NARRATIVE ACCOUNT OF MY L1 ACQUISITION

Being born to language

Too much time has passed since I came to this world for the first
time; its been 28 years, actually. My first memories of this phenomenon
we call language - which is, in everybodys opinion, what really makes us
different from the rest of the animals - are quite confusing. The fact is that
during the first 6 months nothing of what my parents produced with their
vocal chords made any sense to me. I wasnt able to understand anything
they said; therefore, it was mere noises to my ears, not sounds. Yes,
because sounds possesses the distinctive feature of having meaning. An
ambulance siren is a sound, since we all perfectly understand what it
means: a medical emergency. So, in my first half year of life on earth the
talking of my parents meant nothing but noise. Well, I dont mean that it
was frightening, scary, disgusting or something alike. Not at all, for
language possesses other characteristics aside from meaning. They are
called

paralinguistic

features.

Body

language,

gestures,

facial

expressions, tone and pitch of voice are examples of them. We speak

with our vocal organs, but we converse with our entire bodies. Thanks to
these special features of language, the nonsense noises that my parents
produced to communicate with me were in fact pleasant, amusing,
gratifying. Actually, they were quite funny to me, because their talking
was what the experts called caretaker speech, a special kind of speaking
characterized by exaggerated intonation, simple sentence structures, lots
of repetition and questions, and baby-talk words such as choo-choo.
This type of talking was fundamental for me to familiarize with human
conversation and to encourage myself to try to speak. There is also the
fact that we human creature are genetically programmed to hear
language since the day we are born. We can distinguish tones, pitches

and all those nuances that make human speaking something unique and
loaded with meaning. At this point, I wanted to produce such type of
noises myself, in order to express what I was feeling. Unfortunately,
before 6 months approximately I was not able to produce nothing but
coos and gurgles, which cannot be considered anything similar to a
language. Unable to emit nothing more than guttural noises, I could not
communicate my feelings and sensations to my parents, and crying was
the only way for me to catch their attention when something was
happening, which was quite distressing and upsetting.

First conversations
After 6 months, something happened. Something that would draw
more attention from Mom and Dad, and that would apparently make them
particularly happy. For some reason, I gained more control of my tongue
and lips, so I was able to produce my first syllables. Actually, my father
was the happier one, since my first babbling stuff was pa-pa (Spanish
for dad), although it was a completely random, unintentional and
meaningless sound to me. I remember my mother being pretendedly
upset and saying to me: This is nice! I had you for 9 months inside my
belly and the first thing you can say is dad? Of course, it was not my
intention to hurt her. The thing is that at that time the only type of
consonants I was able to produce were the so-called stop consonants (p,
b, t, d, etc,). Nasal sounds like m or n were beyond my capabilities for the
moment. This ability to make syllables entertained me for quite a while. I
started combining different types of them, like pa-ga or ba-pa.
Although there was no real meaning embodied in such combinations called by scholars segmental babbling - it was quite funny for me (and for
my parents of course!). At the same time - and this was fantastic -, I
developed the ability to imitate my parents intonation and pitch variations,
so I began to engage in long conversations with both of them. For the

three of us, this was delightful. The fact that there was not a bit of
semantic content in what I was saying didnt prevent this talking from
being very meaningful for us as a family; it was like there was for the first
time a real connection between us. If someone would have looked at us
while we were having this kind of chats, he/she would have thought that
we were discussing profound and erudite subjects!

Can we have a word?

I remember clearly the first time I associate a real sound with a real
thing. My mom brought to our house a little black dog that she named
Toto, because of her favourite rock band. At this age - I was 10 months
old - I was able to indicate the little dog and say Toto! Many words came
afterwards, such as miau (cat), pan (bread), pete (pacifier), etc. The
problem was that whenever my mother took out for an outing in my baby
stroller and I saw a dog, I would say Toto! In my mind, every dog was
Toto; furthermore, sometimes a cat could be a Toto. Actually, every fourlegged animal qualified to be a Toto. The overextension phenomenon
didnt allow me to distinguish one puppy from another!

Can we have two words?

Being already a 1-year-old boy my set of words increasingly grew. I
felt the need to put a name to every single object I saw. Each time my
mother told me This is called arbol (tree) or This is called mesa
(table), I made a real effort to remember the word and to associate it with
the respective object. Then I tried something even more challenging: real
sentences. Well, not real sentences strictly speaking - they had no verbs but they were a good beginning. In fact, the combination of two words in
order to create a sentence-like meaning is considered by experts and

scholars - I am not one - as the very beginning of grammar developing.

For instance, if I wanted to say that my dad was sleeping, I would say:
papa-tuto (dad-sleep). Auxiliaries like is or are will appear much
later. But at least, I was now able to produce more meaningful utterances,
which improved my social skills and enhanced my interaction with the
outer world. My lexical development was characterized by two
phenomena. First, what experts call whole object principle, meaning that I
was sometimes unable to recognize if a word referred to a whole object or
to a part of it. For instance, I remember once my uncle Alberto was talking
about his bicycle, and constantly said the word manubrio (handlebar),
and was quite confused since I could not said if that was a new word for
bicycle or what... The second thing that happened to me was the socalled extendability principle, exemplified by what I mentioned above
about my mothers pet Toto. This principle, although may be seen as a
defect, is actually very useful in order to develop the notion of concept
categories.

Imitation or creativity?
Eventually, I began to incorporate more complex stuff to my
speaking. I became more fluent; my pronunciation improved dramatically;
I began to learn and use articles, the s for plurals, morphemes, among
others; I mastered - not without difficulties - the past and future tenses,
which are particularly more difficult in Spanish than in English, etc. When
I was 6 years old, I can say that I could speak in a very accurate and
proper manner. Now, the question that really matters - since it relates to
the understanding of human language phenomenon - is if I learned how
to speak by simply imitation or if there was something else involved in the
process. Well, according to my experience, I didnt just try to imitate my
parents and repeat exactly what they said; I mean, although they served
me

as

models

for

certain

language

characteristics

specially

paralinguistic features - every time I tried to speak, it was because I was

really involved in it; it was a inner need to express myself that drove me
into producing my first utterances; it was ME who was trying to express
and say things. Of course I used the materials that my parents provided
me - sounds, words, tones, pitches -, but I combined those materials in a
creative way, in MY way, with the goal of communicate my inner state of
mind, to put into words my feelings.
As a conclusion, I must state that human language cannot be
attributed to merely genetic dispositions in the human mind, or to the
exclusive influence of the environment of the future speaker. It is clear
that I - just like any other human being - learned to speak in an incredibly
fast way considering the complexity of this activity, so there must be
something in our brains which enormously facilitates this process. At the
same time, however, its undeniable that our caretakers play a basic role
in providing us with valuable input - especially in terms of affection and
encouragement - without which it would be impossible for us to
pronounce a single meaningful human sentence.

TIME LINE
First 6 months
Unable to produce nothing but coos, gurgles and guttural noises lacking
real meaning.

Between 6 and 10 months

Babbling and the ability to produce syllables appear for the first
time, but without real meaning. First conversations with my
parents.

Between 10 months and 1 year

First real words, that is to say, sounds associated with specific objects o
groups of similar objects.

1 year on
Ability to combine two words to produce first sentence-like ideas.
Gradually incorporating articles, past and future tenses, morphemes, etc.

6 years old
Accurate and proper speaking.