PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORIES

There are several questions that comes to one's mind wen we talk about language learning for instance

*What does practice do in the learning process?

*What is the importance of the environment in the language learning?

* Is there any age at which it is easier to learn a language and so wat is this age?

*Is there any difference between learning ones first language and learning a second language?

*Why does someone learn a language?

One may find it easier to ask this question about is difficult to answer them .this questions are are
important to people learning a language as well as those who tend to study language acquisition.

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive produce and use words to understand
and communicate.

It involves the picking up diverse capacities include syntax, phonetics and extensive vocabulary.

Learning first language is sometimes that every normal child does successfully without much need for
formal lessons.

Language development is complex and unique human quality yet children seem to acquire it at a very
rapid rate most of whose speech is relatively grammatical by the age of 3.

Most children in linguistics community seem to succeed in converging on a grammatical system

equivalent to everyone else in the community with few wrong terms which is quietly markble
considering the petcos and complexity of the system.

However there is no one point which all children learn to talk. Children acquire Lang in stages. Different
children learn various stages at different times.

This is as such although having one thing in common and is that children learning the same lang will
follow all most identical pattern in the sequence they go through.

The Early utterance of children are often different from adult language.

When a child is asked to repeat what an adult was saying, a child often makes changes eg they ormit
morphemes words or even phrase depending on how developed their language is interms of length and
completexity,they tend to make utterance shorter and less complex bcoz children begin with one word
and two words to utterance and gradually move on to longer and complex utterance.
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN

1.There language development is systematic

The manner in which children's language development is ,is not haphazard but rather systematic.

At each and every stage of language development their is little Lang input effort. However the output
has been always so vast showing children ability to produce and understand utterance they have never
heard before.

This ability to produce and utterance is called linguistics competence.

2. Language is a coherent set of rules

This is to say it could be senseless to talk about children memorizing average utterance for they will set
themselves for an impossible task of memorizing millions of utterance.

The child start learning their F1 Lang by building up a system that will ultimately enable them to produce
and understand on limited number of utterance.

3. Children's discovering of language not instantaneous

The process takes several years and simultaneously goes with a number of well documented stages.
However there is slight age variation from child to child as they pass through these stages.

Children Lang development is governed by at least 2 factors:

_ they learn aspects of language that are meaningful to them.

_they learn aspects that are simple and regular before complex and regular ones.

Eg* children will say" doed" instead of did

* Children will say "putted" instead of put ( to make past tense)

Regularity need child to make mistakes in all stages of language development because they haven't
learned irregularities in the other languages.

Mistakes of this kind are the useful because they demonstrate that children are not simply imitating
what they hear but are working out a system for speaking.

THEORIES AND MODELS OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Several scholars have different views on how language is acquired

B.f skinner claims that language is a set of habits built up over the years just like how one learn to play
football and all that is needed is the right environment.

He clams that language is like these two where there is no language we can not have it.
Thomsky disagree with skinners claims and he says most of skinners research was based on rats and
rabbits and so he argues that you can not assess human habits by what animal do because the nature of
the language development is complex

THE BEHAVIORIST THEORY

Skinner and other behaviorist advocate believe that language.

Behavior operate on environment to bring about favorable consequences. Therefore operate

conditioning can also believe that language could be treated like any other kind of cognitive behavior.

According to them language learning is the process of habit formation that involves period of trial and
error ,a child tries and falls to use language until succeed.

Infancy also have human models in their environment that provide a stimuli and rewards required for
operate conditioning. This rewards reinforces further articulation which gradually comes to resemble
those of other languages .

There is also negative reinforcement in cases where some utterance are discouraged through lack of
rewards and responses.

Children utter words because they poses adults to give them what they want and they will be given
what they want once the adult has shaped the child through reinforcement and rewards speeches close
to that of other speech.

According to skinners theory of language acquisition children learn to speak by coping the utterance
heard around them and by having response strengthened by repetition, correction and other reaction
adults provide.

According to this theory the process of language acquisition is gradual and accumulated where imitation
and reinforcement are central.

