Introduction

Ingram’s textbook has the terms method, description and explanation as a subtitle. This course is designed to teach a little about each of these terms and how they interact to produce a record of first language acquisition. A simple approach to teaching first language acquisition would simply provide a description of children’s language through the first three years of life.

One limitation of focusing solely on description is that the description is provided without a historical background. Ingram identifies three historical periods of acquisition research which used different methods.

Table 3.5 Three Historical Approaches, p. 53

Are these periods genuine linguistic milestones or artifacts of our methodology and description?

Ingram identifies these historical periods in terms of both the methods common during the time as well as their theoretical approach.

One issue that Ingram does not discuss is whether these periods are true for every language. Stern defined the periods based on the observation of German children, whereas Nice and Brown defined their periods based on the observation of American children.

Do German and American English have similar grammars: phonology, morphology, syntax?

How do other languages differ from German and American English?

We live in an age of mass extinction. Most people are familiar with the loss of biological species such as the passenger pidgin and the ivory-billed woodpecker. Very few people are aware of how quickly people of the world are abandoning minority languages. Ken Hale (1998:192) claimed that “During the coming century ... 3,000 of the existing 6,000 languages will perish and another 2,400 will come near to extinction. Thus, 90 percent of the world’s languages are imperiled.” David Crystal (2000:19) suggests that a middle position predicts a 50% loss of languages in the next 100 years. He adds that “To meet that time frame, at least one language must die, on average, every two weeks or so.” Both estimates have dire implications for research on language acquisition. The following graph compares these estimates of language loss against an estimate of the number of languages in which at least one acquisition study has been completed, including simple lists of baby talk words (Puppel 2001; Slobin 1972).

How many languages do you think will have language acquisition studies by the time 90% of the world’s languages become extinct?

One of the main differences between languages is the degree to which they use morphology to express semantic relations. English, German and Chinese use syntax to express semantic relations, whereas the Athabaskan language Navajo, the Iroquoian language Mohawk, and the Mayan language K’iche’ use morphology to express semantic relations.

Do you think two-year-old children would successfully produce the following words?

Which parts do you think children would produce, and which parts would they omit?

Mohawk verb (Mithun 1999:59)

      ^-ts-ya-kwa-n^hst-rų-ko-ʔ

      future-repetitive-1exclusive.agent-plural-corn-set-reversive-perfective.aspect

      ‘We will scrape the corn off the cob’

Siberian Yupik

      angya-ghlla-ng-yuq-tuq

      boat-augmentative-acquire-desiderative-3sing

      ‘He wants to acquire a big boat’

Nootka, spoken on Vancouver Island (Sapir 1915)

      hin -t’ -ciL -aq’ -we/inⁱ

      be/do-come-starts-‘you are fat’-quote

      ‘Someone fat comes, it is said’

What effects do you think such words would have on the developmental milestones suggested by Stern, Nice and Brown?

What implications do such cross-linguistic differences have for the description of child language acquisition?

What implications does impending language extinction have for the method used to study language acquisition?

What are the implications for acquisition theory?

References

Crystal, David. (2000). Language Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hale, Ken. (1998). On endangered languages and the importance of linguistic diversity. In Lenore

A. Grenoble and Lindsay J. Whaley (eds), Endangered languages: Language loss and Community Response, 192-216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Mithun, M. 1999. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Puppel, Stanisław. (2001). A bibliography of writings on the acquisition of first language. Age-long research on child language and human cognition: A tribute to the XXth century studies of man. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

Slobin, D. I. (1972). Leopold’s bibliography of child language, revised and augmented edition. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.

See the World Atlas of Language Structures Online for information on language diversity.

Three Major Periods of Child Language Studies

A. Diary Studies: baby biographies (1876-1926)

      1. Method: parent observer, inductive, unsystematic, diverse

2. Description: major diaries- Taine 1877, Darwin 1877, Stern & Stern 1907 Die Kindersprache, major journal Pedagogical Seminary edited by G. Stanley Hall; later diaries: Leopold 1939-49 on Hildegard, Lewis 1936, 51 on K.

      3. Theory: nativist, if any (see Taine 1877, quote, p. 9)

We only help it [the child: DI] to catch them [general ideas: DI] by the suggestion of our words. It attaches to them ideas that we do not expect and spontaneously generalizes outside and beyond our cadres. At times it invents not only the meaning of the word but the word itself... In short, it learns a ready-made language as a true musician learns counterpoint or a true poet prosody; it is an original genius adapting itself to a form constructed bit by bit by a succession of original geniuses; if language were wanting, the child would recover it little by little or would discover an equivalent.

