First Language Acquisition in Children

TOPIC: 6. Describe how children acquire their mother tongue. First Language Acquisition in Children Kubra Fidanboylu TESOL Diploma Course Module-1 /Assignment-2 September/2014 First Language Acquisition in Children If an extraterrestrial being came to visit our planet, it would be amazed by the similarities we share and the observable differences we have as Earth’s living beings. Concerning the similarities, it would note that all living beings are created with highly conserved developmental systems equipped within the encoded DNA (Hauser, Chomsky, Fitch, 2002). As living beings we have many general similarities such as; anatomy, nervous/respiratory/circulatory systems etc. However, our extraterrestrial researcher would further note that the human intellect and communication system is remarkably different from other living beings. This distinct form of communication that only humans share is: language. Acquisition of language has long been considered one of the uniquely defining characteristics of human behavior (“L.A” n.d.). First language (L1) or mother tongue is the language human beings acquire from birth. Even though young children are not formally taught language, language acquisition is a part of their physical, social, and cognitive development. Children are actively engaged in communication as they are learning to communicate. Clark (n.d.) states that: “The child is the active party in the language-learning process and in the process of making sense of language. His experience and interaction with others give him the background to relate the language to the sound/meaning relationship and to the purpose it represents. Children naturally obtain communicative competence, intrinsically understand the rules of grammar, and gain knowledge of the rules of using language.” Although there is a great variation in parent-child interaction patterns and the child’s individual rate of language acquisition, virtually all normally developing children become language users almost at the same rate. The way children acquire language follows a general pattern (Clark, “n.d.”). There remains a lot that is not known about language development in children. A child’s language is perpetually developing and changing. Nevertheless, this fantastic journey from that very first cry at birth to adult competence in a language can roughly be described with three widely accepted theories; learning theory, nativist theory and functional theory. “According to the learning theory, language is learned from experience alone. Children acquire language based on general learning mechanisms that are also involved in learning many other phenomena. These general learning mechanisms are crucially driven by the ‘input’. (Diessel, “n.d”, p. 1)” Behaviorism argues that the language is learned through a form of operant conditioning. B.F Skinner suggested that (as cited in Chomsky, 1967). “By using a sign, for example a word or lexical unit, given a certain stimulus, reinforces its 2 Portfolio link: https://colorsofteaching.wordpress.com/about/ monetary or contextual possibility”. Operant conditioning is possible through successful reinforcing with rewards. In time, the child will learn through repeated associations that the combination of certain sounds stands for certain things. An example for this phenomenon would be; the child using the word ‘this’ to ask for a cup of water or any other desired object, this would be understood by the caregiver and handing the water over would be the reward for the desired response. Thereby, the child’s understanding of the meaning of that word is reinforced which causes it to be used in similar situations in the future. On the contrary, Noam Chomsky opposed to B.F. Skinner’s behavioral theory of language acquisition and provided a more contemporary approach. According to this nativist theory language could not be learned from experience alone, this contrasts to the stimulusresponse incident of the behaviorist theory. Specifically, this approach argued that children do not receive enough information in the input to learn the intricate rules of grammar. Therefore, children are only able to acquire the grammar through innate grammatical knowledge (Diessel, “n.d”.). Nativist as a term is derived from the fundamental assertion that; language acquisition is innately determined, that we are born with the genetic capability to produce language. (Brown, H. D., 2000). Furthermore Chomsky states that “We are designed to walk. A human being taught to walk is impossible. And pretty much the same is true of language. Nobody is taught language. In fact, you can’t prevent a child from learning it” (as cited in Slobin, 1994). In other words, Chomsky characterized the principles of syntactic structure that could be viewed as normal to all dialects and reflected basic properties of the human personality. Chomsky additionally conveyed his reservations with respect to the limits of his framework to a black-box he called the “language acquisition device” (LAD). The LAD empowers the kid to utter a boundless number of sentences in a given language; whose internal procedures continue being indeterminate (Meissner, 2008). More recently, with the expansion of constructivist approaches to the study of language; there have been adjustments within the research. The adjustments were not far from the generative-cognitive aspect of language however, it was able to portray the deeper principles of language. There have been two general emphases which are; (1) Researchers started to observe language as a sign of cognitive and emotional capability to cope with the world, with other people and, with your own self, (2) Researchers further focused on the different forms of language and the functional measures of meaning created from social interaction (Brown, 2000). As also claimed by Vgotsky “thought development is determined by language, i.e., by the linguistic tools of thought and by the socio-cultural experience of the 3 Portfolio link: https://colorsofteaching.wordpress.com/about/ child”. (Vygotsky, 1962, cited in Elliot, 1994, P.41 as cited in Noormohamadi, 2008 P. 32,). Additionally Bloom (1976, p37) noted that (as cited in Brown, 2000) “an explanation of language development depends upon an