1. FIRST LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION
O’GRADY AND CHO, 2011

2. ABOUT L1 ACQUISITION
• Most important milestone in a child‟s development
• Children acquire language effortlessly giving the
impression that the entire process is simple and
straightforward.
• Grammar is the end result of L1 Acquisition

3. PHONOLOGICAL
DEVELOPMENT
A few facts:
• Children are born with a perceptual system that is
specifically designed for speech.
• Children respond differently to human voices than other
sounds.
• Children show preference for the language of their parents
than any other language by the time they are two days old.
• Children can recognize their mother‟s voice within a matter of
weeks.

4. PHONOLOGICAL
DEVELOPMENT:
BABBLING
• Around 6 months of age: the opportunity for infants to
experiment and gain control over their vocal apparatus.
• Children who - for medical reasons- are unable to babble,
can subsequently acquire normal pronunciation, but their
speech development is significantly delayed.
• Children from different languages exhibit significant
similarities in their babbling.

5. GENERAL TENDANCIES
IN SOUND ACQUISITION
• Vowels are generally acquired before consonants (as a
group – 3 yrs. old)
• Stops (p, t, k, n, d, g, m, n) tend to be acquired before
other consonants.
• Labials are often acquired first followed by alveolars,
velars and alveopalatals.
• Interdentals (ð, θ) are acquired last.
• Children produce phonemic contrasts of their language
well before they can produce them (comprehension tasks).

6. VOCABULARY
DEVELOPMENT
• 18 mts. Vocabulary: 50 words (nouns are the single largest
class in a child‟s early vocabulary).
• Verbs and adjectives are next.
• 6 yr. olds: thirteen or fourteen thousand words.

7. STRATEGIES FOR
ACQUIRING MEANING
• The Whole Object Assumption
• A new word refers to the whole subject.
• The Type Assumption
• A new word refers to a type of thing, not just a particular
thing.
• The Basic Level Assumption
• A new word refers to objects that are alike in basic ways
(appearance, behaviour etc.)

8. MORPHOLOGICAL
DEVELOPMENT
• Initially: affixes are systematically absent and most words
consist of single root morphemes.
OVERGENERALIZATION & OVERREGULATION
• Plural –s
• Past –ed

9. DEVELOPMENTAL
SEQUENCE
BOUND MORPHEMES AND FUNCTIONAL CATEGORIES
1. -ing
2. - s (plurals)
3. -s (possessive)
4. The, a (determiners)
5. -ed past tense
6. -s (third person singular)
7. Auxiliary „be‟

10. SYNTACTIC
DEVELOPMENT
• Takes place in an orderly manner.
1. one-word stage
2. two-word stage
3. telegraphic stage
4. later development

11. THE INTERPRETATION
OF SENTENCE
STRUCTURE
PASSIVES
• Children have an easier time interpreting active sentences
than they do passive ones (although they produce
passives from around age 3)
WHY?
• Canonical Sentence Strategy
• Children expect the first NP to be the agent and the
second NP to be the theme. (NP … V … NP agent-action-
theme)

12. THE INTERPRETATION
OF SENTENCE
STRUCTURE
PRONOMINAL AND REFLEXIVES
• Children do not have a lot of trouble distinguishing
between pronominal and reflexive pronouns.
I hurt myself with the stapler.
*You hurt myself with the sapler.
*I hurt me with the stapler.
You hurt me with the stapler.

13. WHAT MAKES LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION POSSIBLE?
• The role of adult speech
• Childcare talk (motherease)
• The role of feedback
• Recasts

14. THE ROLE OF COGNITIVE
DEVELOPMENT
• Considerable evidence against language acquisition as
dependent on other types of cognitive development.
• Example:
• Individuals with defficient general cognitive development
with highly developed language skills.
• People with average IQ with difficulties with inflection for
the past tense and plural.

15. THE ROLE OF INBORN
KNOWLEDGE
• Nativism: certain grammatical knowledge is inborn
• Universal Grammar: children are born with prior
knowledge of the type of categories, operations and
principles that are found in the grammar of any human
language.
• Chomsky: grammars for human languages are too
complex and abstract to be learned solely from experience
children are exposed to.

16. UNIVERSAL
PRINCIPLES
PRINCIPLE A
• A reflexive pronoun must have an antecedent that C-
commands it in the same IP.
PRINCIPLE B
• A pronominal must not have an antecedent that C-
commands it in the same IP.

17. PARAMETERS
• Not every feature in the grammar of a language can be
inborn: vocabulary, morphology and some parts of syntax
are learned.
• UG stipulates that an X constituent can include a head and
its complements, but it does not specify the order of these
elements.

18. THE CRITICAL PERIOD
• Is there a critical period?
Some examples:
• Genie (see video)
• Victor
• Death children

19. HOW DO WE STUDY L1
ACQUISITION?
1. Naturalistic observation
1. Experimentation

20. NTURALISTIC
OBSERVATION
• Observe and record children‟s spontaneous speech –
Diary Study.
• Usually longitudinal.
• CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange System)

21. PROS & CONS OF
NATURALISTIC
OBSERVATION
• Provides important information of how the language
acquisition process unfolds.
• Makes it hard to test hypothesis and draw firm
conclusions (particular structures and phenomena may
occur rarely in children‟s everyday speech).

22. EXPERIMENTAL
STUDIES
• Specifically designed tasks to elicit linguistic activity
relevant to the phenomenon that is being investigated.
• Typically cross-sectional: investigates and compares the
linguistic knowledge of different children at a particular
point in development.
• What do they test?
• Comprehension
• Production
• Imitation skills

23. TESTING
COMPREHENSION
• Children judge the truth of statements being made about
particular pictures or situations presented about the
experimenter.
• Supply children with a set of toys and ask them to act out
a sentence (passives: the truck was hit by the car)

24. TESTING
PRODUCTION
• the experimenter presents the child with a situation that
calls for a particular type of statement or question.

25. IMITATION TASKS
• Children‟s ability to repeat a particular structure provides
a good indication of how well they have mastered it.
For example:
A child that has not acquired auxiliary verbs will repeat a
sentence such as “Mickey is laughing” by saying: “Mickey
laughing”