ET123 - First Language Acquisition

Stages of Acquisition

1. Perceptual dev - rhythmic awareness

2. Babbling - motor exploration

3. Phonological dev - building sound inventory

4. Lexical dev - word boundaries/meanings

5. Grammatical dev - combining units

6. Discourse - managing convos, intention and pragmatics

Nature Theory

• innate dispositions

• newborns attuned to cues for learning

• lang is species-universal and specific

- CHOMSKY

Nurture Theory

• learning requires exposure to lang

• environment, not genetics

• no exposure = no ability (Morford 2002)

The Brain

• two sides (Left hem/Right Hem)

• sides are contralateral (LH controls right side etc)

The Brain + hemispheric lateralisation = RH

• sensorimotor - left half of body

• visual-spatial processing

• global processing

• responsible for - pragmatics, prosody

The brain + hemispheric lateralisation = LH

• sensorimotor - right half of body

• analytic, detail-oriented

Home of lang centres:

• Broca’s area - lang production

• Wernicke’s area - lang comprehension

Early Development

• babies begin to develop speech perception

• prosody, sounds, visual info

First Perception of sound - Mehler et al 1988

• 4 day old infants attention to their L1

• babies can discriminate between sounds of native vs everything else

• via sound waves and rhythm