Issues in First Language Acquisition:

1. Competence and Performance:.- Competence refers to one’s

underlying of a system, event, or fact; non observable ability to do
something. Performance is the overtly observable and concrete
manifestation or realization of competence. It is the actual doing of
something. In schools, it is assumed that children possess certain
competence in given areas and that this competence can be measured
and assessed by means of the observation of elicited samples of
“tests” and “examinations”. In reference to language, competence is
the underlying knowledge of the system of a language –its rules of
grammar, its vocabulary, all the pieces of a language and how those
pieces fit together. Performance is the actual production (speaking,
writing) or the comprehension (listening, reading) of linguistic events.

Chomsky appointed that a theory of language had to be a theory

of competence so that linguists don’t try in vain to categorize an
infinite number of performance variables that don’t reflect the
underlying ability of the student. Linguists and psychologists in the
generative/cognitive framework have operated under this idea for
some time. Indirect methods of judging children’s competence had to
be invented when researchers realized that if a child has no interest or
cognizance of an adult’s grammatical interrogation, he will say
whatever comes to his mind. Those methods included: 1) tape
recording and transcription of countless hours of speech followed by
 studious analysis, and 2) certain imitation, production, or
comprehension tests. All of these had numerous disadvantages.

The competence-performance model hasn’t been accepted

universally because it states that the competence consists of the
abilities of an “idealized” hearer-speaker who has no performance
variables. Tarone (1988) criticized this model because he says that by
idealizing the language user, there is no place for all of a person’s
goofs that are potentially connected to what he calls heterogeneous
competence which are the abilities that are in the process of being
formed

2. Comprehension and Production.- They both can be aspects of

performance and competence. It is thought that comprehension
(listening and reading) can be associated with competence, while
production (speaking, writing) is associated with performance. The
truth is, both –comprehension and production of a language- are both
associated with performance, even if comprehension skills aren’t as
observable as production skills. Linguistic competence has several
modes or levels: speaking, listening, reading, and writing, and all of
them are separate modes of performance. While lexical and
grammatical instances of production-before-comprehension seem to
be few in number, it still behooves us to be careful in concluding that
all aspects of linguistic comprehension facilitate linguistic production.

3. Nature or Nurture?.- Nativists contend that a child is born with an

innate knowledge of a language, and that this innate property is
 universal. However, it hasn’t been proven that there are “language
genes” in our genetic information. Environmental factors cannot be
ignored. What is that innate knowledge of a language that “nature”
provides us with? And what is that knowledge “nurtured”, internalized
and learned from the environment and by teaching? Evidence has
been found that there are common patterns of linguistic and cognitive
development across a number of languages and that human beings are
“bio-programmed” to proceed from stage to stage and “bloom” when
it is time.

4. Universals.- Language is universally acquired in the same manner,

and deep structure of language at its deepest level may be common to
all languages. According to Maratsos (1988), universal linguistic
categories such as word order, morphological marking tone,
agreement, reduced reference of nouns and noun clauses, verbs and
verb classes, predication, negation and question formation are
common to all languages. There are principles and parameters which
specify some limited possibilities of variation. For example, the
principle of structure dependency “states that language is organized in
such a way that it crucially depends on the structural relationships
between elements in a sentence” (Holzman:1988), apparently, this
principle of structure dependency eventually appears in the
comprehension and production of a child. According to the UG,
languages cannot vary in an infinite number of ways. Parameters
determine ways in which languages can vary; for example, some
 languages are “head first” or “head last”, where the main nouns go
second in a sentence.

5. Systematicity and Variability: Language develops from pivot

grammar to full sentences of almost interminate length. Children
exhibit great ability to infer the phonological, structural, and lexical
semantic system of language. But there may also be variability in the
process of language acquisition, which means something children
once learned may easily be changed or forgotten due to the perception
of new language systems.

6. Language and thought: The issue at stake is to determine how

thought affects language, how language affects thought, and how
linguists can best describe and explain the interaction of the two.
There have been some positions on this such as that of Piaget (1972),
who claimed that cognitive development is at the center of human
organisms and that language depends on cognitive development.
Jerome Brunner (1966), pointed out that there are sources of
language-influenced intellectual development where words shape
concepts, dialogues between parents and children serve to orient and
educate. For Vigotsky (1978), language and thought were given in the
social interaction where language is a prerequisite to cognitive
development. He regarded thought and language as two distinct
cognitive operations. For him, every child reaches his potential
development through social interaction with adults and peers. Spir-
 Whorf appointed that each language imposes on its speaker a
particular “world view”.

7. Imitation: Research has shown that echoing is a particularly salient

strategy in early language learning and an important aspect of early
phonological acquisition. However, the semantic data is not noticed. It
has been observed in foreign language classes that rote pattern drills
evoke surface imitation where the repetition of sounds doesn’t lead
students to have the vaguest idea of what they are saying. Children,
however, perceive the importance of the semantic level of language,
so if they imitate the surface structure of the language, they won’t be
able to understand what they are imitating.

8. Practice: Children like to play with language just as they do with

other objects and events around them. Children’s language seems to
be a key to language acquisition. When talking about practice, it is
thought of as referring to speaking only. But we can also think of
comprehension practice.

9. Input: the speech that young children hear is primarily the speech
heard in home, and much of that speech is parental speech or the
speech of older siblings. Children, after consistent repeated of
telegraphic speech in meaningful contexts, eventually transfer correct
forms to their own speech. For example, from saying “dat John” to
“that’s John”. It is clear from more recent research that adult and peer
input to the child is far more important than nativists earlier believed.
Adult input seems to shape the child’s acquisition, and the interaction
 patterns between child and parent change according to the ingreasing
language skill of the child.

10.Discourse: conversation is a universal human activity performed

routinely in the course of daily living, the means by which children
learn to take part in conversation appear to be complex. The child
learns not only how to initiate a conversation but how to respond to
another’s initiating utterance and recognize the function of the
discourse. For example, when asked something, the child will
identify whether he is being requested for information, for an action,
or for help.