Language Acquisition

Midterm 2

Content vs. Function

content: meaning, dictionary word

function: not really a word, connected to something for a grammatical purpose

Bound vs. Free

bound: must be attached to another morpheme, cannot stand alone

free: smallest units of meaning that can function independently as words, carry meaning

Inflectional vs. Derivational

Inflectional: Changes the tense (past, present future)

Derivational: Grammatical class change

Is ‘an’ a content or function word?

function

Is ‘-ed’ and ‘-ing’ free or bound?

bound

Are ‘and’ and ‘the’ free or bound?

free

What are the three main allomorphs?

/s/ /z/ /lz/

Present progressive -ing

First grammatical morpheme to be mastered

Indicated ongoing action

Early on, inflection appears WITHOUT the auxiliary

Prepositions “In” and “On”

mastered at the same time

occur first in stage 1, then omitted frequently → mastered rapidly in stage 2

What age is ‘present progressive -ing’ typically mastered?

Stage 2: 27-30 months

What age is ‘prepositions “in” and “on”’ typically mastered?

(Occur in Stage 1)

Stage 2: 27-30 months

Regular Plural Inflection /s/

Most plurals in English marked inflection

Nouns occur either single or plural

Three forms: Hats, Cans, Busses

What age is ‘Regular Plural Inflection’ typically mastered

Stage 2: 27-30 months

Irregular Past Tense Verbs

Irregular - each word different (ate, sat, ran)

Initially appear in correct form - prior to emergence of -ed

May initially be learned as lexical items not thought of as past tense

What age is ‘Irregular Past Tense Verbs’ typically mastered?

Stage 2: 27-30 months

Possessive Inflections

Same three allophones as regular plural (/s/ /z/ /lz/)

Stage 1 Daddy Chair (requires context to interpret)

Allomorph mastery even later

What age is ‘Possessive Inflections’ typically mastered?

Stage 3: 31-34 months

Uncontractible Copula

Main Verb!

• serve a grammatical purpose, not super meaningful

• “lonely verb” - only verb in the sentence (“I am funny”)

Not contractible

• he was mad, we were sad

  • can’t combine

What age is ‘Uncontractible Copula’ typically mastered?

Stage 3 and later

31-34 months +

Articles

First emerge stage 2, long time to fully master

• differs from child to child

Only ‘a’ and ‘the’ tracked by Brown

Regular Past Tense

-ed

3 forms - /d/, /t/, /ld/

Earliest versions: Small set of verbs that referred to events of short duration!

• Dropped, crashed

What age is ‘Regular Past Tense’ typically mastered?

Stage 4 - 35-40 months

(Irregular / Regular Past)

3rd person present tense (3rd person singular /s/)

3 allomorphs - /s/, /z/, /lz/

Appear stage 1

If you want a verb to be in 3rd person, add an ‘s’

What age is ‘3rd person present tense’ typically mastered?

Stage 4: 35-40 months

Before irregular third person

Irregular third person

Do/does

Have/has

Appear stage 2

What age is ‘Irregular Third Person’ typically mastered?

Stage 4: 35-40 months

Uncontractible Auxiliary

These are the past and present forms of the verb to BE: am, is, are, was, were

Link the subject with another form (typically present progressive -ing)

Help verb (“Is he wearing your hat?”)

What age is ‘Uncontractible Auxiliary’ typically mastered?

Stage 4: 35-40 months

Contractible Copula

My dog is nice - My dog’s nice

*Is/are come before ‘am’

What is a copula?

Links to a descriptive word or phrase

What age is ‘Contractible Copula’ typically mastered?

fluctuated over a prolonged period (2 years)

Contractible Auxiliary

My dog is running - My dog’s running

What is an auxiliary?

Links to a main verb

What age is ‘Contractible Auxiliary’ typically mastered?

fluctuated over a prolonged period (2 years)

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: “The girl is painting.”

Present Progressive -ing

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: “In the sky.”

Preposition “In”

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: “On the pie.”

Preposition “On”

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: Cats, Cars

Regular Plural Inflection /s/

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: Ran, fell

Irregular past tense verbs

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: The lady’s

Possessive Inflections

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: “He was running. Who? He is.”

Uncontractible Copula

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: ‘a/the book’

Article

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: pulled, painted

Regular Past Tense

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: He picks a shirt

3rd person present tense

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: Does, has

Irregular third person

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: He is.

Uncontractible Auxiliary

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: That man is tall → man’s

Contractible Copula

Which one of Brown’s morphemes: Daddy is eating → Daddy’s

Contractible Auxiliary

What are the four factors that affect the order of acquisition?

Frequency in the input

Regular form

Perceptual factors

Cognitive factors

Explain ‘frequency in the input’

Commonly experienced things are acquired first. Influences the speed and accuracy of learning and production

Explain ‘Regular Form’

The more regular the pattern, the easier it is to learn. Refers to the rules and patterns that determine how a language is organized

Explain ‘Perceptual factors’

Whole syllable vs Single phonemes (whole syllables are easier)

End of sentence vs Middle of sentence (easier to hear at the end)

Emphatic stress vs Low/no stress

Explain ‘Cognitive factors’

Concepts that are easily understood

What is MLU?

Mean length of utterance: A measure of utterance length based on the average number of free and bound morphemes contained in a designated set of spontaneously produced utterances

How do you calculate MLU?

MLU = total # of morphemes / total # of C and I utterances

What is flexible morphological use?

Using the same morpheme with 3 or more stems

• jumps, runs, skips, walks, hops

Using the same stem with 3 or more morphemes

• jumped, jumping, jumps

What is over regularizing?

