Fourth Edition

How Languages are Learned

1
LAN GUAGE LEARNING
IN EARLY CHI L D H O O D

Preview
In this chapter, we will look briefly at the language development of young
children. We will then consider several theories that have been offered as
explanations for how language is learned. There is an immense amount of
research on child language. Although much of this research has been done in
middle-class North American and European families, there is a rich body of
cross-linguistic and cross-cultural research as well. Our purpose in this
chapter is to touch on a few main points in this research, primarily as a prepa
ration for the discussion of second language acquisition (SLA), which is the
focus of this book.

First language acquisition

Language acquisition is one of the most impressive and fascinating aspects
of human development. We listen with pleasure to the sounds made by a
three-month-old baby. We laugh and 'answer' the conversational 'ba-ba-ba'
babbling of older babies, and we share in the pride and joy of parents whose
one-year-old has uttered the first 'bye-bye'. Indeed, learning a language is an
amazing feat -o n e that has attracted the attention oflinguists and psycholo
gists for generations. How do children accomplish this? What enables a child
not only to learn words, but to put them together in meaningful sentences?
What pushes children to go on developing complex grammatical language
even though their early simple communication is successful for most pur
poses? Does child language develop similarly around the world? How do
bilingual children acquire more than one language?
6 Langu,age learning in early childhood

The.first threeyears: Milestones and

developmentalsequences
One remarkable thing about first language acquisition is the high degree of
similarity in the early language of children all over the world. Researchers
have described developmental sequences far many aspects of first language
acquisition. The earliest vocalizations are simply the involuntary crying that
babies do when they are hungry or uncomfartable. Soon, however, we hear
the cooing and gurgling sounds of contented babies, lying in their beds
looking at fascinating shapes and movement around them. Even though
they have little control over the sounds they make in these early weeks of
life, infants are able to hear subde differences between the sounds of human
languages. Not only do they distinguish the voice of their mothers from
those of other speakers, they also seem to recognize the language that was
spoken around their mother befare they were born. Furthermore, in cleverly
designed experiments, researchers have demonstrated that tiny babies are
capable of very fine auditory discrimination. For example, they can hear the
difference between sounds as similar as 'pa' and 'ha'.
Janet Werker, Patricia Kuhl, and others have used new technologies that allow
us to see how sensitive infants are to speech sounds. What may seem even
more remarkable is that infants stop making distinctions between sounds
that are not phonemic in the language that is spoken around them. Far
example, by the time they are a year old, babies who will become speakers of
Arabic stop reacting to the difference between 'pa' and 'ha' which is not pho
nemic in Arabic. Babies who regularly hear more than one language in their
environment continue to respond to these differences far a longer period
(Werker, Weikum, and Yoshida 2006). One important finding is that it is not
enough far babies to hear language sounds from electronic devices. In arder
to le a rn -o r retain -the ability to distinguish between sounds, they need to
interact with a human speaker (Conboy and Kuhl 2011). The Internet
abounds with remarkable videos of infants reacting to language sounds.
Whether they are becoming monolingual or bilingual children, however, it
will be many months befare their own vocalizations begin to reflect the
characteristics of the language or languages they hear and longer still befare
they connect language sounds with specific meaning. However, by the end of
-
their first year, most babies understand quite a few frequently repeated words j

in the language or languages spoken around them. They wave when someone F
says 'bye-bye'; they clap when someone says 'pat-a-cake'; they eagerly hurry
to the kitchen when 'juice and cookies' are mentioned.
At 12 months, most babies will have begun to produce a word or two that
everyone recognizes. By the age of two, most children reliably produce at
least 50 different words and sorne produce many more. About this time, they
begin to combine words into simple sentences such as 'Mommy juice' and
 Language learning in earlychildhood 7

