Language Acquisition

Raymond Hickey, English Linguistics

Why should one concern oneself with language acquisition?

1) Language acquisition tells about the manner in which we unconsciously

learn language in our childhood. As second language acquisition it tells
us about the way in which we can add another language to our
existing knowledge of language. Second language acquisition
furthermore offers insights into how two languages interact and
illuminates the phenomenon of interference.

2) First language acquisition reveals the stages through which we as very

young children go through in learning our later native language. These
stages teach us about what areas of language are central and what are
less important.

3) First language acquisition offers evidence for the hypothesis of many

scientists that a certain amount of knowledge is innate (the nativist
standpoint) and not simply learned by observation and/or habit (the
empiricist standpoint).
4) The order of stages is of relevance when looking at other areas of
linguistics such as language change because the division of
phenomena and categories into central and peripheral (acquisitional
hierarchy) is reflected in the types of language change which are
attested in the world's languages.

5) The progression of language acquisition furthermore throws light on

our cognitive development and as such help us to better understand
our psychological makeup.

6) On a broader level, language acquisition is concerned with learning

more than one language. While monolingualism is often the rule in
modern Western societies, most of the world's population is at least
bilingual. This bilingualism has a social and an individual aspect.
 Areas within language acquisition
1) Language acquisition and related areas of development

► a) Biological maturation and language acquisition

► b) Linguistic and cognitive development
► c) Social aspects of language acquisition

2) Acquisition of phonology/morphology

3) Acquisition of syntax

► a) Single-
Single-word, two-
two-word and complex sentences
► b) Syntax and later language acquisition (after 5)

4) Acquisition of meaning

► a) Meaning relations
► b) Expanding vocabulary

5) Acquisition of pragmatics

► a) Learning how to use language in a community

 Areas within language acquisition (cont.)

5) First and second language acquisition

► a) Comparing natural L1 and L2 acquisition

► b) Controlled and natural L2 acquisition

6) First language acquisition and other areas of linguistics

► (psycholinguistics, language change, speech errors, language
► pathology, language universals)

7) Acquisition of more than one language (natural bilingualism)

8) Linguistic theory and language acquisition (empricism vs. generativism)

What is psycholinguistics?

Psycholinguistics is the study of language with reference to human

psychology. It has a very broad scope but is frequently used with
specific reference to processes of language acquisition, especially of
one's first language. In the more general psycholinguistics covers the
following areas

1) Neurolinguistics (the study of language and the brain). This has a

physical dimension to it and is the domain of neurologists concerned
with impairments of language due to brain lesions, tumors, injuries or
strokes. It also has an observational domain which is the concern of
linguists. Here certain phenomena like slips of the tongue, various
performance errors (due to nervousness, tiredness for instance) are
examined for the insights which they might offer about the structure of
the language faculty in the human brain.
2) Language pathology The breakdown of language has been studied
intensively from at least two main angles. The first is that of medicine
where attempts are made to help patients regain at least partially the
ability to use language normally. Such patients are typically older
people who have had a stroke (a burst blood vessel in the brain, in this
case affecting the Broca or Wernicke areas) or younger people who
have been involved in an accident (typically in a car or on a
motorcycle) and have thus an impairment of the brain due to external
injury. A third group is formed by patients who have had a tumor
(cancerous growth) in the brain which impairs their speech pressing on
either of the speech areas (fairly rare as a medical phenomenon
though). Language disorders are known in linguistics and medicine as
aphasia. There are many different types depending on the impairment
which a patient shows.

► Broca's area A part of the brain — approximately above the left

temple — called after its discoverer the French doctor Paul Broca and
which is responsible for speech production.

► Wernicke's area A part of the brain which is taken to be responsible

for the comprehension of language. It is located just above the left
ear. Named after Karl Wernicke, the German scientist who discovered
the area in the second half of the 19th century.
 Speech errors

► The tip of the tongue phenomenon can be seen with non-

pathological speakers and is characterised by a sudden
block in lexical retrieval and which is released again for no
apparent reason. Slips of the tongue involve the
involuntary and unintended switching of elements among
words of a sentence. Normally the onset or rhyme of
adjacent syllables are switched and this phenomenon
offers firm evidence for the validity of the syllable as a
phonological unit.
 Language acquisition

What can one learn?

