions and beliefs. There have been two somewhat different approaches to the question of variation.

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  The Cognitive Sciences

  An Interdisciplinary Approach

  • Carolyn P. Sobel, Paul Li(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  8

  The Role of Linguistics in Cognitive Science

  Language Acquisition

  First-Language Acquisition

  Stages in First-Language Acquisition

  The Social Aspect of First- Language Acquisition

  Second-Language Acquisition

  Bilingualism

  Language Deprivation

  Language Acquisition in Abused or Feral Children

  Language Acquisition in the Deaf and Hearing Impaired

  Language Loss (Language Attrition)

  Causes of Languages Loss

  Aphasia

  The Role of Computational Linguistics

  Computational Modeling of Language

  Language and Thought

  L inguists search for the underlying commonalities among languages. Some reconstruct rules of languages no longer spoken, and some focus on the rules of languages currently spoken. The data they describe contribute to our knowledge of the types of rules and principles underlying languages. From these data we can infer much about the functioning of the cognitive processes that produce them. As you read in Part 1, cognitive psychology attempts to understand the processes our minds engage in, the cognitive architecture that makes it all possible. Thus, language is of great interest to those of us in the field of cognitive psychology, concerned as we are with issues of learning and of the representation of knowledge in the brain. The following is a look at some of the areas in cognitive psychology in which language plays a major role and where the overlap with linguistics is plain.

  LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

  First-Language Acquisition

  It is helpful to address at this point, because it is far from obvious, the way in which human infants acquire a language (or languages, for many learn more than one in the environment in which they are raised). The word infant

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  Language Files

  Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics, 13th Edition

  • Department of Linguistics(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Ohio State University Press

    (Publisher)

  C H A P T E R 8 Language Acquisition © 2015 by Julia Porter Papke 328 F I L E 8.0 What Is Language Acquisition? Many people believe that language is what sets humans apart from other animals. Lan- guages are highly complex and sophisticated systems. So how do we humans manage to learn such complicated systems? This chapter addresses that question. A predominant theory assumes that part of our ability to acquire language is innate and that children learn language by “inventing” the rules specific to their language. When acquiring one or more native language(s), all children go through the same stages of language development: they start by babbling, then learn their first words, go through a so-called one-word stage (during which they can utter only one word at a time), enter the two-word stage, and finally learn the more complex structures of their language(s). Language acquisition is not limited to children; many people learn a second language later in life. However, second-language acquisition can differ from first-language acquisition in many respects. Contents 8.1 Theories of Language Acquisition Discusses the innateness hypothesis and introduces a number of theories of language acquisition. 8.2 First-Language Acquisition: The Acquisition of Speech Sounds and Phonology Describes how infants perceive and produce sounds, and discusses the acquisition of phonology, including babbling and first words. 8.3 First-Language Acquisition: The Acquisition of Morphology, Syntax, and Word Meaning Discusses the one-word stage, the two-word stage, and later stages of language acquisition, and introduces phenomena involved in the acquisition of word meaning. 8.4 How Adults Talk to Young Children Introduces various features of child-directed speech. 8.5 Bilingual Language Acquisition Presents different kinds of bilingual language acquisition, discusses code-switching, compares bilingual and monolingual language acquisition, and introduces issues in second-language acquisition.

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  Folk Linguistics

  • Nancy A. Niedzielski, Dennis R. Preston(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 4: Language acquisition and applied linguistics 4.1 First language acquisition 4.1.1 Introduction Unlike many technical issues of language, that of how children be-come proficient in the language that is spoken around them is one that the folk do not feel needs be relegated to experts. The several respondents who discussed this issue all had children of their own who had acquired or were in the process of acquiring language, and they were quite willing to voice their opinions on this topic, even, at times, offering unsolicited views. Often a fieldworker could generate considerable discussion by asking something as simple as whether or not the respondent's child was talking yet or what the child's first word had been. In some cases, however, the fieldworker (most often nonnative fieldworkers - see 1.2) were much more direct. In #31, for instance, C (the fieldworker) asked F how he taught his child to speak, a question whose presupposition was not denied and which resulted in a rich discussion of various techniques -intonation, vol-ume of parents' voices, repetition, and the use of picture books. As we shall see, however, it is not the majority folk opinion that parents teach their children to speak at all. Since, in general, our respondents did not find it particularly re-markable that children acquire a language, they were more likely to discuss who had the most influence on the language that the child would eventually speak and how that influence was manifested. Ad-ditionally, and as might be expected from what we have seen gener-ally concerning the role of prescription, they were concerned with whether or not the child acquired proper English and the implica-tions the quality of the language had for the child. There was some interest in certain types of impairments that their children or others' children had and some mention of the nature and role of baby talk that adults use to children and the nature of the talk that babies use themselves.