'baby fall down'. These sentences are sometimes called 'telegraphic' because
they leave out such things as anides, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs. We
recognize them as sentences because, even though function words and gram
matical morphemes are missing, the word order reflects the word order of
the language they are hearing and the combined words have a meaningful
relationship that makes them more than just a list of words. Thus, for an
English-speaking child, 'kiss baby' does not mean the same thing as 'baby
kiss'. Remarkably, we also see evidence, even in these early sentences that
children are doing more than imperfectly imitating what they have heard.
Their two- and three-word sentences show signs that they can creatively
combine words. For example, 'more outside' may mean 'I want to go outside
again.' Depending on the situation, 'Daddy uh-oh' might mean 'Daddy fell
down' or 'Daddy dropped something' or even 'Daddy, please do that funny
thing where you pretend to drop me off your lap.'
As children progress through the discovery of language in their first three
years, there are predictable patterns in the emergence and development of
many features of the language they are learning. For sorne language features,
these patterns have been described in terms of developmental sequences or
'stages'. To sorne extent, these stages in language acquisition are related to
children's cognitive development. For example, children do not use temporal
adverbs such as 'tomorrow' or 'last week' until they develop sorne under
standing of time. In other cases, the developmental sequences seem to reflect
the gradual acquisition of the linguistic elements for expressing ideas that
have been present in children's cognitive understanding for a long time. For
example, children can distinguish between singular and plural long before
they reliably add plural endings to nouns. Correct use of irregular plurals
(such as 'feet') takes even more time and may not be completely under control
until the school years.

Grammatical morphemes
In the 1960s, severa! researchers focused on how children acquire grammati
cal morphemes in English. One of the best-known studies was carried out by
Roger Brown and his colleagues and students. In a longitudinal study of the
language development of three children (called Adam, Eve, and Sarah) they
found that 14 grammatical morphemes were acquired in a similar sequence.
The list below (adapted from Brown's 1973 book) shows sorne of the mor
phemes they studied.
present progressive -ing (Mommy running)
plural -s (two books)
irregular past forms (Baby went)
possessive -s (Daddy's hat)
copula (Mommy is happy)
anides the and a
8 Language learning in earlychildhood

regular past -ed (she walked)

third person singular simple present -s (she runs)
auxiliary be (he is coming)
Brown and his colleagues faund that a child who had mastered the gram
matical morphemes at the bottom of the list had also mastered those at the
top, but the reverse was not true. Thus, there was evidence far a 'developmen
tal sequence' or arder of acquisition. However, the children did not acquire
the morphemes at the same age or rate. Eve had mastered nearly all the mor
phemes befare she was two-and-a-half years old, while Sarah and Adam were
still working on them when they were three-and-a-half or faur.
Brown's longitudinal work was confirmed in a cross-sectional study of 21
children. Jill and Peter de Villiers (1973) faund that children who correctly
used the morphemes that Adam, Eve, and Sarah had acquired late were also
able to use the ones that Adam, Eve, and Sarah had acquired earlier. The chil
dren mastered the morphemes at different ages, just as Adam, Eve, and Sarah
had done, but the arder of their acquisition was very similar.
Many hypotheses have been advanced to explain why these grammatical
morphemes are acquired in the observed arder. Researchers have studied the
frequency with which the morphemes occur in parents' speech, the cognitive
complexity of the meanings represented by each morpheme, and the difficulty
of perceiving or pronouncing them. In the end, there has been no simple satis
factory explanation far the sequence, and most researchers agree that the arder
is determined by an interaction among a number of different factors.
To supplement the evidence we have from simply observing children, sorne
carefully designed procedures have been developed to further explore chil
dren'sknowledge ofgrammatical morphemes. Oneo f the first and best known
is the so-called 'wug test' developed by Jean Berko Gleason (1958). In this
'test', children are shown drawings of imaginary creatures with novel names
or people perfarming mysterious actions. Far example, they are told, 'Here is
a wug. Now there are two of them. There are two ' or 'Here is a man who
knows how to bod. Yesterday he did the same thing. Yesterday, he '. By
completing these sentences with 'wugs' and 'bodded', children demonstrate
that they know the patterns far plural and simple past in English. By gener
alizing these patterns to words they have never heard befare, they show that
their language is more than just a list of memorized word pairs such as 'book/
books' and 'nod/nodded'.

AC T I V I T Y Try out the 'wug' test

A web search for 'wug test' will turn up many examples of the pictu res and the
text created for this land mark research. lf you know sorne English-speaki ng
child ren u nder the age of five years, try usi ng the test with them. '
 Language learning in early childhood 9

What similarities and differences do you notice among the child ren at
different ages?
2 Which grammatical morphemes do they find easy and which enes are
more difficult?

The acquisition of other language features also shows how children's language
develops systematically, and how they go beyond what they have heard to
create new forms and structures.

