First Language Acquisition summary/lecture notes

Inhoud
Seminar 1 – 4th April...............................................................................................................................2
Lecture 1 – 8th April.................................................................................................................................4
Main approaches................................................................................................................................5
Seminar 2 – 11th April.............................................................................................................................8
Lecture 2 – 15th April...............................................................................................................................9
Phonetics............................................................................................................................................9
Phonology...........................................................................................................................................9
Experimental paradigms with infants...............................................................................................10
Guest lecture by Reza Falahati..........................................................................................................10
Lecture 3 – 22th April...........................................................................................................................12
Lecture 4 – 6th May – syntax.................................................................................................................17
How is syntax approached from different perspectives?..................................................................17
Where does syntax come from?.......................................................................................................18
Acquiring part-of-speech (syntax categories)....................................................................................19
Acquiring basic word orders: subject/verb/object............................................................................19
Interplay between morphology and syntax......................................................................................19
Sequence of development................................................................................................................20
Recall (samenvatting)........................................................................................................................22
Paradigms or tests exploring children’s syntactic development........................................................22
Lecture 5 – 13th May.............................................................................................................................23
Lexical semantics..............................................................................................................................23
Possible solutions for the gavagai problem.......................................................................................26
Compositional meaning vs. speaker meaning...................................................................................26




1

,Seminar 1 – 4th April
Describing who you are
Jing (41;00;03) (f)
41 = years old
00 = months
03 = days old
(f) = female

FLA = First Language Acquisition. This is unconscious, without instructions.
 From birth till the age of 6 or 7 years old (critical period)
 Multiple L1’s possible
 When child goes to school, the FLA kinds of ‘ends’ when the child goes to school.
This is because in school, the literacy developmental starts: learning letters,
instructions in language. Here starts another process.

What is there to acquire?
- Form of language: syntax, morphology, phonology
- Content: semantics
- Use: pragmatics

Developmental milestones: there is a picture on the PowerPoint.

Factors affecting FLA
Nature:
 IQ?
 Cognitive abilities, like working memory. Notice that children vary in how well they
are able to play memory cards.
 Hearing abilities
 ADHD
 Developmental Language Disorder

Nurture:
 Exposure to input
 Age of onset (not always from birth)
 Quality/quantity of input

Why do we study FLA?
Humans are unique in a sense that only human beings have languages this complex.
Because we have mechanisms in our brain that are very special. We are able to create
language,, build up from nothing.
 Learnability
 Variations
 Constraints: there are concepts for which there are no words in certain language




2

, Methodology
1. Speech corpus research
Most often naturistic data, especially when it comes to child subjects.
o Diary
o Recording of (child) speech
Hard to control.

2. Experimental research
- Manipulated conditions
- Most often unnatural or semi-naturistic data
- Controlled

You can do a combination of these two options.




3