► A child can learn any language. However, this is in general the

language of the parents, but this does not have to be the case. The
language which the child is exposed to in the first years of life is
that which is learned.

► If more than one language is spoken in the environment of the child

then the child learns these languages. Two languages are not rare,
three or more are unusual, however. What is important for the child
is that both languages are spoken to an equal extent in the
environment - for instance by each of the parents - and that there
are no major tensions in the relationship to the persons who speak
these languages, otherwise the child will probably develop a general
dislike of the language of this individual.
 Language acquisition
This is a process which can take place at any period of one's life. In
the sense of first language acquisition, however, it refers to the
acquisition (unconscious learning) of one's native language (or
languages in the case of bilinguals) during the first 6 or 7 years of
one's life (roughly from birth to the time one starts school).

Characteristics of first language acquisition

1) It is an instinct. This is true in the technical sense, i.e. it is triggered by

birth and takes its own course, though of course linguistic input from
the environment is needed for the child to acquire a specific language.
As an instinct, language acquisition can be compared to the acquisition
of binocular vision or binaural hearing.

2) It is very rapid. The amount of time required to acquire one's native

language is quite short, very short compared to that needed to learn a
second language successfully later on in life.
3) It is very complete. The quality of first language acquisition is far
better than that of a second language (learned later on in life). One
does not forget one's native language (though one might have slight
difficulties remembering words if you do not use it for a long time).

4) It does not require instruction. Despite the fact that many non-linguists
think that mothers are important for children to learn their native
language, instructions by parents or care-takers are unnecessary,
despite the psychological benefits of attention to the child.

What is the watershed separating first and second language acquisition?

Generally, the ability to acquire a language with native speaker

competence diminishes severly around puberty. There are two
suggestions as to why this is the case. 1) Shortly before puberty the
lateralisation of the brain (fixing of various functions to parts of the
brain) takes place and this may lead to general inflexibility. 2) With
puberty various hormonal changes take place in the body (and we
technically become adults). This may also lead to a inflexibility which
means that language acquisition cannot proceed to the conclusion it
reaches in early childhood.
 Definitions and distinctions
► Acquisition is carried out in the first years of childhood and leads to
unconscious knowledge of one's native language which is practically indelible.
Note that acquisition has nothing to do with intelligence, i.e. children of
different degrees of intelligence all go through the same process of acquiring
their native language.
► Learning (of a second language) is done later (after puberty) and is
characterised by imperfection and the likelihood of being forgotten. Learning
leads to conscious knowledge.

► FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION This is the acquisition of the mother tongue.

Chronology is important here (see below). The degree of competence acquired
may vary from individual to individual and may be checked by later switching
to another language. Note that language acquisition is largely independent of
intelligence, although individuals can and do differ in their mastery of open
classes such as vocabulary.

► BI- AND MULTILINGUALISM This is the acquisition of two or more languages

from birth or at least together in early childhood. The ideal situation where all
languages are equally represented in the child's surroundings and where the
child has an impartial relationship to each is hardly to be found in reality so
that of two or more languages one is bound to be dominant.
► SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION This is the acquisition of a second
language after the mother tongue has been (largely) acquired. Usually
refers to acquisition which begins after puberty, i.e. typically adult language
acquisition. Sometimes replaced by the term further language acquisition.

► ERROR This is an incorrect feature in language acquisition which occurs

because of the stage at which the child is at a given time (acquisition in as
yet incomplete). Errors are regular and easily explainable. For instance the
use of weak verb forms for strong ones or the overapplication of the s-
plural to all nouns in English would be examples of errors. Such features
tend to right themselves with time when the child appreciates that many
word classes contain a degree of irregularity.

► MISTAKE Here one is dealing with a random, non-systematic and usually

unpredictable phenomenon in second language learning. Mistakes are
sometimes termed 'performance errors' to emphasise that they arise on the
spur of the moment when speaking and are not indicative of any
acquisitional stage.

► COMPETENCE is the abstract ability to speak a language, i.e. knowledge of

a language independent of its use.