explanation of the cognitive underpinnings of language: what children know will determine what they learn about the code for both speaking and understanding messages.” Hence, researchers started exploring “the formulation of the rules of the functions of language, and the relationship of the forms of language to those functions.” The overview of the theoretical proposals above can be found in the following schema. (See Fig1.) Figure: 1 Theories of first language acquisition (Brown, H. D., 2000) Language starts to emerge when an infant reaches about 18 months, before we start forming words we make sounds and understand our surroundings. Research suggests that before a child is able to form and use words he must be able to somehow “know” what an adult is saying and that he can only then figure out what single words mean. According to Meissner (2008) at the age of one and a half, children usually start uttering words and by the age of three a normal processing child can fully communicate. Language acquisition helps the child gain self awareness and a deeper sense of the external world. Where the child further learns to: distinguish, recognize, and understand quantity, quality and the concept of time. It also provides adaptive self-regulation of psychological activity. Over and above that, all research supports the fact that no one is born talking and that no child can talk without the exposure of a specific language from others. Additionally Meissner (2008) adds; “Significant 4 Portfolio link: https://colorsofteaching.wordpress.com/about/ developmental processes are at work from the beginning of life, arising in the womb and continuing on through the phases of development leading to the adult consolidation and coherence of the self acquired in adolescence” (p. 42). Consequently, there have been many research conducted around the world regarding the stages of first language acquisition. These researchers were able to achieve a general pattern of the stages of L1 acquisition in children. The summary of these stages can be found in following chart. Stages Typical Age Description Cooing 3-5 Months Vowel-like sounds Babbling 6-10 Months Repetitive CV patterns One-word stage 12-18 Months Single open-class words or word stems Two-word stage 18-20 Months "mini-sentences" with simple semantic relations Telegraphic stage 24-30-Months Sentence structures of lexical words, no functional or grammatical morphemes Later multiword stage 30 + Months Grammatical or functional structures emerge Table: 1 General stages of first language acquisition (Slobin, 1994) In conclusion, despite all, first language acquisition falls into one of the largest controversies of all time: nature vs. nurture. Behaviorist theory focuses on the nurture aspect through reinforcement, where it fails to explain the complexity of language. On the other hand the nativist approach points out natural human capacity to acquire a language. This raises the necessity for a scientific explanation of the transmission of language through genes, which is certainly not definite. Thus, the nativists approach fails to take the social and environmental factors into consideration. On the contrary the functional approach was able to summon these two theories by also focusing on function and social interaction. Nevertheless, it has been commonly agreed as Fodor (pp. 105–106, 1966) indicated that (as cited in Meissner, 2008) “acquisition of language is a product of the interaction of nature and nurture, of the integration of maturational processes with a facilitating environment. It is a platitude that no one is born talking, and it seems self-evident that a period of learning is a precondition of fluency, whatever maturational processes may also be involved. No child talks without having been exposed to the utterances of fluent speakers, and the language and dialect he eventually speaks are precisely the language and dialect to which he is exposed”. Thus, regarding the 5 Portfolio link: https://colorsofteaching.wordpress.com/about/ first language acquisition theories, it cannot be claimed that they are unified, complete or consistent. Research on children’s first language acquisition has come a long way, focusing on different aspects, moving towards reaching its eventual goal. It should be retained in mind that such a complex phenomenon cannot be proved and verified entirely by means of empirical research, supplementing to the fact that there is always room for further research and development regarding the subject. 6 Portfolio link: https://colorsofteaching.wordpress.com/about/ References ○ Brown, H. D. (2000). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, (4th ed.). New York: Pearson Education, Retrieved from http://works.doklad.ru/view/XPlrnQsPGkQ/all.html ○ Brown, H. D. (2000). Chapter 02. First Language Acquisition. Principles of Language Learning and Teaching [Schema], (4th ed.). New York: Pearson Education, Retrieved from http://www.tuninst.net/LAT/n-Brown3/n-ch02-3/n-ch02-3.htm. ○ Chomsky, N. (1967). In A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior (Leon A. Jakobovits and Murray S. Miron ed., pp. 42-143). Prentice-Hall, Retrieved from http://cogprints.org/1148/1/chomsky.htm. ○ Clark, B. (n.d.). First- and Second-Language Acquisition in Early Childhood. 181188. ○ Diessel, H. (n.d.). Introduction. In First Language Acquisition (pp. 1-47). ○ Hamann, C. (n.d.). Language Acquisition. Chapter 1: How Language Comes to Children, 1-51. ○ Hauser, M., Chomsky, N., & Fitch, W. (2002). The Faculty of Language: What Is It, Who Has It, and How Did It Evolve? Science’s Compass Review, 298, 1569. ○ Language Acquisition. (n.d.), Retrieved from http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=74028, September 7, 2014. ○ Meissner W.W (2008) The role of language in the development of the self 1: language Acquisition, American psychological association, 25(1), 26-46. 7 Portfolio link: https://colorsofteaching.wordpress.com/about/ ○ Noormohamadi, R. (2008). Mother Tongue, a Necessary Step to Intellectual Development. Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics, 12(2), 25-36. ○ Slobin, D. (1994). First Language Acquisition. The Human Language Series 2, 1-13. ○ Slobin, D. (1994) [Table]. 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