No Linguistics behavior is innately specified language like skills e.g walking and playing football is actually
learned through experience and practice

There is no special inborn capacity to acquire language is due to the fact that we have received training
as children.

From linguistic point of view we are born with empty brains (tabulae rasae), therefore linguistics system
is built or constructed in the structure.

So it is the environment that is most important to the development of language. The environment
provide stimuli and the individual provide response which is language.

NATIVIST THEORY
Thomsky natives theory proposes that children have an inborn faculty for language acquisition that is
biologically determine .

According to goodluck 1991, nativist are people that agree or marry.

They view language as a fundamental traits that make humans and it's acquisition is a natural past of
maturation.

According to them the human spices have evolved a brain whose neural circuits contains linguistics
information at birth and this is a natural predisposition to learn language it is triggered by hearing
speech

with this information the child's brain is then able to interpret what she or he hears according to the
underlined principles or structures it has

Thomsky has determined being biologically prepared to acquire language regards of setting is due to the
child's language acquisition device called LAD

This is the mechanism for working out the rules of a language eg lad already contains the concept of
verb tense. By listening to word forms like .....the child will then form a hypothesis that the past tense of
verb is formed by adding sounds "d" ,"t" to the best form .

Yang 2006 also believes that children initially poses than develop an inate understanding a hypothesis
about grammar regardless of where they are raised .

According to thomsky children acquire grammar because it is the universal property of language,it is an
inborn development and he has coined this fundamental ideas that Humans have as universal grammar
eg UG

Another argument of nativist theory there is a critical period for language acquisition which is a time
flame during which environment exposure is needed to stimulate an innate

Lenneberg 1964 postulated the critical period of language acquisition ends around the age of 12. He
believed that if no language learned before this period then it will never be learned in a normal sense.

For example : there is a girl called jinn who is object to circumstances; who was imposed to abuse
environment which didn't allow her to develop a language skill.

ARGUMENTS FOR NATIVIST VIEW.

Language is a biological triggered behavior. They argued that the time when someone becomes sexually
matured is exactly what happens with language. Language may be set emotion by biological time clock
which similar to child into coined, standing, working and running.

Language emerged almost at the same time in children all over the world, the ages 18-24 months. Yet
there is no evidence that any conscious or systematic teaching takes place. We can not claim that all
mother's in the world state initiating speech in their children at the very same time.
CHARACTERISTICS OF BIOLOGIC TRIGGERED BEHAVIORS (BTB)

I. Emergence of behavior. BTB emerges before it is necessary. I emerges in the anticipation of

something. For example, sexual maturity is procreation to enhance human race. Language also emerges
before needed at age of 18-24 months as it is needed for anticipation.

II. Behaviour appearance is not as a result of conscious. Nativist strongly believe that behavior appear
not as a result of conscious decision but rather jus appears. For example, when every girl develops
breast, sometimes girls will even stoop when walking, yet before this particular stage, they wish that
the breast grow. In the same case over language one cannot control over to start speaking today or
tomorrow.

III. The emerges of behavior is not triggered by external events. The surrounding environment needs to
just be adequate or sufficient for the behavior to develop. For example, if one is in an environment with
people who can walk then he/she is in a suitable environment. Although, biologic all the time has
triggered the behavior, then the environment is not rich it cannot develop. Similarly, if where not
exposed to language, this behavior will not develop.

IV. There is a critical period in the acquisition of behavior. There is likely to be critical period for the
emerges of behavior. A critical period is a space of time that is critical for an event to occur.

THE EVIDENCE OF CRITICAL PERIOD

a. Children of the deaf mute.