► PERFORMANCE is actual use of language. Its features do not necessarily

reflect characteristics of comptence, for example, when one is nervous,
tired, drunk one may have difficulties speaking coherently. This, however,
does not mean that one cannot speak one's native language.
 Acquisition and learning

► Second language acquisition refers to a further language

which is acquired after the first, usually after primary
school. The acquisition of a second language never reaches
the degree of proficiency of the first. The reason for this is
that children start too late, in fact they are usually
teenagers before being exposed to the second language.
After puberty one cannot learn a second language as well
as a first one, no matter how much time one invests in
this. In this connection linguists generally make the
distinction between acquisition - for the first language -
and learning - for the second language after childhood.
 Conditions of acquisition
► NATURAL This is characterised by continuous exposure to language data. This data is
not ordered, i.e. the (child) learner is exposed to the performance of adult speakers of
the language he/she is acquiring. There is little if any feedback to the acquirer with
regard to this intake.

► CONTROLLED This is intervallic if not to say sporadic. Furthermore it takes place against
the background of another language, usually the first language (L1) of the learners. In
exceptional cases acquisition can be both natural and controlled, i.e. where one obtains
formal instruction (or gives it one to oneself) and lives in an environment where the
target language is spoken. Controlled acquisition is further characterised by an ordered
exposure to the data of the language.

► GUIDED LANGUAGE ACQUISITION This is an intermediary type between the two just
discussed and is characterised by prescriptive corrections on the part of the child's
contact persons, i.e. mother, father, etc. Corrections show the transfer of adult
grammars to children whereas natural language acquisition shows the gradual
approximation of the child's grammar to the adult's.
► Note that a child is not corrected as often by his/her mother as one might
imagine. Self-correction is most common (but not immediate) due to two factors. Most
broadly speaking, because of lack of communication (here immediate correction may
take place) and secondly by consistently hearing correct usage on the part of the
mother, the child eventually drops his/her incorrect forms, which while perhaps
communicatively effective, are grammatically wrong. It is also true that children do not
learn language just from the mother. If siblings are present, then they too form a source
of input for the child. And siblings do not correct others or simplify their language for the
younger ones among them.
 The logical problem of acquisition
► The logical problem of language acquisition is that it would seem
impossible to learn anything about a certain language without first
already knowing something about language in general. That is the
child must know what to expect in language before he/she can actually
order the data he/she is presented with in his/her surroundings and
ascribe meanings to words he/she encounters.

► THE EVIDENCE OF DEAF CHILDREN Deaf children start by babbling

and cooing but this soon peters out because they have no linguistic
input. However, they would seem to seize on other communication
systems and if people in their surroundings use sign language then
they pick this up. The interesting point here is that the children usually
learn the sign language more perfectly than the people from which
they learn it (note: sign language has grammar with inflections just as
does spoken language). They are creative in this language and create
sentence structures if these are not present in their input. This would
seem to suggest that deaf children use sign language as a medium for
activating their knowledge about language which is innate.
► THE EVIDENCE OF PIDGINS Children who have very poor input in their
surroundings tend to be creative in their use of language. Any
categories which they deem essential but which are not present in the
input from their environment are then invented by the children. This
has happened historically in those colonies of European powers where
a generation was cut off from its natural linguistic background and only
supplied with very poor unstructured English, Spanish, Dutch, etc. as
input in childhood. Such input, known technically as a pidgin, was then
expanded and refined grammatically by the children of the next
generation and is known in linguistics as a creole. Here one can see
that if the linguistic medium of their environment is deficient children
create the structures which they feel are lacking, going on their own
abstract innate knowledge of language.
► The implication of both the above cases is that children look for
language and if they do not find it they create it somehow, so that
they have a system of communication. In this sense language is a true
instinct because it starts to develop of its own accord and does not
need to be consciously triggered.
► IS THERE A LANGUAGE GENE? There is a pathological medical condition called
Specific Language Impairment (abbreviated SLI) which covers a range of
defects, all of which have in common that children continually make
grammatical mistakes in their mother tongue, i.e. they would seem to be
unaware of the existence of grammatical rules. Now as the Canadian linguist
Myrna Gopnik has shown in her study of a family in Britain, some 16 of 30
members over three generations suffered from the defect. This would seem to
imply that it is genetically transferred (it looks like a defective gene which is
dominant in the family) which would also imply that the ability to grasp the
rules of grammar in first language acquisition is genetically encoded.

