Q: What was your first word?Why study language acquisition?The (really) big questionsFirst Language Acquisition is…PowerPoint PresentationWhat do children have to do?Slide 7Slide 8Slide 9Slide 10Slide 11Slide 12Slide 13Listening to languageSlide 15What can infants do at birth?How do we test infants’ perceptual abilities?What does this mean?Children perceive rythm in languageSpeech perception: the sounds of the languageSounds contrasts in the native languagePerception of soundsSlide 23Slide 24Slide 25BabblingSlide 27Slide 28Slide 29Slide 30Slide 31Slide 32Slide 33Slide 34Slide 35How?Slide 37nature v. nurtureSlide 39Example: Learning pluralsThis is a wug.Slide 42This is a tass.Slide 44This is a mouse.mousesSlide 47What’s another example of something that must be learned?Lexical DevelopmentSlide 50Late talkersWhat is Language Impairment?Slide 53What is SPECIFIC Language Impairment?Common features of SLIVocabularySlide 57Slide 58Q: What was your first word?Why study language acquisition?“doubtless the greatest intellectual feat any one of us is ever required to perform” “doubtless the greatest intellectual feat any one of us is ever required to perform” (Leonard Bloomfield, 1933)1The (really) big questions•What do children have to do?•When do they do it?•How do they do it?3First Language Acquisition is…•Typical•Spontaneous•Creative•Similar across languages and children2•divide up the speech streamminindeminageratawkumadeljilochmin indeminager atawkum adel, jilochWhat do children have to do?4What do children have to do?•make and coordinate fine articulatory movements5http://sail.usc.edu/~lgoldste/General_Phonetics/Gestural_structure/Xray_Films/Dance.htmlInfants have…•Raised larynx•Shorter vocal tract•Lower palate•Tongue takes up more of mouth•No teeth76Larynx begins lowering around 3-4 mos. (complete by ~3 yrs)87What do children have to do?•associate `chunks’ with meaningduck!8underextension error9overextension error10What do children have to do?•learn to combine `chunks’ in specific ways–the duck vs. *duck the–I want a duck vs. *I a duck want –My mom says that one is not a duck.–And then she was all like, “Dude, that’s totes not a duck!”11The (really) big questions•What do children have to do?•When do they do it?•How do they do it?12Listening to language 14Last trimester of pregnancy: Late term fetuses possess relevant perceptual abilities They have a particular sensitivity to melody contour in both music and languageListening to language15•During the first months of life: –babies cannot produce speech because their vocal tract has not developed yet–babies listen to speech and try to find regularities in the speech streamWhat can infants do at birth? 16•New born can discriminate their native language from a foreign languageLanguages discriminated Infant’s native languageAgeFrench-Russian French 4 daysEnglish-Spanish Spanish-English 2 daysEnglish-Italian English 2 monthsEnglish-Japanese English 2 monthsEnglish-French English 2 monthsHow do we test infants’ perceptual abilities? 17The high-amplitude sucking procedure (HAS)A pacifer is linked to a pressure transducer connected to a computer, enabling children’s sucking rate to be measured. The more vigorously infants suck, the more stimuli they receive.What does this mean?•Infants have already become familiar with certain properties of their linguistic environment before birth 18Children perceive rythm in language 19Infants extract and build a representation of languages based on rhythmic properties, which are known to vary across languageshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUMM5eCvi8w•For instance: –Stress-timed languages: Dutch, English, Russian, Swedish–Syllable-timed languages: Italian, French, Greek, Spanishmachine-gun rhythm: each underlying rhythmical unit is of the same duration, similar to the transient bullet noise of a machine-gunSpeech perception: the sounds of the language 20There are sounds in languages which may bring about a change of meaningLace vs race Some sounds are distinctive on some languages but not in others: /l/ and /r/ are distinctive in English (lace vs race, but not in JapaneseJapanese speakers cannot discriminate /l/ and /r/Sounds contrasts in the native language 21How do children acquire these contrasts in sounds and understand that they are important/ unimportant in their language?Perception of sounds 22Let’s listen to what children can do (talk by prof. Patricia Kuhl, University of Washington): http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies.htmlPerception of sounds•Children can perceive all the sounds until they are 1 y.o.•They loose this ability as they become more attuned to their native language•By age 1 they only attend the sounds of their languageWhen do they start producing language?Language stage BEGINNING ageDiscomfort sounds BirthCooing and laughter 2 monthsBabbling 4-6 monthsIntonation patterns 8 months1-word/holophrastic stage 8-12 months2-word utterances 18 monthsWord inflections 2 yearsQuestions, negatives 2-2.5 yearsRare / complex constructions 5 yearsMature speech 10 yearsFancy linguistics jargon 18 yearshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lr_K3KuV-Zk&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7mOzWQSnaQ&feature=related13When?Language stage BEGINNING ageDiscomfort sounds BirthCooing and laughter 2 monthsBabbling 4-6 monthsIntonation patterns 8 months1-word/holophrastic stage 8-12 months2-word utterances 18 monthsWord inflections 2 yearsQuestions, negatives 2-2.5 yearsRare / complex constructions 5 yearsMature speech 10 yearsFancy linguistics jargon 18 years14Babbling•Similar across lgs (CV)•Common sounds: [b m g j]ɑ•Children sometimes babble sounds that don’t occur in their language or that they don’t use in words until 2-3 years later 15•Canonical babbling: repetition of syllables; ca. 6-10moshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JmA2ClUvUY•Variegated babbling:variation in syllable combinations; ca. 10-12moshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMaxy8uaJjYBabbling16•Around 8mos, intonational patterns start to sound like sentenceshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYk6TWFfICI•Babbling typically continues well after the appearance of first words (for another 4-5 months or longer)Babbling17When?Language stage BEGINNING ageDiscomfort sounds BirthCooing and laughter 2 monthsBabbling 4-6 months1-word/holophrastic stage 8-12