FIRST LANGUAGE

ACQUISITION
Prepared by: CHERRYL MAE P. BANLAT
FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
DEFINITION

 Refers to first-language acquisition, which studies infants’

acquisition of their native language.
 This is the acquisition of the mother tongue.
 The process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive
and comprehend language, as well as to produce and use words
and sentences to communicate.
 Language acquisition is one of the quintessential human
traits, because non-humans do not communicate by using
language.
INPUT
 Input is where human infants are certainly helped in their
language acquisition by the adults in the home environment.
 “baby talk” is where speech style adopted by someone who
spends a lot of time interacting with a young child.
 Examples for simplified words are “tummy”, “mama” “poo-
poo” “pee-pee” and others.
Caregiver Speech

 Also described as “motherese” or “childdirected

speech”.
 There are four types of caregiver speech :
 Frequent use of questions
 Often using exaggerated intonation
 Extra loudness
 A slower tempo with longer pauses
1) Cooing

 Between 2-4 months.

 The child gradually becomes capable of producing vowel-like
sounds, such as [i] and [u]
 Repetition of the vowel sounds.
 Express satisfaction or pleasure.
2) Babbling

 Between 6-8 months.

 The child produces a number of different owels and
consonants, such as ba-ba-ba and ba-ba-da-da, which at times
can almost sound ike a real speech.
 Uses consonants B, M, D and G.
 3) The One-word Stage

 Between 12 – 18 months.
 One or two recognizable word.
 Resembles words or simple phrases.
 Words that utter everyday objects
such as “milk” , “cat” , “spoon”
4) The Two-word Stage

 Begin around 18 – 20 months.

 At least 50 different words.
 Simple sentences, grammatically incorrect and perhaps
missing information.
 Variety combination words appear.
 For examples :
 baby chair, daddy car, more milk, cat bad.
 The phrase “baby chair” may be taken as :
1) an expression of possession = (this is baby’s chair)
or
2) as a request = (put baby in the chair) or
3) as a statement = (baby is in the chair)
 5) Telegraphic Speech

 Between 2 – 3 years old.

 The child begins producing a large number that
could be classified as “multiple-word” speech.
 The child vocabulary has grown to hundreds of
words during this stage and pronunciation become
more clearer.
 Almost complete sentences.
 Correct/proper word order.
 Physical development : running and jumping.
 For examples :
a) this shoe all wet
b) daddy go bye-bye
c) cat drink milk
Learning through imitation