Reading 1.2
Brown, D. (2000). First language acquisition. In Principles of language learning and teaching (4th ed., pp. 20-48). White Plains, NY: Longman. |
H. Douglas Brown (born 1941) is a professor emeritus of English as a Second Language at San Francisco State University. He was the president of International TESOL from 1980 to 1981, and in 2001 he received TESOL's James E. Alatis Award for Distinguished Service (Wikipedia) |
A summary of the keypoints of First language acquisition, by H. Douglas Brown (2000)
Readers should refer to the reading for the list of references for inline citations - this document is a summary of a peer-reviewed literature, and the rights of the original author are acknowledged. This document is for educational purposes only.
Meaningful research into FLA by children first occurred in mid-20th century and accelerated for a ‘few decades’. Educators attempted to use this research to relate FLA and SLA however the marked differences between these two should be noted. An understanding of FLA will aid SLA teaching, but the two are not to be confused.
THEORIES OF FLA
- Around 12 months, children attempt to imitate words and speech sounds, and produce their first words
- Around 18 months, they have increased their vocabulary and are developing 2 or 3 word sentences
- Around 3 years, they have massively increased comprehension and speech
- At school age, they are improving their communicative and social skills
- Behaviourist approach
- Nativist approach
- Functionalist approach
A behaviourist approach suggests that children are born with a tabula rosa (clean slate) and are then shaped by environment and conditioned through reinforcement. The approach views imitation and practice as primary processes in LA.
Skinner (1957, 1968) introduced operant conditioning, which focuses on whether an operant (a sentence or utterance in this context) is reinforced or extinguished by the response provided.
utterance -> good response -> behaviour maintained/reinforced
utterance -> bad response -> behaviour weakened/extinguished
Skinner’s work was criticised by Chomsky (1959) and others, and later defended by MacCorquodale (1970). Today, the model is considered insufficient as it does not account for abstraction.
A variation on Skinner’s model is mediation theory, especially by Osgood (1953, 1957), which is considered a relatively weak theory as it discusses supposed subtle or invisible internal processes, and also fails to account for abstraction.
Mediation theory is further expanded by Jenkins and Palermo (1964) who focussed on imitation, yet still failed to account for abstraction.
Nativist approach
A nativist approach suggests that LA is innately determined through genetics and predisposition.
Lenneberg (1967) proposed that language is a human behaviour that is biologically determined.
Chomsky (1965) argued that children achieve FLA rapidly due to innate properties, using the concept of a Language Acquisition Device (LAD).
McNeil (1966) described LAD has having four innate linguistic properties:
- speech sounds that are distinguishable from environmental sounds
- ‘linguistic data’ can be ordered into classes
- a certain kind of language system is possible, others are not
- the ability to refine a linguistic system to its simplest form
The LAD was later expanded to universal grammar (UG) - see Cook (1993) and Mitchell & Myles (1998) – in which all humans are said to be genetically disposed to LA.
Nativist theories post that at a given time a child’s language is ‘complete’ for that child and ‘systematic’ in that the child is constantly testing and developing their language mastery.
Berko (1958) demonstrated that children use language as a system (“wugs”, “glings” etc.) rather than rote-learned words or phrases.
Nativists studied child FLA using a generative framework as opposed to structural methodology which enabled rapid progress, including the development of the notion of pivot grammars (classes found in two-word utterances).
Pivot grammars provided a rule for generative frameworks:
sentence -> pivot word + open word
which led to other rules that nativists argue are innate.
Chomskyist tradition was later challenged (Spolsky 1989) with parallel distributed processing (PDP) or connectionism which posits that language performance is directly related to physical neural connections, and that sentences are constructed as a result of ‘simultaneous interconnection of a multitude of brain links’.
The nativist framework offers:
- freedom from ‘scientific method’
- a description of FLA using rules or PDP
- UG
More recently the nature of research has changed to more deeply explore “the essence of language” resulting in the emphases:
- language is one manifestation of the human capacity to engage with the world, and
- the nativist framework discussed forms of language (morphemes, words, sentences and rules) but neglected the functional levels of meaning (meaningful interaction within a social context).
Bloom (1971) criticised pivot grammar by demonstrating that a superficiality in the theory, and concluded that “children learn underlying structures, and not superficial word order”.
Research by Bloom and others focussed on the relationship of cognitive development to FLA, with an emphasis on overall development as a “result of children’s interaction with their environment” – with cognitive and linguistic development seen as complementary rather than divergent.
“What children learn about language is determined by what they already know about the world”.
Slobin (1971, 1986) argued that semantic learning depends on cognitive development, and that semantic complexity is a higher determinant than structural complexity on the sequence of development:
- function – rate of LA is directly related to rate of conceptual and communicative development, within constraints of innate cognition
- form – rate of LA is directly related to rate of perception and information-processing development, within constraints of innate grammar
Social Interaction and Language Development
Language is more than “cognitive thought and memory structure.”
Holzman (1984) proposed a reciprocal model which focuses on the reciprocated interaction between the learning infant and the teaching adult in a “socialising-nurturing-teaching” role. Later research considered social systems (Berko-Gleason 1988, Lock 1991), and the function of discourse (Budgwig 1995, Kuczaj 1984) – “what do children know and learn about talking with others?”
