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• Major theories of language

  • Vocal Theories
  • Gestural Theory
  • Complexity of the Social World
• Vocal Theories


  • Ma Ma Theory
  • Ta Ta Theory
  • Bow Wow Theory
  • Pooh Pooh Theory
  • Ding-Dong Theory
  • Yo He Ho Theory
  • Sing Song Theory
  • Hey you! Theory
  • Hocus Pocus Theory
• Onomatopoeia


  Echoic / Mimic
• Agglutinative


  Combining word chunks to form a sentence
• Isolating


  Simple words (monosylatic-oe word syllables)
• Fusional


  Combining more themes
• Motherese language


  Baby talk
• Receptive skills


  Reading and listening
• Productive skills


  Speaking and writing
• Macro skill


  Receptive and productive skills
• Father of modern language- Noam Chomsky
• Father of language- Ferdinand
• Origins of language


  • Belief of divine creation
  • Natural evolution hypothesis
  • Invention hypothesis
• 6,000 active languages
• Learner characteristics


  • Linguistic factors
  • Learning processes
  • Age and acquisition
  • Instructional variables
  • Context
  • Purpose
• Acquire language


  Children acquire language through a subconscious process during which they are unaware of grammatical rules
• Primary linguistic data (PLD)

  Implicit, acquisition is seen as an implicit and subconscious process where the learner is exposed to PLD in informal situations
• Language learning


  Explicit, the result of direct instruction in the rules of language
• Language learning is not an age appropriate activity for very young children
• Interlocutor in a comprehensible manner


  Main purpose of communication
• Acquisition vs Learning


  • Acquisition: Implicit/subconscious, informal situations, grammatical feel, depends on attitude, stable order of acquisition, motivation influences attitude
  • Learning: Explicit/conscious, formal situations, use of grammatical rules and regulations, depends on aptitude or intelligence, simple to complex order of learning, depends on L1
• First language (L1)


  Mother tongue or native language, an instinct triggered since birth
• Second language (L2)


  A language a person learns to communicate with native speakers
• Factors differentiating L1 and L2

  • Age
  • Personality
  • Culture
  • Motivation
  • Mother tongue
• Terms for L1 and L2

  • L1: Native language, mother tongue, primary language, stronger language, source language
  • L2: Non-native language, foreign language, secondary language, weaker language, target language
• L1 facilitates the learning of L2
• Universal Grammar (UG)


  We use UG to acquire L1, once L1 is acquired, UG becomes inactive and L2 learning becomes dependent
• Stages of L1 acquisition

  • [0-6 months] Baby doesn't talk, but able to understand
  • [6-8 months] Babbling - Sounds, syllables, non-linguistic
  • [8-9 months] Holophrastic - One word utterance
  • [18-24 months] Two word
  • [2-3 yrs old] Two words or longer sentence
  • [3 yrs - onwards] Strain basic words "connect" preposition
• Stages of L2 learning

  • [0-6 months] Silent - listen only
  • [6-12 months] Early Production - Simple phrases
  • [1-3 yrs old] Speech Emergence
  • [3- onwards] Fluency
• Critical Period Hypothesis


  Difficulty to learn language after a certain age
• Fossilized error


  Errors that children never get corrected
• From gestures to words

  • Gestures
  • Deictic
  • Iconic
  • Beat
  • Metaphoric
• 42 months: rate of children's use of gesture predicted the size of their vocabulary
• Gesture provides an early route to first words
• Integrated gesture-speech system


  Coherent semantic relationship and synchronous temporal relationship between gesture and word
• Integration is the culmination of increasingly tight relation that has been evolving between hand and mouth rhythmic manual behaviors prior to the onset of babbling
• Structural linguistics and behavioural psychology

  • Structural/descriptive linguistics
  • Generative linguistics and cognitive psychology
  • Constructivism: a multidisciplinary approach
• Branches of constructivism


  • Cognitive
  • Social
• Behaviorism


  • Classical conditioning
  • Operant conditioning
• Reinforcement


  Adding or removing privilege to encourage or discourage behavior