Negation
Children learn the functions of negation very early. That is, they learn to
comment on the disappearance of objects, to refuse a suggestion, or to reject
an assertion, even at the single word stage. However, as Lois Bloom's (1991)
longitudinal studies show, even though children understand these func tions
and express them with single words and gestures, it takes sorne time before
they can express them in sentences, using the appropriate words and word
order. The following stages in the development of negation have been
observed in the acquisition of English. Similar stages have been observed in
other languages as well (Wode 1981).

Stage 1
Negation is usually expressed by the word 'no', either all alone or as the first
r word in the utterance.
No. No cookie. No comb hair.

Stage2
1 Utterances grow longer and the sentence subject may be included. The neg
s ative word appears just before the verb. Sentences expressing rejection or
prohibition often use 'don't'.
Daddy no comb hair. Don't touch that!

Stage3
The negative element is inserted into a more complex sentence. Children
- may add forms of the negative other than 'no', including words like 'can't'
t and 'don't'. These sentences appear to follow the correct English pattern of
attaching the negative to the auxiliary or modal verb. However, children do
not yet vary these forms for different persons or tenses.
I can't do it. He don't want it.

Stage4
Children begin to attach the negative element to the correct form of auxiliary
verbs such as 'do' and 'be'.
1O Language learning in earlychildhood

You didn't have supper. She doesn't want it.

Even though their language system is by now quite complex, they may still
have difficulty with sorne other features related to negatives.
I don't have no more candies.

Questions
The challenge oflearning complex language systems is also illustrated in the
developmental stages through which children learn to ask questions.
There is a remarkable consistency in the way children learn to form ques
tions in English. For one thing, there is a predictable order in which the 'wh-
words' emerge (Bloom 1991). 'What' is generally the first wh- question
word to be used. It is often learned as part of a chunk. ('Whassat?') and it is
sorne time before the child learns that there are variations of the form, such
as 'What is that?' and 'What are these?'.
'Where' and 'who' emerge very soon. Identifying and locating people and
objects are within the child's understanding of the world. Furthermore,
adults tend to ask children just these types of questions in the early days of
language learning, for example, 'Where's Mommy?' or 'Who's that?'
'Why' emerges around the end of the second year and becomes a favourite
for the next year or two. Children seem to ask an endless number of questions
beginning with 'why', having discovered how effectively this little word gets
adults to engage in conversation, for example, 'Why that lady has blue hair?'
Finally, when the child has a better understanding of manner and time, 'how'
and 'when' emerge. In contrast to 'what', 'where', and 'who' questions, chil
dren sometimes ask the more cognitively difficult 'why', 'when', and 'how'
questions without understanding the answers they get, as the following con
versation with a four-year-old clearly shows.
CHILD When can we go outside?
PARE N T In about five minutes.
CHILD 1-2-3-4-5! Can we go now?
The ability to use these question words is at least partly tied to children's cog
nitive development. It is also predicted in part by the questions children are
asked and the linguistic complexity of questions with different wh- words.
Thus it does not seem surprising that there is consistency in the sequence of
their acquisition. Perhaps more surprising is the consistency in the acquisi
tion of word order in questions. This development is not based on learning n
new meanings, but rather on learning different linguistic patterns to express
meanings that are already understood.
E
w
 Langu,age learning in early childhood 11

Stage 1
Children's earliest questions are single words or simple two- or three-word
sentences with rising intonation:
Cookie? Mommy book?
At the same time, they may produce sorne correct questions-correct because
they have been learned as chunks:
Where's Daddy? What's that?

Stage2
As they begin to ask more new questions, children use the word arder of the
declarative sentence, with rising intonation.
You like this? I have sorne?
They continue to produce the correct chunk-learned forms such as 'What's
that?' alongside their own created questions.

Stage3
Gradually, children notice that the structure of questions is different and
begin to produce questions such as:
Can I go?
Are you happy?
Although sorne questions at this stage match the adult pattern, they may be
right for the wrong reason. To describe this, we need to see the pattern from
the child's perspective rather than from the perspective of the adult grammar.
We call this stage 'fronting' because the child's rule seems to be that questions
are formed by putting something (a verb or question word) at the 'front' of a
sentence, leaving the rest of the sentence in its statement form.
Is the teddy is tired? Do I can have a cookie?
Why you don't have one? Why you catched it?
Stage 4
At Stage 4, sorne questions are formed by subject-auxiliary inversion. The
questions resemble those of Stage 3, but there is more variety in the auxilia
ries that appear befare the subject.

f Are you going to play with me?

