Acquisition of Phonetics & Phonology

Some phonetic differences are being

perceived from a very young age

Very young babies show preference for their mother’s

[pa] and[ba]
voice and the language their mother speak
For example :
a baby of Indonesian-speaking mother prefers to
hear Indonesian, before he/she can produce any words,
he/she has acquired some of the basic intonation
patterns and auditory characteristics of the language
A characteristic of language acquisition is that
perception precedes production

()
 Acquisition of Lexicon
1 y.o  acquires first words
18-36 months y.o  their vocabulary increases
rapidly
4 y.o  1,600 words

Indonesian-speaking-children has 1,540 words

by the age of 4
the early lexicon of children acquiring English tends to
be made up of high proportion of nouns.
 Acquisition of Semantics

OVEREXTENSION UNDEREXTENSION MISMATCH

• Overextension, the child’s generalization of
the meaning of the word beyond the sense in
the adult language.
• Underextension, the child assigns a narrower
meaning to the word than in the adult
language.
• Mismatch, the child assigns a completely
mistaken to a word.
 Acquisition of Morphology

CHILDREN TEND TO ACQUIRE THE

GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES OF THEIR
LANGUAGE IN RELATIVELY CONSINSTENT
ORDERS.
 The morphology of number in English shows irregularities, and
the acquisition of plural marking of nouns is a staged process.
The typical stages are as follows :

1. First no nouns distinguish number

2. The child has a single noun that distinguishes number
3. Another high-frequency irregular form is acquired
alongside its singular form
4. The regular allomorph –s and –z appears on nouns.
These two regular allomorphs are overgeneralized
5. The allomorph /ᵊz/ appears and is overgeneralized
6. Most overgeneralized plural form are corrected
7. All overgeneralizations are corrected
 Acquisition of Syntax
Three syntactic construction in English
Negative constructions :
Interrogatives :
First stagesentence
Complex (aroundconstructions
18-26 months), : negative markers no and not
are put
First stage,
at the
thebeginning
child employsOR end
justofthe
theintonation;
utterance high rising tone
Second
on
Three y.o  sentences
an utterance
stage (three
signifies
years a old),
question
begin to the
appearnegative word stars
that consist to bethan
of more
usedclause,
Second
one between
stage
most
(two
theofsubject
years
theseold),
are
andcoordinate
the
verb; child
in verbless
begins
constructions
toclausses
use using
it occurs
the
between the‘and’
interrogative
conjunction two
words,nounfirstphrases
what and where, later who, why, when,
Thirdhow
and stage, the child sees the appearance of other auxiliary
formsstage,
Third with attached
the childnegative
acquiresmarkers
the auxiliary
and their
verbsmorphological
be, have, and do
analysis