This genre is more interested in performance, which was eliminated in earlier research by generative linguists who focussed on competence. Extraneous utterances are now considered as part of language.
“A complete, consistent, unified theory of first language acquisition cannot yet be claimed; however, child language research has manifested some enormous strides toward that ultimate goal. And even if all the answers are far from evident, maybe we are asking more of the right questions.”ISSUES IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Competence and performance
Competence refers to the “unobservable” knowledge that enables you to do something. Performance is the “doing” of the thing.
In linguistics, “competence is one’s underlying knowledge of the system of a language – its rules of grammar, its vocabulary, all the pieces of a language and how those pieces fit together. Performance is actual production (speaking, writing) or the comprehension (listening, reading) of linguistic events.”The competence-performance model attracts criticism, including that it assumes an “idealised” subject without performance variables. Critics argued that linguists should study only the actual use of language (Stubbs 1996), and that speech ‘goofs’ are heterogeneous competency or part of the performance development process (Tarone 1998).
When used cautiously, studying performance may give insights while allowing for other findings.
Comprehension and product
Comprehension and product can be elements of both performance and competence.
It follows that there is a distinction between production competence and comprehension competence.
Linguistic competence takes multiple forms (reading, writing, etc.).
It is a myth that comprehension is production, while product is performance.
Most research suggests that comprehension is more significant than production – “children seem to understand ‘more’ than they actually produce”.
Nature or Nurture?
The theory of LAD is incomplete in that it does not explain the how LA is transmitted genetically, although this is likely to be added – the author suggests the future discovery of “language genes”.
While noting that LA is universal Brown raises the nature/nurture question and suggests that this “muddies the waters” of the innateness debate.
Bickerton (1981) suggests that humans are “bio-programmed” to progress from stage to stage in LA and cognitive development.
Universals
Building on the innateness stance is the suggestion that the “deep structure” of language is universal (Leopold 1949, Greenberg 1963 & 1966, Bickerton 1981, Slobin 1986 & 1992) and this is continued with Universal Grammar (UG), which is based on the ‘commonalities’ of languages.
UG centres around principles and parameters – principles specify a definable scope of variations expressed as parameters that need to be set (Saleemi 1992).
An example of a principle is structure dependency, which states that language is dependent on the structures within a sentence. This principle appears in both comprehension and production.
Systematicity and Variability
Current research focuses on the systematicity of LA, on children’s ability to “infer the phonological, structural, lexical, and semantic system of language”, as per Berko’s speech experiments (1958) with nonsense words (“wug” etc.).
In contrast, variability remains a factor in LA, both in FLA and SLA, and researchers (Bayley & Preston 1996, Tarone 1988) seek to determine how to make the variable factors systematic.
Language and Thought
What is the relationship between language and thought?
Behaviourists contend that cognition cannot be studied by the scientific method, while nativists argue that language is dependent on cognitive development, as cognitive development is at the core of ‘being human’.
Others argue that language (Bruner, Olver & Greenfield 1966) and social interaction (Vygotsky 1962 & 1978) influences cognitive development.
“Thought and language were seen as two distinct cognitive operations that grow together (Schinke-Llano 1993).”
The zone of proximal development is the difference between actual cognitive capacity and potential development (Vygotsky 1978).
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity states that each language forces a particular view on its speaker.
The ongoing debate is to what degree thought affects language, and vice versa.
Imitation
Children imitate
.
This is a factor of LA. Echoing is used in early LA for phonological acquisition.
Imitation in LA is discussed at different levels – behaviourists use it when describing the surface level of phonological imitation as opposed to semantic imitation.
Foreign-langague classes often use repetitive drills without understanding.
As children develop they attach greater ‘meaning’ to the utterances they are imitating, leading to deep-structure imitation.
Practice
Researchers are interested in whether children practice language, and how this can be observed, and conclude that practicing is critical to LA.
Practice is not limited to production, but also refers to comprehension, with evidence suggesting that more frequently used language forms are acquired first – the language of the care giver is a strong predictor of how a child’s speech will emerge (Brown & Hanlon 1970).
The “frequency of meaningful occurrence may well be a more precise refinement of the notion of frequency.”
Input
Input in LA is critical.
Early research claimed that input from adults is random and non-contributing to early LA (McNeill 1966) however this was refuted by others (e.g. Labov 1970) and indeed speech aimed at children was “carefully grammatical and lacked the usual hesitations and false starts common in adult-to-adult speech” (Bullugi & Brown 1964, Drach 1969, Lande 1975, Hladik & Edwards 1984, Moerk 1985). Recent research shows that children will, over time and with repetition, eventually correct their own speech to align with that of adults.
Discourse
Conversational or discourse analysis suggests that for successful FLA interaction rather than exposure to language is required – children do not learn from overhearing, they acquire FL by being spoken to.
“The child learns not only how to initiate conversation but how to respond to another’s initiating utterance.”
Children learn the difference between assertions and challenges.
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