At this stage, children can even add 'do' in questions in which there would be
, no auxiliary in the declarative version of the sentence.
Do dogs like icecream?
Even at this stage, however, children seem able to use either inversion or a wh
word, but not both (for example, 'Is he crying?' but not 'Why is he crying?'
12 Language learning in early childhood

Therefore, we may find inversion in yes/no questions but not in wh- ques
tions, unless they are formulaic units such as 'What's that?'

Stage5
At Stage 5, both wh- and yes/no questions are formed correctly.
Are these your boots?
Why did you do that?
Does Daddy have a box?
Negative questions may still be a bit too difficult.
Why the teddy bear can't go outside?
And even though performance on most questions is correct, there is still one
more hurdle. When wh- words appear in subordinate clauses or embedded
questions, children overgeneralize the inverted form that would be correct
for simple questions and produce sentences such as:
Ask him why can't he go out.

Stage 6
At this stage, children are able to correctly form all question types, including
negative and complex embedded questions.
Passage through developmental sequences does not always follow a steady
uninterrupted path. Children appear to learn new things and then fall back
on old patterns when there is added stress in a new situation or when they
are using other new elements in their language. But the overall path takes
them toward a closer and closer approximation of the language that is spoken
around them.

Thepre-schoolyears
By the age of four, most children can ask questions, give commands, repon
real events, and create stories about imaginary ones, using correct word order
and grammatical markers most of the time. In fact, it is generally accepted
that by age four, children have acquired the basic structures of the language
or languages spoken to them in these early years. Three- and four-year-olds
continue to learn vocabulary at the rate of several words a day. They begin to
acquire less frequent and more complex linguistic structures such as passives re.
and relative clauses. ·ca
IS
Much of children's language acquisition effort in the late pre-school years is
spent in developing their ability to use language in a widening social environ of
ment. They use language in a greater variety of situations. They interact more mt
rid,
often with unfamiliar adults. They begin to talk sensibly on the telephone to
invisible grandparents (younger children do not understand that their
telephone partner cannot see what they see). They acquire the aggressive or
 Language learning in earlychildhood 13

;- cajoling language that is needed to defend their toys in the playground. They
show that they have learned the difference between how adults talk to babies
and how they talk to each other, and they use this knowledge in elaborare
pretend play in which they practise using these different 'voices'. In this way,
they explore and begin to understand how and why language varies.
In the pre-school years, children also begin to develop metalinguistic aware
ness, the ability to treat language as an object separare from the meaning it
conveys. Three-year-old children can tell you that it's 'silly' to say 'drink the
chair', because it doesn't make sense. However, although they would never
say 'cake the eat', they are less sure that there's anything wrong with it. They
may show that they know it's a bit odd, but they will focus mainly on the fact
1e that they can understand what it means. Five-year-olds, on the other hand,
d know that 'drink the chair' is wrong in a different way from 'cake the eat'.
:t They can tell you that one is 'silly' but the other is 'the wrong way around'.
Language acquisition in the pre-school years is impressive. lt is also note
worthy that children have spent thousands of hours interacting with
language-participating in conversations, eavesdropping on others' con
versations, being read to, watching television, etc. A quick mathematical
g exercise will show you just how many hours children spend in language-rich
environments. If children are awake for ten or twelve hours a day, we may
estimate that they are in contact with the language of their environment for
y
k 20,000 hours or more by the time they go to school.
:y Although pre-school children acquire complex knowledge and skills for
s language and language use, the school setting requires new ways of using
n language and brings new opportunities for language development.

Theschoolyears
Children develop the ability to use language to understand others and to
rt express their own meanings in the pre-school years, and in the school years,
r this ability expands and grows. Learning to read gives a major boost to meta
d linguistic awareness. Seeing words represented by letters and other symbols
;e on a page leads children to a new understanding that language has form as
is well as meaning. Reading reinforces the understanding that a 'word' is sepa
:o rare from the thing it represents. Unlike three-year-olds, children who can
s read understand that 'the' is a word, just as 'house' is. They understand that
'caterpillar' is a longer word than 'train', even though the object it represents
is substantially shorter! Metalinguistic awareness also includes the discovery
is
1-
of such things as ambiguity. Knowing that words and sentences can have
re
multiple meaning gives children access to word jokes, trick questions, and
te riddles, which they love to share with their friends and family.
ir
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