      4. Assessment:

            a. Strength–data, nativist, first insights

            b. Weaknesses–unsystematic, biased, descriptive

B. Large Sample Studies (1926-1957)

1. Method: large number of subjects, cross-sectional, systematic, small samples per child, quantitative analysis.

2. Description: major studies- M. Smith (Iowa), D. McCarthy & M. Templin (Minnesota); Templin 1957

3. Theory: behaviorist, if any, e.g., Bloomfield 1933 on word acquisition (see p. 19). (Also Skinner 1957)

            - child vocalizes [da]

            - child imitates similar adult words, e.g. doll as [da]

            - child associates sound to context

            - child displaces to broader context

            - child is reinforced

            a. Strength–norms, data (needs reinterpretation), use of measurement

            b. Weaknesses–linguistically naive, grouped data, superficial, atheoretical

C. Longitudinal and Experimental Studies (1957- present)

      1. Method: 3 children, regular visits, 2 observers, recorded and transcribed.

2. Description: major studies- Brown 1973 on Adam, Eve, Sarah, Bloom 1970 on Eric, Gia, Kathryn, Braine 1963 on Gregory, Andrew, Steven. Chomsky (see p 24): multiple methods; competence vs. performance

Theory: two approaches (p. 27)

1. Child Language: data oriented, inductive, focus on what children do–overgeneralizations, local strategies, dynamic grammar–constructionist

2. Language Acquisition: theory oriented, deductive, focus on what children do not do–constraints, rich interpretations, static grammar–maturationist.

These approaches offer different perspectives on restructuring in child grammar

i. Constructionist approaches limit restructuring and make it subject to environmental conditions.

      ii. Nativist approaches suggest two posibilities:

           1. Strong Inclusion Hypothesis (p. 70)–child’s grammar is adult-like, no learning

           2. Restructuring Hypothesis–due to rare input or maturation, again no learning

Ingram assumes a strong linguistic position in which linguistic theory can explain language acquisition. This position does not acknowledge the limits of current linguistic theory.

Assessment: we need to combine the methodological rigor of Child Language research with the theoretical orientation of Language Acquisition, i.e. CL needs more theory, LA needs more data.

What is required is a real theory of child language acquisition, one that predicts language development

A new approach—the Comparative Method

      The Comparative Method is used in Historical Linguistics to reconstruct the features of a Proto-language and the histories of the descendant languages. The key feature of the Comparative Method is that it uses data from different, related languages as a check on the proposed theoretical reconstruction. Current acquisition theories lack a multilingual check so the theories are free to incorporate various ad hoc solutions to recalcitrant data. Most researchers in the field do not even test their hypotheses with data from another language.

Universal Grammar—Parameters

Linguists have long assumed that children’s access to Universal Grammar (UG) explains their ability to rapidly acquire any human language (Chomsky 1965). Chomsky (1981) proposed that UG contains a set of parameters that explain how languages vary on a few grammatical features such as word order or the use of pronouns. Newmeyer (2004, 2005) reviews the arguments that have been given in favor of parameters and argues that parameters have no advantage over linguistic rules.

Parameters are descriptively simple

Parameters are supposedly more general than rules, but linguists use the term parameter as a synonym for rule (Cinque 1994). Parametric accounts still acknowledge the need for rules, e.g. the account of Hixkaryana OVS word order as S[OV] parameter + VP fronting rule

Parameters have binary settings

      There is no evidence of binarity in morphosyntax, e.g. gender, number, case.

Parameters are small in number

A single issue of Linguistic Inquiry may contain 30-40 proposed parameters (Lightfoot 1999:259)

            Newmeyer provides the following estimate for the number of functional heads:

                  a. 32 in the IP domain (Cinque 1999)

                  b. 30 for DP (Longobardi 2003)

                  c. 5 for Adjective Phrase

                  d. 12 or more for CP (Rizzi 1997)

                  e. 4 for clitic inversion (Poletto 2000)

                  f. 6 for thematic roles (Damonte 2004)

                  g. 4 for Neg phrase (Zanuttini 2001)

Parameters predict unexpected clusterings of morphosyntactic properties

Parametric properties do not cluster together across unrelated languages, e.g. pro-drop.