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  Understanding Language

  A Basic Course in Linguistics

  • Elizabeth Grace Winkler, Elizabeth Winkler(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  Chapter Overview 1. Early theories of first language acquisition 50 2. Stages of first language acquisition 59 3. Second language acquisition 63 4. Second language teaching and learning 66 In the first two chapters, we’ve learned that acquiring a language is a remark-able achievement requiring an understanding of many linguistic systems each with its own set of complex rules. Nevertheless, practically all children acquire their native language with little obvious effort. The vast majority of us take this phenomenon for granted. It is not until we try to learn a second language that we confront for the first time a multitude of rules and processes that we must understand to communicate effectively in a second language. In fact, most native speakers are completely unaware, at a conscious level, of the majority of the rules of their own native language. Despite this, every day we produce and comprehend thousands of sentences, which we have never heard or produced before. What is it that children acquire during the acquisition period before age 5? Children are exposed to the dialect that their parents speak, thus they learn the basic formal patterns of that dialect. This would be rules like, in English, that adjectives come before nouns and that the normal sentence pattern is subject, verb and finally object. These types of fundamental rules cover nor-mal spoken language. This is not the same as school grammar or prescriptive grammar as discussed in Chapter 1. That would include rules that prohibit 3 Language Acquisition Understanding Language 50 ending sentences in prepositions or using double negatives. The vast major-ity of children do not learn these types of rules until they go to school, and despite the best efforts of our teachers, many of us continue to break these school rules throughout our lives, especially in speaking. 1. Early theories of first language acquisition In the mid- 1950s, behavioural psychologist B.

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  The Sounds of Language

  An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology

  • Elizabeth C. Zsiga(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  For both children and adults, we examine the tools used to study the phenomena, typical data for both speech perception and speech production, and the theories that are proposed to account for the data. Finally (Section 20.5), we end with a consideration of what the study of phonological acquisition and learning can teach us about linguistic theory. 20.1 language acquisition and language learning The goal of the linguist is to propose an explicit analysis; the goal of the learner is to gain the knowledge needed to become a proficient language user. When we speak of the process of gaining language proficiency as it applies to babies and children, we refer to language acquisition, and we call a native language acquired in childhood the L1. To say that language is “acquired” emphasizes the seeming effortlessness of the task. All babies, unless they have severe physical or cognitive disabilities, become competent (if not perfect) users of their native language by age 4. The process is not nearly so effortless for an adult learning a non-native language. (Lin- guists may call any non-native language an L2, even if it is the third or fourth in the speaker’s repertoire.) Most adults find the process of learning an L2 to be difficult, even with explicit instruction, and the results vary considerably. Differences in aptitude, motivation, type of instruction, and amount of social interaction play important roles in language learning for adults. Some adults have an aptitude for learning languages and are quite successful: some L2 speakers become so proficient that their speech is indistinguishable from that of a native. For most adult learners, however, a foreign accent of varying severity persists, even when the learner has been surrounded by native language users for many years. This is the case even for speakers who are otherwise highly intelligent: think of the thickly-accented English of Albert Einstein or Henry Kissinger, both native speakers of German.

