Language Acquisition Stages, Syntax, and Applied Linguistics
Telegraphic Speech
Telegraphic speech: The final stage of language acquisition is the telegraphic stage. This stage is named as it is because it is similar to what is seen in a telegram; containing just enough information for the sentence to make sense. This stage contains many three and four word sentences. Sometime during this stage the child begins to see the links between words and objects, and therefore overgeneralization comes in. Some examples of sentences in the telegraphic stage are “Mummy eat carrot”, “What her name?” and “He is playing ball.” During this stage, a child’s vocabulary expands from 50 words to up to 13,000 words. At the end of this stage, the child starts to incorporate plurals, joining words, and attempts to get a grip on tenses.
Acquisition of Syntax
Acquisition of syntax: Children must learn many aspects of grammar from their specific linguistic environment. English-speaking children learn that the subject comes first and that the verb precedes the object inside the VP, that English is an SVO language. Japanese children acquire SOV language; they learn that the object precedes the verb.
Forming Questions
English-speaking children must learn that yes-no questions are formed by moving the aux. to the beginning of the sentence, as: You will come home Will you come home? Japanese children learn that to form yes-no questions, the morpheme –ka is suffixed to a verb stem.
Tanaka ga sushi o tabete iru “Tanaka is eating sushi”
Tanaka ga sushi tabete iruka “Is Tanaka eating sushi?”
Children extract from the linguistic environment those rules of grammar that are language-specific, such as word order and movement rules.
Pivoting
Pivoting: Syntactic pivot, the argument of the verb around which the sentence revolves. Pivot language, an artificial or natural language used as an intermediary language for translation.
World Englishes
World Englishes: Are variations of the English language around the globe. For example, the English spoken in Thailand or New Zealand is not the same as the one in the States or in England. There are constant variations that are always evolving or changing.
Lingua Franca
Lingua franca: Is a language systematically used to make communication possible between persons not sharing a native language, in particular when it is a third language, distinct from both native languages. Lingua francas have arisen around the globe throughout human history, sometimes for commercial reasons (so-called “trade languages”) but also for diplomatic and administrative convenience, and as a means of exchanging information between scientists and other scholars of different nationalities.
Origins of Applied Linguistics
Origins of applied linguistics: In 1948, there was a journal, which was founded in Michigan University and called Language Learning. This journal was the first journal that carried the term applied linguistics. It was mentioned in an article, which was called Language Learning in 1967. However, the term applied linguistics meant the application of linguistics. One of the editors has emphasized the wide range of theories and research methods that are used to investigate language studies in 1993. However, doing this cost a price, which is abandoning the term applied linguistics. Here, the editor wanted to give his own interpretation of applied linguistics because he thought that the reader of the journal would understand a journal of research in language studies as a functional interpretation of applied linguistics.
Restriction of the Scope
Restriction of the Scope: During the 1960s and 1970s, it was taken for granted that applied linguistics was about language teaching. This was important because there was a need for language teaching, especially English, after the Second World War. This showed that a number of teachers, trainers, and supervisors lacked language knowledge. It is accepted that applied linguistics is trying to solve language problems that people encounter in the real world. Then, the scope of applied linguistics should not be restricted to language teaching only. In fact, the scope should be broadening to cover language acquisition, either the mother tongue or a target language, psych/neuro linguistics, sociolinguistics, and so on.