Introducing Second Language Acquisition. Kirsten M. Hummel

       High amplitude sucking (HAS)

       Reduplicated babbling

       Nonreduplicated (variegated) babbling

       Overextension

       Underextension

       Morphemes

       Mean length of utterance (MLU)

       Input

       Nativism

       Empiricism

       Behaviorism

       Universal Grammar (UG)

       Interactionism

       Child‐directed speech (CDS)

       CHILDES

       Emergentism

       Connectionism

       Object permanence

       Metalinguistic awareness

       Transfer

       Interference

       Overgeneralization

       Formulaic sequences/expressions

      1 The ability to discriminate sounds not used in the L1 seems to:be lost by one month of agebe lost by three to four months of agebe lost by 10–12 months of ageremain available until school age.

      2 Which of the following is NOT considered to be a key stage in L1 acquisition?babblingone‐word stagetwo‐word stagethree‐word stage.

      3 Brown's (1973) study on the order of acquisition of certain grammatical morphemes in English primarily revealed that:children acquire morphemes in different orderschildren acquire morphemes at different ratesboth a and bnone of the above.

      4 CHILDES is:a computerized database of child speech transcriptsa computer program for teaching children new wordsthe name of an important child language researchernone of the above.

      5 When we say that children's early multiword utterances are “telegraphic,” we mean they:are immediately understoodinclude many content words and few function wordsinclude many function words and few content wordsare produced in a flat, mechanical tone of voice.

      6 Most children begin combining words into multiword utterances when their productive vocabulary includes about:10 words50 words150 words250 words.

      1 It is argued that children do not receive explicit correction when they use ungrammatical forms. Do you agree with this claim? Why or why not? Are there other ways in which children might get feedback or come to realize that their utterances are not grammatical?

      2 To what extent do you think there are individual differences affecting children's acquisition of their first language? Based on your own personal experience, have you encountered any differences, such as with regard to rate of L1 acquisition, among children you know?

      3 Do you know what was the first word or words that you produced? If so, does that word or words resemble the first words produced by others in your class? What might explain which words are the first to appear in a child's vocabulary?

      1 Using the guidelines found below based on Brown (1973), calculate the MLU for one of the CHILDES transcripts found online (http://childes.talkbank.org). Select a transcript involving a child between the ages of one and three years of age (ages are indicated at the beginning of each transcript). (Note that a sample shorter than 100 utterances may be used, although Brown recommends a 100‐utterance length.)

      1 Use 100 intelligible utterances of a child language transcript.

      2 Count the morphemes as indicated in the guidelines below.

      3 Add the total number of morphemes and divide by the total number of utterances (100) to get the MLU.

      1 Count all obvious morphemes (“cat,” “baby”).

      2 Count as separate morphemes grammatical markers such as the “–s” plural marker (e.g. “cat‐s”), the past tense marker “–ed” (e.g. “talk‐ed”), the “–ing” present participle marker (e.g. “throw‐ing”), the third person singular marker (e.g. “she drinks milk”).

      3 Count as one morpheme plurals that do not occur in the singular (e.g. “clothes”).

      4 Contractions are counted as two morphemes (e.g. “can't, “we'll”).

      5 Compound words and proper names count as single morphemes (e.g. Big Bird, policeman).

      6 Irregular past forms and irregular plurals count as one morpheme (e.g. “went,” “geese”).

      7 Diminutives (e.g. “horsie”) and concatenatives (e.g. “gonna,” “hafta”) count as one morpheme.

      8 Do not count hesitations, filler words (“um,” “hum”), false starts, or repetitions, unless the repetition is for emphasis (e.g. “No! No! No!” would count as three morphemes, i.e., one morpheme in each of three utterances).

      1 “Baby get Teddy Bear.”

      2 “Teddy Bear eat.”

      3 “Eating cookie.”

      4 “Cookie gone.”

      5 “More cookie.”

      6 Number of morphemes = 12

      7 Number of utterances = 5

      8 MLU (12 divided by 5) = 2.4

      1 Use the same transcript as for Exercise 1, or choose a different CHILDES transcript, to examine the type of language used by adults when speaking to a child. What type of utterances tend to characterize the adult's speech? Do they differ from how adults speak to other adults?

      2 Arrange to observe the interactions between a young child and a parent/caretaker in his or her environment. Record the child's and caretaker's utterances. Next, observe an older child or adult as he or she communicates in an L2 with a native speaker of the target language and record these interactions. Compare the type of language (types and length of sentences, types of words, repetition, etc.) used by the caretaker and native speaker with the young L1 learner and the older L2 learner. Is the type of language used different in each case? How so? What other differences do you find in the two sets of data?

      3 Observe/tape record children speaking to each other and attempt to identify instances of overgeneralization, i.e. using rules and structures in contexts or instances in which they should not be used (example: “My arm hurted a lot.”).

      4 Interview parents of young children and ask them what the first words to appear were. Compare your results