First language acquisition is remarkable for the
speed with it takes place
in addition
to the speed of acquisition the fact that it
generally occurs, without overt instructions for
all children, regardless of great differences in their circumstances.
provides
strong support for the
idea that there is an
inmate predisposition in
the human infant to
acquire language
Basic requirements
A child requieres
interaction with
other language
-users in order to
bring this general
language capacity
into operation
with a particular
language such as
English
that is why
the child must also be
physically capable on
sending and receiving
sound signals in a
language.
in order to
speak a language,
a child must be
able to hear that
language being
used by itself.
however
hearing a language is not enough.
A boy raised by deaf parents was
exposure to TV and radio programs .
the boy did not acquire an ability to speak or understand English.
what
he did learn effectively ,by the age of three
was the use of American Language
THE
ACQUISISTION
SCHEDULE
has
the same basis as the
biologically determined
development of motor skills.
this biological schedule
is
tied very much to the
maturation of the infant's
brain.
for example:
an infant is capable
of distinguishing
between sounds
such as (ba) and (pa)
what
this acquisition capacity then requires
is a sufficient constant type of "input"
which
the basis of the regularities in a particular
language can be worked out.
Caregiver speech
is characteristically simplified
speech style adopted
by
someone who spends a lot of time
interacting with a young child.
salient features of this type of speech
are
the frequent use of questions, often using
exaggerated intonations, extra loudness and
slower temp with longer pauses.
Caregiver speech is also
characterized by simple sentence
structures and a lot of repetition.
it has generally been observed that
the speech of those regularly
interacting with very young children
changes and becomes more
elaborated as the child begins using
more and more language.
Cooing and babbling
the earliest use of
speech-like has been
describe as cooing.
Speech
perception
studies have
shown that by
the time they
are five
months old,
babies can
already hear
the
difference between the vowels (i) and (a)
and discriminate beteen syllables like (ba)
and (ga)
the type of sound production is
described as babbling
is when
the child is sitting up and
producing a number of different
vowels and consonants, as well
as combination such as ba-ba-ba
and ga-ga-ga
as
children begin to pull
themselves into a
standing position during
the tenth and eleventh
months, they become
capable of using their
vocalizations to express
emotions and emphasis
The one-word stage
is
characterized by speech in
which single terms are
uttered for everyday
objects
such as
"milk, cookie,cat,cup,and spoon"
we sometimes
use the term holophrastic (meaning a single form
functioning as a phrase or sentence)
to
describe an utterance that could be analyzed as a word,
a phrase, or a sentence.
The two word stage
can
around eighteen to twenty months
the child vocabulary moves beyond fifty words
as
the
the adult interpretation of such
combination is of course, very
tied to the context of their
utterance.
the
significant functional consequences are
that the adult behaves as if communication is
taking place
begin
Telegraphic speech
this is
characterized by strings of words (lexical
morphemes)in phrases of sentences such
as THIS SHOE, ALL WET AND DADDY GO
BYE-BYE
by
the age of two-and-half, the child's vocabulary is
expanding rapidly and the child is initiating more talk
while
increased physical activity includes
running and jumping.
at this point, it is
worth considering
what kind of
influence, if any
the adults have in
development of
the child's speech.
The acquisition process
in this stage
exists a more accurate view would have the children actively constructing
from
what is said to them, possible ways of using language .The child's linguistic
production appears to be mostly a matter of trying out constructions and testing
whether they work or not.
it is simply not possible that the child is acquiring the language
principally through a process of imitating adult speech.
one factor
that seems to be important in the child's acquisition
process is the actual use of sound and word
combination, either in interaction with others or in
word play alone.
Developing morphology
By the time a child is two and a half years old,
the inflectional morphemes that indicate the
grammatical function of the nouns and verbs
used.
the
acquisition of plural marker is often
accompanied by a process of
overgeneralizacion
the child
overgeneralizes the apparent rule of
adding -so to plurals and will talk about
foots and mans.
at about
the same time,
different forms of the
verb "to be", such a
are and was, begin to
be used.
the
appearance of forms
such as was and, at
the same time, went
and came should be
noted.
Developing syntax
there have been numorous
studies of the development of
syntax in children's speech .
there
appear to be three
identifiable stages, which
can vary
but
the general pattern seems to be :
stage 1: between 18 and 26
months
stage 2: beetween 22 and 30 months
stage 3: beetween 24 and 40 months.
forming questions
the child has three stages wich has
three procedures:
fisrt stage: simply ass a
Whform (where,who) to
the beginning of the
expression
in the second stage, more
complex expressions can
be formed, but the raising
intonation strategy
continues to be used.
in the third stage, the requiered inversion of
subject and verb in English questions appears (I can
go-Can I go)
forming negatives
in the case of negatives, stage one
seems to involve a simple strategy of
putting no or not at hte beginning.
in the second stage the additional negative forms
don't and can't appear, and with no and not , are
increasingly used in front of the verb rather than at
the beginning of the sentence.
the third stage sees the
incorporation of the auxilary
forms such as didn't and
won't while the typical stage
1 dissapear.