(Este é um resumo do texto de Andrew Hardie)

 

Briefing:

Language Acquisition (L.Ac.) by Andrew Hardie -

37.1: The author takes a general overview of the process of L.Ac. And then goes on to consider two examples of theories for L.Ac.. his discuss covers many points to the acquisition of any language but particular details are all realated to Englihs in this chapter.

37.2: transition when a child learns English from natural (biological) to phonetic sounds.

From non-meaningful vocalization to words and the transition from single words to grammatical structure.

37.2.1: From sounds to speech sounds

Non-linguistic sounds as crying (earliest sounds) in children is stimulated by physical or psychilogical discomfort or distress (when it is hungry, in pain, angry, or when it desires attention from a caregiver; other are by burping, swallowing and sneezing without control over the production of these sounds. When it is 2 months or more, cooing and laughter are added. Then it is nocticing the earliest stage oa acquring consonants, children would produce a very wide range of consonant sounds - Any language of the world.

“a baby in an English-speaking environment might produce click consonants or pharyngeal consonants, at the outset (...even though these sounds are not found in English.” (p.610)

Today is hard to confirm Jakobson's theory “Cause very young babies are shaped more like those of non-human apes than those of adult humans.”

Phonems as: Velar or glottal - h / w / k / but kids do not make, are not able to distinctions;

h	hot, whole, ahead

k	key, clock, school

Plosives : Produced the front of oral plosives: p / b/ t/ and / d /;

p	pen, copy, happen
b	back, baby, job
t	tea, tight, button
d	day, ladder, odd

nasal: n and m;

m	more, hammer, sum
n	nice, know, funny, sun
ŋ	ring, anger, thanks, sung

Fricatives: / s /versus / ʃ / or / f / versus / θ /

f	fat, coffee, rough, photo
v	view, heavy, move
θ	thing, author, path
ð	this, other, smooth
s	soon, cease, sister
z	zero, music, roses, buzz
ʃ	ship, sure, national
ʒ	pleasure, vision

Affricatives:

tʃ	church, match, nature
dʒ	judge, age, soldier

liquids:

l	light, valley, feel
r	right, wrong, sorry, arrange

1. Vowels are tipically mastered much earlier (about 3 years old);
2. Vowels are less discrete;
3. consonants are clearly distinguishable in terms of place of articulation and manner of articulation;
4. Vowels exist on a continuum.

37.2.2: - From pre-words to words – (p.611)

Babbling: speech are first connected together into larger phonetic units, it takes the form of babbling (a.k.a. Vocal play) occurs in children from around 3^rd 4^th month of life. Even deaf children have been found to “Babble” - is an innate part od development in L.Ac.

It is teh production of repeating strings of alternating consonants and vowels, such as [ bababa] or [gagaga]. Children seem to enjoy this form of vocal play.

In babble articulates “glottal, velar and labial consonants”, with later [b], [d],[m] and [n] becoming + important. Babbling (non-meaningful) =/ speech (meaningful)

Vocal gestures: At this stages the child becomes capable of using precursos to words – phonetic units which are more stable in form than babbling, and which seem to have some kind of meaning. They are vague and more a gesture than a word. But some researchers have used a range of terminology to describe them.

DORE and colleagues (1976) described these as “phonetically consistent forms”.

HALLIDAY (1975) described these as “ proto-words”.

• their meaning are restricted to the context in which it is used;
• when vocalization takes on a meaning that is independent of its context we can actually begin to class them as linguistic symbols – early words (HARDIE. p.611)

First words: It's been claimed that nouns specially are very prominent in the early vocabulary, with verbs being somewhat less frequent. The nouns in question are almost always concrete rather than abstract nouns.

37.2.3: From words to sentences - 9^th moths to a year, starting produce these words one at time, putting words together to produce longer utterance evidencing that they're basic (but increasingly complex) morphology and syntax.

The notion of holophrases (whole sentence) – relates the degree to which the child possesses the concept of the sentence.

a) holophrase utterances is that, they are partial representations of adult sentences – sentences with all but one of the words missed ou;

b) teh structure of a sentence is understood by the child, but left unspoken, due to the child's limited abilities.

Ex: child speaking: - clock!

Meaning: - there's a clock! Or, - Where's a clock?

Two-word utterances (of gramatical development): around 18 months old this two-word satge has been of great interest to many researchers because it is only with multi-word utterance that there is scope to investigate teh early emergence of syntax.

BROWN and FRASER (1964) suggests that these are basically “telegraphic”.

-Adult utterances with grammatical words like of and or the missed out – explains: sweater chair; mommy sock; baby table, but not the many two-word utterances that do contain grammatical words, such as:

• no down; she here; there high; more noise...

BRAINE (1963) and McNeil (1966) hypothesizes that children have two classes of words: Pivot words ( 1 ) and Open words ( 2 ):

1. Pivot words are restricted to one position in the utterance - 1^st or 2^nd – and ca not occur alone;
2. Can occur in either position, or alone. Ex: More milk (milk pivots around); more juice (juice pivots around); more read (read pivots around).

To be continued...

read more in: 

 http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/profiles/andrew-hardie

                         CULPEPER, J. "English Language: description, variation and context (2009). PALMGRAVE MACMILLAN