《语言学导论》语言习得

语言习得心理语言学的几个研究方向 习得 理解 产生 障碍 语言与思维 神经认知 Any theory of language acquisition must account for what children do and do not do in the course of achieving adult linguistic competence.Two different approaches to answering this question Behaviorism: the child is endowed at birth with general learning abilities but not with any language-specific knowledge; linguistic behavior is molded by adult speaker; and imitation plays an important role. Noam Chomskys theory: language acquisition cannot be accounted for without positing a linguistically specific system of principles and parameters that every healthy (in the relevant sense) child is generally endowed with, a system he refers to as Universal Grammar (UG), or as the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). Chomskys arguments against behaviorism The linguistic data available to the child are themselves impoverished and not sufficient for a child to inductively arrive at a grammar capable of producing ill-formed expressions. Language development in children occurs spontaneously and does not require conscious instruction or reinforcement on the part of adults. In a very short period of time children are able to develop very complex linguistic systems, moving from a one-word stage to multiword stages, on the basis of limited and often fragmentary data. Teaching children?Note: “hay putter” two “his” “did” In part on the basis of these kinds of examples, Chomsky has concluded that children deductively arrive at the grammar that enables them to both produce and understand novel expressions. Note that, this is not to say that imitation and instruction play no role whatsoever in learning ones native language. The point is that imitation and overt teaching play at best a very minor role in the childs mastery of grammar. Early stages in the development of languageBabblingThe one-word stage At some point in the late part of first year of life or the early part of the second year, children begin using recognizable words of their native language. E.g., mama, dada, kitty, doggie, ball, bottle, cupMore!, No!Very few so-called function words (如介词、冠词、助动词、疑 问词) The phenomenon of overextension or underextension of reference. Therefore, Childrens utterances does not necessarily mean what adults utterances mean.Multiword stages Children develop their native language in a sequence of identifiable stages. Specific constructions of a language develop in an interrelated way. Especially, the development of negative sentences and questions in English is intimately connected with the development of the auxiliary verb system.Is there a “language acquisition device”? Acquisition of Phonetic/Phonological Principles Acquisition of Morphology Acquisition of Syntax Acquisition of Pragmatic CompetenceAcquisition of Phonetic/Phonological Principles 儿童习得语音的顺序（Owens 1984）：按照发音方法依次为：鼻音，滑音，塞音，流音，摩擦音，塞擦音 按照发音部位依次为：唇音，软腭音，齿槽音，齿音，腭音SubstitutionAnticipatory assimilation（先行同化）Clear-cut tendency Consonant clusters tend to be eliminated (Smith, 1973):Metathesis (调位)Metathesis involving segments:Metathesis of a feature These data reveal that children do not substitute randomly in pronouncing words that are hard for them. Acquisition of Morphology Overgeneralization E.g., take *taked; break *breaked Berko (1958) provided nonsense words to children aged 4-7 and asked them to give a variation of each nonsense word reflecting certain morphological properties, such as the plural morpheme.An experiment on the acquisition of the English plural: As Berko put it: But the pronunciation learning is far from instantaneous.Compounds Darwin Darwinian Darwinism Constraint: the output of level 3 word building cannot be the input to either level 2 or level 1, and the output of level 2 cannot be the input of level 1. ?Gordons (1985) experiment: Acquisition of Syntax Recursion Yes/no questionsC-commend and control Minimal Distance Principle (MDP): The implicit subject of the complement verb is the NP most closely preceding it. (Chomsky, 1969) Chomsky demonstrates that children between the ages of 5 and 10 appears to be following the MDP even when to do so yields the wrong interpretation. But the MDP is not sufficient to account for further data. Maratsos (1974) demonstrates that children who understand passive sentences interpret Mary and not John as the controller. Therefore, in order for a noun phrase to be a controller, it must c- command the embedded verb; in other words, linear order is not sufficient to account for the cases of control citer above, even for children.原则和参数理论Recall X-bar theory, binding principle, and FOFC. Some other parametersAcquisition of Pragmatic Competence Though individuals may have a systematic grammar of their native language, does it follow that they know how to use linguistic expressions in a contextually appropriate manner? To what extent can we rely on the grammar in order to co