Theories of First Language Acquisition

Republic of the Philippines
Municipality of Altavas
ALTAVAS COLLEGE
Altavas, Aklan
1st Semester, Academic Year 2021-2022
PRINCIPLES AND THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LEARNING
Module 2: First Language Acquisition
LEARNING OBJECTIVE
 examine theories of first language acquisition
**********
DISCUSSION
THEORIES OF FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Everyone at some time has witnessed the remarkable ability of children to communicate. As
small babies, children babble and coo and cry and vocally or nonvocally send an extraordinary
number of messages and receive even more messages.
 1 year of age - children make specific attempts to imitate words and speech sounds
- they utter their first “words”
 18 months of age – produce two-word and three-word “sentences,” commonly referred to as
“telegraphic” utterances (e.g., all gone milk, shoe off, bye-bye Daddy, etc.)
 2 years of age – comprehending more sophisticated language
- forming questions and negatives
examples: where my mitten? that not red, that blue why not me sleeping?
 3 years of age – nonstop chattering and incessant conversation
How can we explain this fantastic journey from that first anguished cry at birth to adult
competence in a language?
Behaviorist position would claim that children come into the world with a tabula rasa, a clean
slate bearing no preconceived notions about the world or about language, and that these children
are then shaped by their environment and slowly conditioned through various reinforcement.
Cognitivists claim that children come into this world with a very specific innate knowledge,
predispositions, and biological timetables, but that children learn to function in a language through
interaction and discourse.
Behavioral Approaches
1
 Language is a fundamental part of total human behavior.
 A behaviorist might consider effective language behavior to be the production of correct
responses to stimuli. If a particular response is reinforced, it then becomes habitual or
conditioned.
 One learns to comprehend an utterance by responding appropriately to it and by being
reinforced for that response.
 B. F. Skinner’s Operant Conditioning – conditioning in which the organism (human being)
emits a response, or operant (sentence or utterance), without necessarily observable stimuli;
that operant is maintained (learned) by reinforcement. Example, if a child says “want milk”
and a parent gives the child some milk, the operant is reinforced and, over repeated
instances, is conditioned.
The Nativist Approach

 The term nativist is derived from fundamental assertion that language acquisition is innately
determined, that we are born with a genetic capacity that predisposes us to a systematic
perception of language around us, resulting in the construction of an internalized system of
language.
 This innate knowledge, according to Chomsky, was embodied in a metaphorical “little black
box” in the brain, a language acquisition device (LAD).
Four Innate Linguistic Properties of LAD (McNeill, 1966)

1. The ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds in the environment.
2. The ability to organize linguistic data into various classes that can later be refined.
3. Knowledge that only a certain kind of linguistic system is possible and that others are
not.
4. The ability to engage in constant evaluation of the developing linguistic system so as to
construct the simplest possible system out of the available linguistic input.
 Universal Grammar – research that attempts to discover what brings all children, regardless
of their environmental stimuli, to language acquisition process.
 Pivot grammars – the early grammar of child language
Functional Approaches
 Language was just one manifestation of the cognitive and affective ability to deal with the
world, with others, and with the self.
 Cognition and language development
 Social interaction
 Focus more on the functions of language in discourse
2
Figure 2.1 Theories of first language acquisition
Nativist
Behaviorist *innate predispositions Functional

(LAD/UG)
*tabula rasa *constructivist
*systematic, rule-
*stimuli; linguistic *social interaction
governed acquisition
responses *cognition and language
*creative construction
*conditioning *functions of language
*pivot grammar
*reinforcement *discourse
*parallel distributed
processing
EVALUATION
1. Observe or consider how children learn their first language and figure out what some of the
children’s “secret” are, which enable them to acquire a language seemingly efficient. (30 pts)
Reference:
https://epdf.tips_principles-of-language-learning-and-teaching-5th-e.pdf
Prepared by:
Ms. Kristine F. Cantilero
Instructor
3
- End of Module 2 -

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Republic of the Philippines

PRINCIPLES AND THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LEARNING

Module 2: First Language Acquisition

The Nativist Approach

Four Innate Linguistic Properties of LAD (McNeill, 1966)

 Pivot grammars – the early grammar of child language

Behaviorist *innate predispositions Functional

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