► IS THE LANGUAGE FACULTY SEPARATE FROM OTHER COGNITIVE ABILITIES?

There is one major piece of evidence that this is the case. Williams syndrome
is a medical condition in which the patients are quite severly retarded, as both
children and adults, and have difficulties counting properly or carrying out
simple tasks like tieing their shoelaces. However, such people are good
speakers of their native language and just show a slight tendency to
overgeneralise (they might say speaked for spoke). They have a good
command of grammatical rules which shows that their language faculty is
intact. The implication of this is that our ability to speak language is separate
from other cognitive abilities.
 How is language transmitted?
► Language is obviously passed on from parents to their children. But on closer
inspection one notices that it is the performance (in the technical sense) of the
previous generation which is used as the basis for the competence of the next.
To put it simply, children do not have access to the competence of their
parents.

► 1) Linguistic input from parents (performance) >

► 2) Abstraction of structures by children >
► 3) Internalisation (competence of next generation)

► The above model is the only one which can account for why children can later
produce sentences which they have never heard before: the child stores the
sentence structures of his/her native language and has a lexicon of words as
well. When producing new sentences, he/she takes a structure and fills it with
words. This process allows the child to produce a theoretically unlimited
number of sentences in his/her later life.
► Note that certain shifts may occur if children make incorrect conclusions
about the structure of the language they are acquiring on the basis of what
they hear. Then there is a discrepancy between the competence of their
parents and that which they construct; this is an important source of language
change.
► Language acquisition for any generation of children
consists of achieving mastery in four main areas, i.e.
acquiring:

1) A set of syntactic rules which specify how sentences are

built up out of phrases and phrases out of words.

2) A set of morphological rules which specify how words are

built up out of morphemes, i.e. grammatical units smaller
than the word.

3) A set of phonological rules which specify how words,

phrases and sentences are pronounced.

4) A set of semantic rules which specify how words, phrases

and sentences are interpreted, i.e. what their meaning is.
 Competence and Performance

► competence According to Chomsky in his Aspects of the

theory of syntax (1965) this is the abstract ability of an
individual to speak the language which he/she has learned
as native language in his/her childhood. The competence
of a speaker is unaffected by such factors as nervousness,
temporary loss of memory, speech errors, etc. These latter
phenomena are entirely within the domain of performance
which refers to the process of applying one's competence
in the act of speaking. Bear in mind that competence also
refers to the ability to judge if a sentence is grammatically
well-formed; it is an unconscious ability.

► performance The actual production of language as

opposed to the knowledge about the structure of one's
native language which a speaker has internalised during
childhood.
 Stages of language acquisition
► One of the firmest pieces of evidence that language acquisition is
genetically predetermined is the clear sequence of stages which
children pass through in the first five years of their lives. Furthermore
there are characteristics of each stage which always hold. For instance
up to the two-word stage only nouns and/or verbs occur. No child
begins by using conjunctions or prepositions, although he/she will have
heard these word classes in his/her environment. Another
characteristic is overextension. Children always begin acquiring
semantics by overextending meaning, for instance by using the word
dog for all animals if the first animal they are confronted with is a dog.
Or by calling all males papa or by using spoon for all items of cutlery.
The generalisation here is that children move from the general to the
particular. To begin with their language is undifferentiated on all
linguistic levels. With time they introduce more and more distinctions
as they are repeatedly confronted with these from their surroundings.
Increasing distinctions in language may well be linked to increasing
cognitive development: the more discriminating the child's perception
and understanding of the world, the more he/she will strive to reflect
this in language.
0) 0.0 - 0.3 Organic sounds, crying, cooing
1) 0.4 - 0.5 Beginning of the babbling phase
2) 0.10 - 1 The first comprehensible words. After
this follow one-word, two-word and
many-word sentences. The only word
stages is known as the holophrastic
stage; Telegraphic speech refers to
speech with only nouns and verbs.
3) 2.6 Inflection occurs, negation, interrogative
and imperative sentences
4) 3.0 A vocabulary of about 1000 words
5) 5.0 The main syntactic rules have been
acquired

