3. Language Acquisition

Acquisition

• To acquire = to get, to obtain

• Acquisition (uncount.) = the action of obtaining

• We are acquiring things implicitly, learning is an explicit process

• How language began, how it works, what language is, how people work, who we are

• Why be interested?

• Language teaching, speech disorder,

Basic distinction

• First language acquisition (FLA)

• Native language, mother tongue

• Second language acquisition (SLA)

• Additional languages

First language acquisition

• Age is different from learning second language

• Children in belly can learn rhytm, can hear only low frequencies

• First we are listeners, then speakers

• Linguistic competence = ability to use our knowledge

• Two parts: Lexicon (items you have to remember) and Grammar (rules for handling items in lexicon)

• Every learner has to learn a lot by heart, form generally formulated rules (question – swap subject and verb)

• 6-year-old knows passively ca. 13 000 words = 8 new words a day, high-school graduate – 60 000 words

• Vocabulary spurt

• Phonotactics??

Two competing learning strategies

1. Learn everything by heart

• Choo-choo = train

• Come-here = come

• Advantage – little processing capacity required

• Disadvantage – limited storage

1. Form and rule that generates correct forms

• Plural in english we are not learning them by heart, we learn a rule to make them

• Advantage – no storage needed

• Disadvantage – requires processing – slower

• Discovering “rules” of grammar

HOW DO CHILDREN FIGURE OUT THE RULES?

Possibility n.1 – adults help their children to do that

Parent can’t teach them, they do not have the ability to teach them, they do it implicitly

1. Exaggerated intonation – it makes you to pay attention

2. More disctict vowels (I,u,a) – kids have more eggatereted diffence

3. Reduced complexity – using simple sentences, parents change their length of a sentences when the kid was just about to start talking

4. Conversational interaction – parent is trying to interact with their children, alhough the didn’t responde - really good for learning !

But they are not teaching explicitly, children are not able to pick it up (no, say “nobody like me!”)

Possibility n.2 – Grammar is part of the genetic endowment of humans

If it is like this, there must be some universal tendencies in every language

Universial tendencies:

• perception and production

• CV syllables!

• Overgeneralization

• Overextension

Possibility n. 3 – children are born equipped only with general (not language-specialized) learning mechanims

SECONG LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

• Adults tend to have general mental abilities, but their language learning abilities are not so good => they are not good at learning a new language

• A critical age after which children lose the language-learning advantage

• Why is it difficult? You already know your L1

• Bringing aspects of L1 to L2 = transfer

• If L1 helps = positive transfer

• IF L2 “hurts” = negative transfer