英语语言学（教学课件）chapter11 Language Acquisition.pptVIP

Chapter 11 Language Acquisition 11.1 First Language Acquisition It is no wonder that parents take such joy in observing their children’s first step in the acquisition of language. Consider the following sequence between a mother and her 3-month-old daughter: Ann :( smiles) Mom: Oh, what a nice little smile! Yes, isn’t that nice? There. There’s a nice little smile. Ann :( burps) Mom: What a nice wind as well! Yes, that’s better, isn’t it? Yes. Ann :( vocalizes) Mom: Yes! There’s a nice noise. First language acquisition (L1 acquisition) is the term most commonly used to describe the process whereby children become speakers of their native language and languages . L1 acquisition is remarkable for the speed with which it takes place. The speed of acquisition has led to the belief that there is some “innate” proposition in the human infant to acquire language. This is usually called the “language faculty” with which each newborn child is endowed. There are basically two approaches to the question of first language acquisition: ①The behaviorist approach ②The innateness approach 11.1.1 The behaviorist approach Let’s see the following example: Suppose a baby is hungry, she babbles; she does not pronounce the right sound [milk] for the milk she wants; she gets corrected, she imitates the correct sound and gets understood; she gets the milk she wants. All the time the baby is observing and imitating the speech sound [milk]; she gets punished ( in the sense that she does not get the milk she wants) when she falls to produce the right sound [milk] and is rewarded when she hits on the correct sound. The child imitates the speech around it, using a process of trial and error. It is reinforced in these imitations, or discouraged from them, by the degree of success it achieves in communicating. This is a standard “stimulus-response-imitation-reinforcement” approach. The important thing is that they all believe that all the internal linguistic knowledge of the indiv