Issues in First Language Acquisition:
(PLLT) 31-43
1. Competence and Performance:.- Competence refers to one’s underlying of a system,
event, or fact; no observable ability to do something. Performance is the overtly
observable and concrete manifestation or realization of competence. It is the actual
doing of something. In schools, it is assumed that children possess certain competence
in giv en areas and that this competence can be measured and assessed by means of
the observation of elicited samples of “tests” and “examinations”. In reference to
language, competence is the underlying knowledge of the system of a language –its
rules of grammar, its vocabulary, all the pieces of a language and how those pieces fit
together. Performance is the actual production (speaking, writing) or the
comprehension (listening, reading) of linguistic events.
Chomsky appointed that a theory of language had to be a theory of
competence so that linguists don’t try in vain to categorize an infinite number of
performance variables that don’t reflect the underlying ability of the student. Linguists
and psychologists in the generative/cognitive framework have operated under this idea
for some time. Indirect methods of judging children’s competence had to be invented
when researchers realized that if a child has no interest or cognizance of an adult’s
grammatical interrogation, he will say whatever comes to his mind. Those methods
included: 1) tape recording and transcription of countless hours of speech followed by
studious analysis, and 2) certain imitation, production, or comprehension tests. All of
these had numerous disadvantages.
The competence-performance model hasn’t been accepted universally because
it states that the competence consists of the abilities of an “idealized” hearer-speaker
who has no performance variables. Tarone (1988) criticized this model because he says
that by idealizing the language user, there is no place for all of a person’s goofs that
are potentially connected to what he calls heterogeneous competence which are the
abilities that are in the process of being formed
2. Comprehension and Production.- They both can be aspects of performance and
competence. It is thought that comprehension (listening and reading) can be associated
with competence, while production (speaking, writing) is associated with performance.
The truth is, both –comprehension and production of a language- are both associated
with performance, even if comprehension skills aren’t as observable as production
skills. Linguistic competence has several modes or levels: speaking, listening, reading,
and writing, and all of them are separate modes of performance. While lexical and
grammatical instances of production-before-comprehension seem to be few in number,
it still behooves us to be careful in concluding that all aspects of linguistic
comprehension facilitate linguistic production.
3. Nature or Nurture?.- Nativists contend that a child is born with an innate knowledge of
a language, and that this innate property is universal. However, it hasn’t been proven
that there are “language genes” in our genetic information. Environmental factors
cannot be ignored. What is that innate knowledge of a language that “nature” provides
us with? And what is that knowledge “nurtured”, internalized and learned from the
environment and by teaching? Evidence has been found that there are common
patterns of linguistic and cognitive development across a number of languages and that
human beings are “bio-programmed” to proceed from stage to stage and “bloom” when
it is time.
4. Universals.- Language is universally acquired in the same manner, and deep structure
of language at its deepest level may be common to all languages. According to Maratsos
(1988), universal linguistic categories such as word order, morphological marking tone,
agreement, reduced reference of nouns and noun clauses, verbs and verb classes,
predication, negation and question formation are common to all languages. There are
principles and parameters which specify some limited possibilities of variation. For
example, the principle of structure dependency “states that language is organized in
such a way that it crucially depends on the structural relationships between elements
in a sentence” (Holzman:1988), apparently, this principle of structure dependency
eventually appears in the comprehension and production of a child. According to the
UG, languages cannot vary in an infinite number of ways. Parameters determine ways
in which languages can vary; for example, some languages are “head first” or “head
last”, where the main nouns go second in a sentence.
5. Systematicity and Variability: Language develops from pivot grammar to full
sentences of almost interminate length. Children exhibit great ability to infer the
phonological, structural, and lexical semantic system of language. But there may also
be variability in the process of language acquisition, which means something children
once learned may easily be changed or forgotten due to the perception of new
language systems.
6. Language and thought: The issue at stake is to determine how thought affects
language, how language affects thought, and how linguists can best describe and
explain the interaction of the two. There have been some positions on this such as
that of Piaget (1972), who claimed that cognitive development is at the center of
human organisms and that language depends on cognitive development. Jerome
Brunner (1966), pointed out that there are sources of language-influenced intellectual
development where words shape concepts, dialogues between parents and children
serve to orient and educate. For Vigotsky (1978), language and thought were given in
the social interaction where language is a prerequisite to cognitive development. He
regarded thought and language as two distinct cognitive operations. For him, every
child reaches his potential development through social interaction with adults and
peers. Spir-Whorf appointed that each language imposes on its speaker a particular
“world view”.
7. Imitation: Research has shown that echoing is a particularly salient strategy in early
language learning and an important aspect of early phonological acquisition. However,
the semantic data is not noticed. It has been observed in foreign language classes that
rote pattern drills evoke surface imitation where the repetition of sounds doesn’t lead
students to have the vaguest idea of what they are saying. Children, however, perceive
the importance of the semantic level of language, so if they imitate the surface
structure of the language, they won’t be able to understand what they are imitating.
8. Practice: Children like to play with language just as they do with other objects and
events around them. Children’s language seems to be a key to language acquisition.
When talking about practice, it is thought of as referring to speaking only. But we can
also think of comprehension practice.
9. Input: the speech that young children hear is primarily the speech heard in home, and
much of that speech is parental speech or the speech of older siblings. Children, after
consistent repeated of telegraphic speech in meaningful contexts, eventually transfer
correct forms to their own speech. For example, from saying “dat John” to “that’s
John”. It is clear from more recent research that adult and peer input to the child is
far more important than nativists earlier believed. Adult input seems to shape the
child’s acquisition, and the interaction patterns between child and parent change
according to the ingreasing language skill of the child.
10. Discourse: conversation is a universal human activity performed routinely in the course
of daily living, the means by which children learn to take part in conversation appear
to be complex. The child learns not only how to initiate a conversation but how to
respond to another’s initiating utterance and recognize the function of the discourse.
For example, when asked something, the child will identify whether he is being
requested for information, for an action, or for help.
