10 Language acquisition英文版本.ppt

Topic 10First Language Acquisition Second Language Acquisition Wang Lijuan 10.1 Language Acquisition one of the central topics in psycholinguistics Language acquisition refers to children’s development of their mother tongue, that is, the native language of the community in which a child has been brought up. The development of a first language (L1) is called first language acquisition (FLA). The development of a second language (L2) is called second language acquisition (SLA). 10.2 First language acquisition theories L1 learners and L2 learners follow a similar route of language development; L1 development and L2 development do not involve identical processes. The nature of language acquisition is still an open question. 10.2.1 The tabula rasa hypothesis 白板假说 Human beings cannot know anything that is not observable and that the infant’s mind at birth is a blank slate to be written on by experience. Behaviorists claim that children acquire their first language through a chain of “stimulus– response – imitation – reinforcement”. Represented by B. F. Skinner. Language learning is a habit-forming process. Preliminary steps: imitation, practice Key: discrimination, generalization Suppose a baby is hungry, she babbles; she does not pronounce the right sound for the thing she wants: she gets corrected, she imitates the correct sound and gets understood; she gets the thing she wants. Behaviorists believe that all the internal linguistic knowledge of the individual is the direct result of integration of the linguistic events that the individual has observed. Any limitations in behaviorism? Limitations: How to explain that children imitate words selectively and according to their own understandings of the sounds or patterns? How to explain that children do produce many utterances that they are not exposed to? How to explain that children’s acquisition of complex language system? The following is the recording of an adult’s repeated but pointless correctio