 ISABELLA. Is an example of a wolf child (who develop or grow in an environment / conditions

which are not conjusive for human beings). Isabella was 6 years and only making frog sounds,
she and her mother had spend most of their time in a dark room however, when she was found,
she was exposed to language and made a remarkable progress. She went through the normal
stages of linguistics development at a grade accelerated rate. She covered what takes a normal
6 year old child in 2 years. When she was 8 and half years she was at the same level with others.
 JINNY. Another wolf child, she was found after 14 years. She lived just like Isabella. At the age of
2 she was physically punished by her father when she attempted to speak. She spends most of
her time in tied in portable chair or sleeping bag. She was found totally without speech. Once
she was exposed to language, she learned to speak in a very permitive way, she progressed very
slowly compared to normal children which is the opposite of Isabella. Where normal human
children will go over the two way stage it takes only 2 weeks and it took 5 months for Jinny and
she was still struggling. Where ordinary children pose the grammatical negative stage, Jinny took
2 years to go over this stage. Normal children acquire the WH question immediately after the
two word stage and Jinny didn't go through this stage.
WHY THERE IS DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ISABELLA AND JINNY
 It appears the age of 14 years is beyond the critical period but 6 and half years seems to be in
critical period.
 In other words, Jinny began to acquire language after the adolescent stage and this is the beyond
the period of language acquisition.
b. People with damaged brain.
 It is involved with lateralization.
1. Lateralization
Is the specialization of language on one side of the brain. There is evidence that speech is located on the
left side of the brain. Patients with damaged brain provide us with evidence for the idea of critical
period. Studies have shown that critical period is considered of those in line with lateralization.
Lateralization are suggested by Elingberg as it occurs in between 2 to 14 years. However, others argues
that it's 5 to 6 years. Evidence shows that the child still learns language normally but it is controlled by
the right hemisphere and not the left. However, as the child grows the likelihood of damage to the left
hemisphere causing permanent damage gets better. If a child has a damage on the left hemisphere of
the brain at the age of 7 or 8 years, speech impairment is usually long lasting and it mainly cover 20
years or 50 when one is having brain damage as adolescent speech impairment is life bug (unrecovered).
Why is this the case? This is because at the same time you were an adult or adolescent the process of
lateralization is complete. And at that particular stage, the brain seems it have lost its abilities of
learning language.
C. The bird called chaffinch
A similar critical period of learning speech has been found in a bird called Chaffinch. The critical period is
in terms of acquisition of their songs which becomes fixed when the bird is 5 months old. After 5
months, the song cannot be changed anymore. If the bird is not exposed to the song before 5months
from birth, the bird will never learn to sing normally, thus the critical period is from birth to 5 months.

Note: All the three evidence suggests that a critical period exists and it is biological triggered, as humans
beings has no control of human behavior.

V. Direct teaching. Direct teaching and intensive practice have relatively little effect. Behaviors that are
not biologically triggered like playing football, cycling can well be achieved through the amount of
teaching one receives.
This is different with language in that there is no relationship between direct teaching no matter how
you try to teach the child how to speak, still the results seems to be the same. Some psychologists
argued that collecting the child hinder the process of learning. For example, a boy called Paul who's
mother collected his speech often as he grew, the boy lacked confidence and his process of language
learning was hindered.
On the other hand, the mother of a 14 month old girl called Jane did not care what her daughter said,
she responded to whatever Jane said, eventually Jane showed remarkable progress in her speech and
that the time she was 15 months old, she had acquired 80 words.
VI. Regural sequence. There is a regular sequence of milestones as the behavior develops which can be
to correlated with age and other aspects of development. Various stages of language acquisition are
related to various stages of human physical development but the chronology remains the same. In some
cases, the might be near and sometimes apart.
SEQUENCE OF ACQUIRING LANGUAGE

LANGUAGE PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT /AGE

STAGE 1 At birth
Crying

STAGE 2 At 6 weeks
cooing (soft mammering sound)

STAGE 3 6 weeks to 6 months

Babbling (producing of syllables)

STAGE 4 8 months
Intentional patterns

STAGE 5 1 year
One word utterance

STAGE 6 18 months
Two words utterance

STAGE 7 2 years
Word infections

STAGE 8 5 years or 4 and half years

Questions and negatives

STAGE 9 5 and half years

Rare complex constructions

STAGE 10 10 years
Mature speech (usage of speech
of figurative language)