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  Language Development

  • Peter Jordens, Josine A. Lalleman(Authors)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Fletcher & M. Garman (eds.) Language acquisition: studies in first language development, Cambridge: Univ. Press, 455-474 LEOPOLD, W.F. 1939-1949 Speech development of a bilingual child, Evanston: Northw. Univ. Press LOVAAS, O.I. 1977 The autistic child: language development through behaviour modification, New York: Irvington Publ. MACNAMARA, J. 1977 From sign to language, in J. Macnamara (ed.) Language Learning and thought, New York: Acad. Press MARATSOS, M. 1983 Some current issues in the study of the acquisition of grammar, in J.H. Flavell & E.M. Markman (eds.) Handbook of child psychology Vol 3: Cognitive development (general ed. P.H. Müssen), New York: Wiley. MARATSOS, Μ. & M.A. CHALKLEY 1980 The internal language of children's syntax: the ontogenesis and representation of syntactic categories, in K.E. Nelson (ed.) Children's Language (Vol 2), New York: Gardner Press MAZURKEWICH, I. & L. WHITE 1984 The acquisition of the dative alternation: unlearning overgeneralizations, in Cognition 16, 261-283 MCNEILL, 1966 The creation of language by children, in J. Lyons & R.J. Wales (eds.) Psycholinguistic Papers. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press 27 MILLER, G.A. & Ν. CHOMSKY 1963 Finitary models of language users, in R. Bush, E. Galanter & R. Luce (eds.), Handbook of mathematical psychology, vol. II. New York: Wiley MUYSKEN, P.C. 1985 Taalontwikkeling en grammatika, in Tijdschrift voor Taal- en Tekstwetenschap 5,3, 219-230 NELSON, K. 1973 Structure and strategy in learning to talk, in Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 38 NEWPORT, E.L. 1976 Motherese: the speech of mothers to young children, in J.J. Castellan, D.B. Pisoni & G.R. Potts (eds.) Cognitive Theory (Vol 3), Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum PETERS, A.N. 1986 Early syntax, in P. Fletcher & M. Garman (eds.) Language acquisition; studies in first language development, Cambridge: Univ.

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  Linguistic Perspectives on Language and Education

  • Anita K. Barry(Author)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • Praeger

    (Publisher)

  If you are interested in the acquisition of this structure, a good place to begin is Crain and Lillo-Martin, 389-98. 4. As a teacher, you might be interested in exploring language development in the later years of childhood. Here you might begin with the seminal study by Chomsky (1969). Tager-Flusberg (186-97) also offers some interesting insights into later language de- velopment. 5. In this chapter, we touched on some of the theoretical issues concerning the acquisition of language, such as the question of how much language-learning ability is innate Child Language Acquisition 191 and what the role of imitation is in the process. These questions are part of a much broader and long-standing intellectual debate concerning the nature of language. An- other related piece of the debate is the question of whether language learning is different from other kinds of learning. Some psychologists make the case that it is not, while most linguists take the position that it is. If you wish to explore this debate, a good place to start is Bohannon and Bonvillian (279-84). You might also wish to explore the recent claim by some scientists that they have discovered a gene specif- ically related to language. (See "Scientists Report Finding a Gene Enabling Speech," New York Times, October 4, 2001.) More will be said about these issues in Chapter 11. 6. This chapter has not explored the acquisition of the pragmatics of language use, an area that might be of great interest to a teacher who interacts socially with children for many hours each day. How do children learn the conventions of politeness? How do they learn the intent behind an utterance? How do they learn to gauge what their listener already knows and shape their language appropriately? How do they learn to give appropriate feedback in a conversation? At what point do they recognize gender differences in the use of language? These issues are explored in Warren and Mc- Closkey (1997).

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  Process linguistics

  Exploring the processual aspects of language and language use, and the methods of their description

