Summary of the course Psycholinguistics 1 of the Teacher Training English. The document contains a summary of chapters 1 through 5 of the book How Languages Are Learned - Patsy M. Lightbrown & Nina Spada.
PLING summary chapters 1-5
From the book ‘how languages are learned – Patsy M. Lightbrown &
Nina Spada
,Chapter 1: Language learning in early childhood
First language acquisition – universal
Baby crying.
o Cooing and gurgling sounds.
o Distinguish the voice of mother from others.
o Babies are capable of very fine auditory discrimination. (they can hear the
difference between sounds as similar as ‘pa’ and ‘ba’.
By twelve months.
o Show signs of comprehension – bye-bye.
o Begin producing a word or two.
By the age of two.
o Produce at least 50 words. (some produce many more)
o Combine words into simple sentences (mommy juice – baby fall down).
These are called telegraphic sentences.
o Telegraphic sentences – leave out such things as articles, prepositions, and
auxiliary verbs. Even though function words and grammatical morphemes are
missing, the word order reflects the word order of the language they hear.
Developmental sequences are related to children’s cognitive development. For
example, children do not use words like next week or yesterday until they develop an
understanding of time.
Grammatical morphemes
Roger Brown’s study in the 1960s.
A longitudinal study of language development. (Longitudinal = research that is done
on people or groups over a long period of time)
3 children (Adam, Eve, and Sarah)
Found 14 grammatical morphemes acquired in a similar sequence.
9 examples:
1. -ing
2. Plural -s (two books)
3. Irregular past forms (baby went)
4. Possessive -s (Daddy’s hat)
5. Copula (Mommy is happy)
6. Articles the and a
7. Regular past -ed (she walked)
8. Third-person singular simple present -s (she runs)
9. Auxiliary be (he is coming)
In this study, they noticed that a child who mastered the grammatical morphemes at
the bottom of the list, also mastered the ones at the top, but this was not true the
other way round.
,Negation
Children learn the functions of negation very early. They learn to comment on the
disappearance of certain objects, refuse a suggestion, or reject an assertion. Divided into 4
stages.
Stage 1:
Negation is usually expressed by the word ‘no’. (No cookie. No comb hair, etc.)
Stage 2:
Negative word just before the verb. These sentences often contain ‘don’t’ (Daddy no
comb hair. Don’t touch that!)
Stage 3:
Other forms of a negative word like ‘can’t’ (I can’t do it. He don’t want it.)
Stage 4:
Negative element attached to correct form of auxiliary verbs like do and be.
Questions
There is a remarkable consistency in the way children learn to form questions. There is an
order in which the ‘wh- words’ emerge.
What:
Often learned as part of a chunk. What It takes some time before the child learns
variation of that form, such as ‘What is that?’ and ‘What are these?’.
Where and who:
Emerge very soon identifying and locating people and objects. Parents often ask
these kinds of questions in the early days of language learning, for example, ‘Where’s
mommy?’ or ‘Who’s that?’.
Why:
This word emerges around the end of the second year and becomes a favourite for
the next year or two. Examples are ‘Why that lady has blue hair?’.
How and when:
When the child has a better understanding of time. When children ask questions
using ‘why’, ‘when’, and ‘how’, they often do not understand the answers they get.
Child: When can we go outside?
Parent: In about five minutes.
Child: 1-2-3-4-5! Can we go now?
, The ability to use questions contains 6 stages:
Stage 1:
Single words or simple two- or three- word sentences with rising intonation. (Cookie?
Mommy book?)
They may also produce questions they learned in chunks. (Where’s daddy? What’s
that?)
Stage 2:
Declarative word order + rising intonation. (You like this? I have some?)
Stage 3:
Children notice the structure of questions. (Can I go? Are you happy?)
Fronting: WE need to see the pattern from the child’s perspective rather than from the
perspective of the adult grammar. This is called ‘fronting’ because the child’s rule
seems to be that the questions are made by putting the verb or question word at the
‘front of a sentence, leaving the rest in its statement form. (Is the teddy is tired? Do I
can have a cookie?)
Stage 4:
Children use subject-auxiliary inversion. The questions look like those of stage 3, but
there is a more varied use in the auxiliaries before the subject. (Are you going to play
with me? Do dogs like ice cream?)
Stage 5:
Children from wh- and yes/no questions correctly. (Are these your boots? Why did
you do that?)
Negative questions may still be too difficult (Why the teddy bear can’t go outside?)
Stage 6:
Children are able to correctly form all question types.
The pre-school years
Children are in contact with the language of their environment for 20,000 hours or more by
the time they go to school.
By the age of 4
o Ask questions, give commands, report events, create stories.
o Mastered the basic structure of their language.
o Acquire less frequent and more complex linguistic structures.
o More interaction with unfamiliar adults.
o Acquire aggressive language.
o Know the difference between adults and baby talk.
Much language acquisition effort in the late pre-school years is spent in developing their
ability to use language in a social environment. They begin to understand how language
varies in different situations.
Children also begin to develop metalinguistic awareness the ability to treat language as an
object, e.g. being able to define a word or to say what sounds make up that word.
3-year-old children would speak ‘drink the chair’ but they would never say ‘cake the eat’. 5-
year-olds would know ‘drink the chair’ is wrong in a different way from ‘cake the eat’.
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