These divisions of the early period of first language

acquisition are approximate and vary from individual to
individual.
 Insights from language acquisition

Unconscious knowledge
► For the linguist the metaphor of the iceberg is very
useful: nine tenths of language is under the surface.
For instance, none of the present public would
probably be in a position to list and describe the
sentence structures of their native language.
Nonetheless you use these hundreds of times each day
in well-formed sentences. Perhaps a medical
comparison might be helpful here: you use the muscles
of your body constantly in order to move your limbs or
to keep your balance while standing. You can do that
without knowing how it works. But your central
nervous system 'knows' how the muscles are
innervated.
 Insights from language acquisition

One can recognise here that there are two types of

knowledge: knowledge which one can express in words -
e.g. the rules of chess - and unconscious knowledge
which is activated without reflection, for instance, when
speaking your native language. Such unconscious
knowledge is based on the internalisation of language
structures which we extracted from our environment as
children.

Input Language in our surroundings

Action by child (i) extraction of structures

(ii) storage in long term memory as
unconscious knowledge
 Insights from language acquisition

Language as an instinct, as an innate faculty

► An instinct is a tendency to do something which when

triggered in childhood cannot be rejected, it is not a
matter of conscious decision. For instance, there is no
adult who crawls around on all fours, we cannot refuse
to walk upright because this is an instinct. The
development of an instinct takes place immediately
after birth and is completed quickly.
 Insights from language acquisition

If one applies this view to language acquisition then one can

maintain the following.

1) No child makes a conscious decision to learn a language.

2) No child has ever refused to learn the language spoken in his/her
environment.
3) Acquisition is unconscious and can be compared with the unfolding
of other instincts, for instance that of binaural hearing or telescopic
vision.

Linguists furthermore assume that we know what language is and

how we are to react to it, i.e. by acquiring it. To put it simply: the
language faculty is innate so that the child can immediately process
the language he/she hears in the surroundings. The child must not
wait for instructions from the parents before acquiring his/her native
language.
 Insights from language acquisition
The decline in the ability to learn language

In general one can maintain that after puberty the ability to acquire a
language - in the technical sense of learning with native speaker
competence - drops off radically and is never gained again. There
are two major hypotheses about why this should be the case. The
hypotheses may well be related to each other.

1) Due to the lateralisation of the brain - shortly before puberty - the

brain loses flexibility and receptiveness, at least for unconscious
learning. By lateralisation one means the fixing of functions of the
brain to one half only.

2) With sexual maturity at puberty strong hormonal changes take place

with humans. These lead to a reduction of the playful element
which is typical of children. The spontaneous behaviour of children
decreases drastically with the onset of puberty. A certain rigidity is
characteristic of adults vis a vis children and this also affects the
ability to learn languages.
 Insights from language acquisition

What do we know at the end of the day?

Now we can view the stages of native language acquisition in more

detail.

1) Children hear fragments of language in their environment. They

then abstract the underlying structures behind what they hear.

2) Children then internalise the structure they gained - for instance the
structures of sentences - and later on they use these when they
wish to form new sentences without considering whether they have
heard an actual sentence before or not. This process is called
sentence generation in linguistics.
 Contrasting features of first and second
language acquisition

FLA SLA
no conscious choice choice made by learner
very rapid relatively slow
no instruction instruction is usual
high competence reached competence attained varies greatly

Possible reasons for differences between FLA and SLA

SLA occurs against the background of FLA (interference hypothesis)

FLA takes place before puberty (adulthood)
FLA takes place before lateralisation of brain (just before puberty)
Development
of the human
brain during
pregnancy
The Limbic System (shown in lilac colouring)
 Recommended literature

Aitchison, Jean 1998. The articulate mammal. An introduction

to psycholinguistics. London: Routledge.
Clark, Herbert H. 1996. Using language. Cambridge:
University Press.
Fletcher, Paul and Michael Garmon (eds) 1979 and later
Language acquisition Cambridge: University Press.
Gregory, Richard L. (ed.) 1987. The Oxford companion to the
mind. Oxford: University Press.
Lust, Barbara and Claire Foley (eds) 2004. Language
acquisition: The essential readings. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Steinberg, Danny 1993. An introduction to psycholinguistics.
London: Longman.