  • Thomas T. Ballmer, Wolfgang Wildgen, Thomas T. Ballmer, Wolfgang Wildgen(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Do these capacities develop in a way that is impor-tant for language acquisition? Is the child capable of formulating hypotheses about language in general and more specifically about syntax? Are these hypotheses similar to the child's general learn-ing principles? Does this kind of hypothesis develop along the same lines as his intellectual development? What do these hypoth-eses refer to? etc. In this light it is interesting to remember that LA-theory claims a limited hypothesis space and LL-theory an extensive hypothesis space. This means that in the LL-theory the child is postulated to be more active and creative than in LA-theory; c) to determine more exactly the child's innate and language specific capacity to learn language. Actually this latter point is nothing more than a methodological gap: all peculiarities that cannot be explained for the moment from a) and b) belongs to it for the time being. That language acquisition occurs almost unnoticed is only partly true. Every adult is aware that he cannot talk to a child - whether he is one, two or seven years old - in the same manner as to an adult. Furthermore, it is often found that adults don't neglect systematically the child's language difficulties, but do correct and expand their immature productions. 213 Finally, the analysis of mother to child language makes clear that this kind of communication is bound by very specific rules. A valid explanation of why people think that children learn their language almost unnoticed is perhaps that language is not learned so much by overt practice in a learning situation, but rather in a communicative situation. What we are doing with a child is communicating, transferring information establishing relation-ships. For the child, however, there is the additional task of detecting linguistic regularities in the speech directed to him.

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  Diversity and Equity in the Classroom

  • Valerie Pang(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Cengage Learning EMEA

    (Publisher)

  Language Development and Acquisition Learning Objectives LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4 LO5 uni273D CHAPTER 10 STANDARDS COVERED Copyright 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. WCN 02-3 00 308 Chapter 10 Language Development and Acquisition Overview Many students arrive at school knowing how to speak a first language other than English, so it is important for teachers to understand how students learn their home language and a second language. Teachers need to learn how they can use language acquisition theories and models to implement various English language learner (ELL) teaching strategies. There are numerous links between learning language and the development of cognition. Lan -guage learning is not only important so that students can communicate with each other, but also language is a critical tool in the development of higher-order thinking, cognitive, and writing skills. The next section discusses the fact that many students arrive in the class -room speaking languages other than English. Social Context: Demographics In the United States, numerous students come to school speaking a language other than English at home. The Migration Policy Institute (2015) reported that students ages 6 to 18 who attended school and had a home language other than English were recognized as English language learners (ELLs). The information was taken from the 2013 American Community Survey (ACS). Nationally, 71 percent of ELLs speak Spanish. In addition, the following nine languages and the percentage of students who speak a language other than English are included in Tableuni00A010.1. In reviewing the table, it is interesting to note that five of the languages are not based on the Latin alphabet; they are Chinese, Arabic, Yiddish, Korean, and Hmong. Immigrants are migrating to the United States from Asian, European, and Middle Eastern countries.

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  Consciousness and the Acquisition of Language

  • Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hugh J. Silverman(Authors)
  • 1979(Publication Date)
  • Northwestern University Press

    (Publisher)

  1 / The Psychological Development of Language in the 'Child [1] AN OVERVIEW DURING THE FIRST MONTHS OF LIFE, the child cries; he makes expressive movements; and then he begins to babble. One must consider this babbling as the ancestor of language: it is, above all, extraordinarily rich and includes phonemes which do not exist in the language that is spoken around the child, and which he himself, once he has become an adult, is incapable of reproducing (for example, when he wants to reacquire t'hem to learn a foreign language). This babbling is therefore a poly- morphic language, whieh is spontaneous with respect to its en- vironment. (It exists in deaf-mute children, even though it is not as well developed.) There is, however, a large amount of imita- tion. This imitation reaches its culmination between six and twelve months, but it remains rudimentary to the extent that the child does not grasp' the meaning of that which he is imitating. The same relationship' exists between babbling and language as between scribblin,g and drawing. This imitation concerns the melody of the sentence just as much as the words, because the child tries, as it were, to speak "in general." W. Stem relates that, for a month, his daughter spoke a foreign ''language,'' which had 'a conversational tone but which did not mean anything. 1 (It was as though she were playing I. [See William Stern, Psychology of Early Childhood (New York: Holt, 1931).] [II] 12 / CONSCIOUSNESS AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION at speaking.) According to Delacroix, "The child bathes in language." 2 He is attracted and enthralled by the movement of dialogue around him, and tries it himself. Language is the indissoluble extension of all physical activity, and at the same time it is quite new in relation to that physical actiVity. Speech emerges from the "total language" as constituted by gestures, mimicries, etc.

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