Language Acquisition
Language Acquisition
Some Facts
• Nobody is taught their first language.
• Children know and speak their first language before the age of five.
• Five-year olds are fluent speakers but they are not “fluent” in math, using a
fork and knife, etc.
• Learning one’s first language is similar to learning to walk—neither is
taught.
• Any healthy newborn infant can learn any natural language.
• Children all over the world go through the same stages of language
acquisition in the same sequence: babbling, holophrastic speech, two-word
sentences, telegraphic speech, adult-like grammar.
• Poverty of stimulus/input: sentence fragments, false starts, speech errors,
interruptions.
• No negative evidence: No one tells children “This is a correct sentence, that
is not.”
• Children systematically ignore occasional corrections.
Some Facts
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Language Acquisition
• Children regularly use expressions they never hear in their environment
(overgeneralizations): goed, lót, etc.
• Phonological simplifications are universal: spoon Æ poon; kanál Æ kaja.
• Consonant harmony is universal: doggy Æ goggy; puddingÆ punding.
• Children invent words: pik (‘rajzol’).
• No other animal can learn, nor even be taught any natural language.
Some Facts
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Language Acquisition
The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition
An explanatorily adequate theory of language must account for language
acquisition.
An adequate account of language acquisition must account for the “ease,
rapidity and uniformity of language acquisition in the face of impoverished
data” (Chomsky).
This is known as the Logical Problem of Language Acquisition (LPLA).
The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition
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Language Acquisition
Language Acquisition: Observations
Ease
• Complex task of constructing a mental grammar — easy for children
• Without teaching
Rapidity
• Children are fluent speakers before they go to school.
Uniformity
• Uniform across languages
• Same stages regardless of the language
• Any child can learn any human language.
Impoverished data (poverty of the stimulus)
• incomplete sentences
• slips of the tongue
• no negative evidence
Language Acquisition: Observations
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Language Acquisition
Language Acquisition: The Solution to LPLA
Solution to LPLA: Innateness Hypothesis.
Innateness Hypothesis
Human children are born with an innate faculty of language FL. FL is a
species-specific biological endowment. FL contains a Universal Grammar UG.
UG is a grammar of Natural Language.
UG is a set of Principles and Parameters. The Principles of UG are general
principles of NL, common to all possible human languages. The Parameters of
UG represent the systematic and limited variation in NL. Each particular
language L is a variant of NL. Each G of L is a variant, of ‘a grammar of a
natural language’, made possible by the Parameters in UG.
LA is a constructive, maturational process, whereby a child constructs the
grammar G of a particular language L. G is the mental grammar of L.
FL enables the child to
• interpret part of its environment as linguistic experience,
• construct G.
Language Acquisition: The Solution to LPLA
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