How Languages Are Learned

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HOW LANGUAGES ARE LEARNED

CHAPTER 1: LEARNING A FIRST LANGUAGE


· Infants are able to hear subtle differences between sounds of human language
· By end of one year they can understand a few frequently used words. They can produce a couple of words that are recognizable
· By age 2, 50 words, and combine these words into simple sentences
o Mommy juice
o Telegraphic sentences: the leave out many auxiliary verb, articles, prepositions, etc.
o They are recognized as sentences even though function word and grammatical morphemes are missing, the word order reflects the language they are hearing
· By age 3-4, most children ask questions or give commands, report real events, and create stories about imaginary ones-complete with correct grammatical morphemes.
· By 4 children have mastered the basic structures of the language
· Metalinguistic awareness: the ability to read language as an object, separate from the meaning it conveys-develops more slowly. Major metalinguistic awareness occurs when kids learn to read.
· MA includes the discovery of things such as ambiguity- words and sentences that have multiple meanings. Gives kids access to word jokes, trick questions, riddles
· Simultaneous bilinguals: learn and hear more than one language from birth on
· Sequential bilinguals: learn second language later
· Subtractive bilinguals: cut off from family language as they are emerged in the second language. Children are caught because they have not had time to master the first language

Developmental Sequences

· Grammatical morphemes:
o Roger brown said that they develop in sequences (5) kids who have mastered the bottom of the list was sure to have mastered the top.
o Order of acquisition
o Longitudinal study: over a period of time
· Negation: learn to deny, reject, disagree with and refuse something
o Stage one: first neg, usually expressed by the word “no” in a simple sentence
o Stage 2: utterances g...