Language Acquisition

4 stages of Language Acquisition and the ages they occur

Babbling stage (0-11 months), one-word stage (11-18 months), two-word stage (18-24 months) and multiword stage (24+ months)

Babbling stage 4 main points

initially communicate via crying, begin producing sounds from every language in the word which narrows to only sounds in target language, babbles will have adult intonation patterns, and learning social rules

One-word stage 5 main points

learn sounds relate to meaning, pronunciation will be off, vocal of around 50 words, use one word for a range of different meanings (over-generalisation), and will know a lot more words then able to produce

Two-word stage 3 main points

children begin combining two separate words together to make basic sentences, usually limited to single-morpheme content words and order of words will be correct

Multiword stage 2 main points

begin forming sentences and begin using closed class words and bound morphemes

The 3 language acquisition theories

Chomsky’s Universal Grammar, Micheal Tomasello’s Usage based theory and the critical period hypothesis

Chomsky’s Universal Grammar

suggests that the human mind is pre-equipped with a linguistic framework, which he referred to as language acquisition device. He suggested that children are born with an innate understanding of grammar

support for universal grammar

children develop language in similar stages, create their own language rules, often ignore correction and brain studies show language-specific areas

criticism for universal grammar

explains language as innate but not fully how it develops, ignores the role of interaction and was not directly tested by Chomsky

Micheal Tomasello’s Usage Based Theory and the 2 skills needed

we learn language structures and words by using language and by understanding the language that other people use, cognitive skills needed for this are intention reading skills and pattern spotting

intention reading skills

children understanding and reconstructing the intended meaning of utterances they observe

pattern spotting

learning of language structures is about spotting patterns rather than learning rules

support of usage based theory

children under 2 use verbs only in patterns they have heard, showing language develops through exposure and repeated use

criticism of usage based theory

the theory struggles to explain how children form complex structures and how they generalise language beyond repeated patterns

the critical period hypothesis

states that the first few years of life is the cubical time in which an individual can acquire a first language if presented with adequate relies on neuroplasticity. If language input, does not occur until after this time, the individual will never achieve a full command of language