Language Acquisition
Presented By - Jas Preet KusThwaTha
SBU200411
Session -2020-2023
BA ENGLISH HONOURS
SEMESTER -II
LANGUAGE &
LINGUISTIC
1.WHAT IS LANGUAGE ACQUISITION ?
Language acquisition is the process by which
humans acquire the capacity to perceive and
comprehend language (in other words, gain the
ability to be aware of language and to
understand it), as well as to produce and use
words and sentences to communicate. Also ,
the First language acquisition refers to the
way children learn their native language and
Second language acquisition refers to the
learning of another language or languages
besides the native language.
For children learning their native language,
linguistic competence develops in stages, from
babbling to one word to two word, then telegraphic
speech. Babbling is now considered the earliest
form of language acquisition because infants will
produce sounds based on what language input they
receive. One word sentences (holophrastic speech)
are generally monosyllabic in consonant-vowel
clusters. During two word stage, there are no
syntactic or morphological markers, no inflections
for plural or past tense, and pronouns are rare, but
the intonation contour extends over the whole
utterance.
Telegraphic speech lacks function words and only carries
the open class content words, so that the
sentences sound like a telegram.
2.NatIVe LaNGuaGe AcquIsItIoN
TIMeLINe
3.BASIC THEORIES ABOUT LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
The three Basic theories about
language Acquisitions are -
1) Behaviorism (B.F. Skinner)
2) Universal Grammar
(Noam Chomsky)
3) Cognitive Theory (Jean Piaget)
BEHAVIORISM-
B.F SKINNER
B.F. Skinner, an eminent behaviorist, proposed
that language acquisition is really one big and
complex case of conditioning. At its core, it’s
all pattern recognition—associating words
with meaning.
For example, if a baby hears the word “milk”
often enough right before being fed from the
bottle, he’ll soon learn what that word means.
If he always hears the word “ball” right before
being handed a spherical object, he’ll begin to
associate “ball” with its referent
UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR-
NAOM CHOMSKY
In the 1960s, the field of behaviorism came under serious attack from
the likes of Noam Chomsky, a man recognized as the father of modern
linguistics, and about as decorated a scholar as any.
He pointed out that if you really look closer, parents give only very little
linguistic input for tots to run with. Chomsky argued that parent-child
interactions are limited to repeated utterances of things like “Put that
back” and “Open your mouth”–not very likely to make significant dents
towards the cause of language learning. And besides, when a child says,
“I swimmed today,” he didn’t really get that from any adult figure in his
life. That’s not imitation.
So how does one account for the fact that children learn to speak
their native tongues in spite of the “poverty of the stimulus”? One is left
with the conclusion, Chomsky argues, that if not from the outside,
external input, then the ability must have been there all along.
COGNITIVE THEORY-
JEAN PIAGET
The psychologist Jean Piaget is a major proponent of this
cognitive model, which sees language acquisition in light of
the developing mental capacities. The idea here is that we’re
able to learn language because of our ability to learn. It’s
because of our cognitive development. Our brains become
more complex, and we learn so many things so fast.
Babies initially don’t talk because their brains and mental
capacities still lack the experience and scaffolding
necessary for language. But as babies grow, as they
interact with adults, as they gain more experience, as they
observe more things and as they learn more concepts,
language becomes the inevitable result.
4. STAGES OF SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Stephen Krashen divides the process of
second-language acquisition into five
stages: 1-Preproduction
2-Early Production
3.Speech Emergence
4.intermediate fluency
5.Advanced fluency
1. Preproduction:-The first stage, preproduction, is also known as
the silent period. Learners at this stage have a receptive vocabulary
of up to 500 words, but they do not yet speak their second
language.
2. Early Production- during which learners are able to speak in
short phrases of one or two words. They can also memorize chunks
of language, although they may make mistakes when using them.
Learners typically have both an active and receptive vocabulary of
around 1000 words. This stage normally lasts for around six months
3. Speech Emergence-Learners' vocabularies increase to
around 3000 words during this stage, and they can communicate
using simple questions and phrases. They may often make
grammatical errors.
4. Intermediate Fluency -At this stage, learners have a vocabulary of
around 6000 words, and can use more complicated sentence
structures. They are also able to share their thoughts and opinions.
Learners may make frequent errors with more complicated
sentence structures.
5. Advanced Fluency -The final stage is advanced fluency,
which is typically reached somewhere between five and ten
years of learning the language.
Learners at this stage can function at a level close to native speakers.
THANK YOU
