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languageacquisitionandshowtheirnumerousapplicationsintoday’sfirst
languageacquisitionresearch.
1.1.Milestonesinfirstlanguageacquisitionresearch
1.1.1.Earliestrecordsoffirstlanguageacquisition
Tobeginwith,accordingtoCampbellandWales(1970),theearliestrecorded
studyoffirstlanguageacquisitionwasmadebytheGermanbiologistTiedemann
(1787),whocarriedoutageneralanalysisofchilddevelopment.Otherimportant
earlystudiesincludeCharlesDarwin’s(1877)andHippolyteTaine’s(1877).
However,itwasnotuntiltheGermanphysiologistPreyer(1882)madedetailed
dailynotesofthefirstthreeyearsofhisson’sdevelopmentthatthestudyofchild
languagegaineditstruefoundingfather(CampbellandWales(1970)).According
toIngram(1989),Preyer’sstudyfallswithintheperiodofthesocalleddiary
studies(1876-1926),wherethemethodofdatacollectionwastheparentaldiaryin
whichalinguistwouldrecordhischild’slinguisticdevelopment.Nonetheless,the
Preyer’sstudyisnotlimitedtolinguisticdevelopmentalone;itincludesmany
noteson,forexample,motordevelopmentandmusicalawareness.Thefirst
publishedbooktobedevotedexclusivelytothestudyofchildlanguagewasW.
Stern’sDieKindersprache(1907).Itisfromthisworkthatthenotionofstagesof
languageacquisition,appliedsowidelyinpsycholinguistics,derives.However,
onlyafterWorldWarI,withtherisingpopularityofbehaviourism,didthestudyof
firstlanguageacquisitionbegintodevelop.
1.1.2.Behaviourism
Althoughbehaviourismgainedwidespreadpopularityinthe1950s,the
foundationsforbehaviouristthinkinginthisperiodwerelaidasearlyasinthe
1930s.ItwasthenthattheattemptofLeonardBloomfield,oneofthefounders
oftheschoolofstructurallinguistics,toaccountforthechild’sacquisitionof
wordmeaningreceivedconsiderableattention.Structurallinguistsbelievedthat
[...]languagesystemsconsistofafinitesetof[patterns)or[structures)whichact
asmodelsfortheproductionofaninfinitenumberofsimilarlyconstructed
sentences(Howatt(1988:14-15)).Inthisview,thelinguisticanalysisof
asentencepatternbothinadultandchildlanguageconsistsinclassifyinglexical
itemsintoclasses,applyingthecriterionofdistributionalpropertiesofwords.
Newutterancesareformedbyanalogyandinductivegeneralisationsaboutthe
positionofwordsinasentence(Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk(1988)).Thistheory
gaverisetodistributionalapproachestofirstlanguageacquisition.Accordingto
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