Many studies that propose parameters only examine a single language. Rule-based accounts handle clustering within a single language just as easily.

Parameters are easier to learn than rules

      Exposure to utterances isn’t sufficient to set parameters, e.g. the 32 IP projections for adverbs

There is no common feature in English, Chinese and Japanese that children can use for the negative setting of the ergative parameter.

      Children need to have their grammar in place to benefit from triggers, e.g. expletives.

Children have to acquire the hard stuff at the periphery anyway so parameters don’t add any benefit. Children acquire language-specific structures early, regardless of their rarity.

References

Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2004. Against a parameter-setting approach to typological variation. Linguistic Variation Yearbook 4.181-234.

Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2005. Possible and Probable Languages: A Generative Perspective on Linguistic Typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Description versus Explanation

On p. 54 Ingram introduces the distinction between a descriptive and explanatory stage (c.f. Brainerd 1978)

      1. Descriptive Stage

            a. some behaviors are observed to undergo change

            b. antecedent variables (causes) are proposed to account for the change

      2. Explanatory Stage

            a. some behaviors are observed to undergo change

            b. antecedent variables are proposed to account for the change

            c. an independent measure of the antecedent variables is established 

What examples of descriptive and explanatory stages does Ingram provide?

What types of independent evidence does Ingram discuss?

Positive and Negative Evidence

      1. Children only draw upon positive evidence to acquire language

            positive evidence: evidence available in input, e.g., irregular verb past tense, went

      2. Children do not acquire language on the basis of negative evidence (two types)

            direct negative evidence: correction by parents (Braine p. 29)

                  Child: Want other one spoon, Daddy.

                  Father: You mean, you want the other spoon

                  Child: Yes, I want other one spoon, please, Daddy.

                  Father: Can you say ‘the other spoon’?

                  Child: Other ... one ... spoon.

                  Father: Say ... ‘other’.

                  Child: Other

                  Father: Spoon

                  Child: Spoon

                  Father: Other ... spoon

                  Child: Other ... spoon. Now give me the other one spoon.

indirect negative evidence: child computes input frequencies and notes what has not occurred.

References

Braine, M. D. S. 1971. On two types of models of the internalization of grammars. In D. I. Slobin (ed.), The Ontogenesis of Grammar, pp. 153-186. New York: Academic Press.

Chouinard, M. and E. Clark. 2003. Adult reformulations of child errors as negative evidence. Journal of Child Language 30: 637-669.

Marcus, G. 1993. Negative evidence in language acquisition. Cognition 46: 53-85.

Saxton, M. 1997. The contrast theory of negative input. Journal of Child Language 24: 139-161.

Saxton, M. 2000. Negative evidence and negative feedback: Immediate effects on the grammaticality of child speech. First Language 20: 221-252.

Zwicky, A. 1970. A double regularity in the acquisition of English verb morphology. Working Papers in Linguistics 4. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University.

Current methods of data collection

c.f., Demuth ‘Collecting spontaneous production data’ in McDaniel et al. (1996), Methods for Assessing Children’s Syntax.

It is important to know the strengths and weaknesses of each method

1. Spontaneous language sampling

      Strengths

            a. Provides a general picture of all the child’s linguistic abilities

b. May reveal unexpected or novel features of child language, including errors, omissions and overgeneralizations

            c. Documents language environment (Input)

      Weaknesses

            a. Transcription and analysis of language samples is time-consuming

            b. It is easy to miss rare constructions, e.g., passives, relative clauses

            c. Variation between children requires more than one subject

      It is useful to have your own experience with language sampling since:

            a. Most theories of language acquisition rely on data from language samples

            b. You can appreciate the difficulties involved in interpreting children’s language samples

2. Parental diary–historically the first method

      Strength–researcher is familiar with the child and the child’s language

      Weakness–tends to be unsystematic

3. Experimental approaches

      Strength–Can collect a great deal of data on a targeted linguistic feature

Weakness–May not be ecologically valid; may fail to collect data on related features, context; the method may not apply to all languages

4. Metalinguistic judgements

      Strength–Can be applied directly to linguistic theory

      Weakness–Children under six do poorly on such tests

5. Elicited imitation

      Strength–Can collect data quickly on targeted linguistic features

      Weakness–This method may fail to reveal the nature of the child’s grammar