Ran: Runed, Raned

Went: Goed, Wented

Rang: Ringed, Ranged, Runged

What is U-shaped development? How does it apply to the development of the past tense -ed morpheme?

Appear proficient → Get worse → Improve again

1st irregular used correctly → Develops a sense for regularity in regular past tense

Early Declaratives

SVO - subject verb object

About 30 months

Example: “I play ball”

Mid Declaratives

SVO + Auxiliaries

By about 33 months

Example: “I’ll get it” , “I am eating toast”

What are modal auxiliaries?

Special helping verbs - possible situations

Ex: “I can swim” , “You may leave”

Late Declaratives

Indirect objects

By about 44 months

Ex: “I gave it to Bobby” , “We made it for Mommy”

What are declaratives?

Statements

What are negatives?

Falsity

Early negatives

One word stage - “No!”

Negative + X

(23-35 months)

Ex: “No boots” , "No the dog”

Mid negatives

Internal negative markers (31-41 months)

• “Daddy no drive car” , “I not make mess”

Auxiliary markers (35-50 months)

• “I don’t want it” , “It isn’t funny”

Late negatives

Negative interrogatives

• “Don’t you like pizzas?”

Indefinite forms

• nobody, no one, nothing

• “No one ate the cookies” , “Nobody likes me”

Age 5

What are interrogatives?

Questions

Early interrogatives

Use of intonation - “Cookie?”

WH + NP + (doing?)

• “What that?” “What Mama doing?”

WH + NP + (going?)

• “Where Daddy?” , “Where truck going?”

Mid interrogatives

WH word + NP + VP

• Starts with what/where, and later when/how

• “What bunny eat?” , “Where Mommy is?”

Subject verb inversion

• Starts with yes/no questions only

• Inconsistent at first

• “Do I get it?” , “Does kitty stand up?”

Late interrogatives

WH + Copula + Subject

Subject auxiliary inversion for WH questions

• “What can we do?” , “Where will we drive?”

‘Where’ and ‘What’ occur around what age?

26 months

‘Who’ occurs around what age?

28 months

‘How’ occurs around what age?

33 months

‘Why’ occurs around what age?

35 months

‘Which’, ‘Whose’, ‘When’ occur around what age?

After 36 months

What is a phrase?

A syntactic structure with one main word, and usually one or more closely associated words grouped around it

What is a noun phrase?

Serve the function of the noun in the sentence - always have a noun or a pronoun as a head

What is a verb phrase?

Syntactic element that expresses: Existence, action, or occurrence - have a verb as a head

What are the elements of a noun phrase?

Noun, modifier (determiner: quantifier, article, possessive, demonstrative, numerical term), adjective, post noun modifier: prepositional phrase

What are the elements of a verb phrase?

Main verb, auxiliary, copula, negative, adverbs

Two element phrases predominate

18-24 months

NP: Adjective + Noun - “Big kitty”

NP: Determiner + Noun - “That ball”

VP: Verb + Particle - “Get out”

PP: Preposition + Noun - “On chair”

Three element phrases predominate

24-30 months

Four element phrases predominate

30-36 months

NP: N + PP - “Man in blue shoes”

VP: Auxiliary + Auxiliary + Verb - “Has been eating”

VP: Negative + Verb - “Not eating”

PP: Preposition + Determiner + Adjective + Noun - “In the scary room”

Recursive elements predominate

36-42 months

NP: NP + Conjunction + NP - “The man and the little girl”

VP: VP + VP - “Was scratching and biting”

PP: PP + PP - “In the car by the window”

What is a clause?

A group of words that are unified by meaning - have their own subject and predicate - must have a verb

Simple clause

One independent clause

Ex: “She is running” “The cat sat”

Compound clause

Two or more independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction

Ex: “The dog barked and the cat hissed”

Complex clause

One independent clause and one (or more) dependent clauses

Ex: “Although it was raining, we went for a walk”

Examples of communicative functions that preschoolers use:

Requesting permission, suggestion, offer, indirect requests, exclamations, primitive narrative development

Ways to elicit communicative functions through naturalistic observations

Obtains a more representative sample of child’s skills

Clinician can structure the environment to elicit specific skills

Ways in which pragmatic language changes in preschoolers

Statements and direct requests increase due to increasing vocabulary and putting multiple words together, so children begin sharing more information/using more communicative functions

Cultural responsivity considerations

Consider the items you use for evaluation (Does the child interact with these items regularly?)

Each culture has its own views on the child-caregiver relationship (Ex: Individualism, collectivism)

Ask the caregiver if the evaluation was representative of their child’s skills

What are narratives?

Involves the telling of stories or accounts that have a beginning, middle, and end

One speaker → greater demands on speaker

Less immediate feedback so need to consider shared knowledge more

What is the structure of a narrative?

Character, Setting, Kick-off, Internal response, Plan, Attempts or actions, Direct consequence, Resolution

How are narratives different from conversation and exposition?

Conversation: Typically involves informal language, turn-taking, topic shifts, repairs (corrections) - It’s dynamic

Expository: Focuses on explaining, describing, or providing information about a specific topic or concept

Cultural and linguistic consideration:

Narrative information and organization

Much of what is told in narratives reflects the storytellers perspective on the purpose and context of the storytelling

Cultural and linguistic consideration:

Effects of experience and word knowledge

Different contexts may generate different types of narratives, based on previous world experience and assumptions about the narrative task

Cultural and linguistic consideration:

Narrative elicitation tasks

There is evidence that the methods selected to elicit narratives have an effect on the type of information recalled

• Books via movies

• Visual vs. no visual support

Cultural and linguistic consideration:

Audience involvement

Storytelling is a social event governed by cultural norms and values

These extralinguistic rules dictate appropriate narrative behavior (Monologue)