Language acquisition

Autism

"Language module" is intact but "theory of mind" module is not. However, not every person with autism lacks theory of mind. Language cannot be nearly fit into a module. It is more like the weather, with many factors influencing it.

Independence hypothesis

1980s Challenge to the fusion hypothesis Two languages learned by bilingual children develop independently Mishima-Mori (2002) studied Jap/Eng bilingual children. Compared emergence of past tense markers. Found the emergence consistent with monolingual speakers, suggesting two different systems. •English past tense marker -> after two-word stage •Japanese past tense marker -> before two-word stage

Canonical babbling

A change in infants' vocalizations that occurs between 6-9 months. AKA reduplicated babbling Distinguished from earlier vocalizations by the presence of true syllables - CV combination [dada] Not necessarily communicative, but parents often mistake it as such. Deaf children do not babble vocally, but they babble with their hands.

Overgeneralization

A grammatical error that children make in which they over-apply language rules. For example, they put the regular -ed ending on irregular verbs -> goed. This is a stage in FLA that all children go through.

Semantic bootstrapping

A process in which children use semantic cues to help them work out grammatical structure. Children use knowledge of semantic roles (agent, patient), and link them to syntactic categories. Example: Child knows "cat" and "mouse." Child hears "the cat is chasing the mouse." Understands the cat is doing the action, the mouse is receiving the action. Understands that cat is agent, mouse is patient. Child knows semantic roles. Child is able to link semantic roles to syntactic categories: agents and patients are nouns; agents come before the verb, patients come after. Repeated exposure to similar sentences -> child understands that NP + VP + NP = a sentence

Attention

Another essential element of cognition. Enhances the retention of input in working memory. Incidental L2 learning is possible, e.g. vocabulary acquisition in reading. However, people learn more, faster, and better when they apply themselves. The notion of attention is related to Schmidt's Noticing Hypothesis.

Type constraint

A proposal made by Nativists with respect to how children acquire words. When a child hears a new word, she assumes it applies to all things of that type, rather than being the name of only that object. For example, if an adult says "cat" and points to a cat, a child will not think that the word "cat" refers to that specific animal only. Rather, the child is more likely to think that "cat" is a label for the group of animals that had four legs, whiskers, and meows.

Critical period hypothesis

A view of L1 acquisition which states that one's LAD is fully functional until puberty. Afterwards, one no longer has access to the LAD. For L2 acquisition beyond this age, one must rely on memorization. The first few years of life are crucial for acquiring a first language. If language input doesn't occur until after this time, the individual will never have full command of the language, especially grammar. Victor: 1799. No input until age 12. Five years of socialization and language instruction -> only learned 2 words. Genie: 1977. Isolated for 13 years. Five years of therapy -> normal language use was never acquired. Large gaps between comprehension and production.

Williams syndrome

Average IQ 55 Weak general cognitive abilities Delay in gross and fine motor skills Seemingly have excellent language skills, in grammar, vocabulary, and phonological memory. However, they will also overgeneralize regular morphemes onto irregular verbs. Language development is atypically slow. Preference for low-frequency words. Evidence for single-route model.

Bilingual language acquisition

Bilingual children progress through the same stages of language acquisition as monolingual children, at about the same rate; they reach the same level of mastery in about the same amount of time. This evidence led to the displacement of the Fusion Hypothesis, and the development of the Independence Hypothesis. But there is evidence that interaction does exist (e.g. Mishina-Mori's (2005) finding that Eng/Jap bilingual children were placing Japanese question words in front, like in English). A new hypothesis: interdependence - the two languages do not develop in "watertight containers," but rather influence each other to some degree, based on the individual. Bilingual children exhibit many cognitive advantages, including creativity, literacy, problem-solving skills, metalinguistic awareness.

Telegraphic speech

Characteristic of children's early multi-word sentences (after the two-word stage); age 2 Simplified manner of speech in which only the important content words are used to express ideas, while grammatical function words and inflectional endings are often omitted. Reasons: -function words and inflections are not essential to meaning -cognitive limitations dictate short length of utterances, so only meaningful items are used -adults don't tend to stress function words -children's underlying knowledge at this point may not include function words and inflections

Syntactic bootstrapping

Children use syntactic clues in a sentence to figure out a word's meaning. Brown (1957): three groups of children were shown a pair of hands poised over a bowl of wood chips. 1. Look, a seb! -> seb = bowl. 2. Look, some seb! -> seb = wood chips. 3. Look, sebbing! -> seb = to mix The children used the syntactic clues in the sentence (determiners, -ing) to figure out the words' meaning.

Single route model

Connectionist approach to morphological development. There is only one cognitive mechanism that handles morphology. Kids use every piece of info available to them (phonology, semantics, frequency, analogy to other words) to figure out a morphological rule, such as past tense. In the beginning: verb past tense combinations are learned by rote memorization. The child eventually becomes biased toward the regular form. Nicoladis and Paradis (2012) provided evidence for the single route model. Bilingual children made more irregularization errors in French than they did in English -> they incorrectly applied the rules of verbs in a certain verb family to other verbs in that family, meaning they were using the cognitive strategy of analogy to figure out a morphological rule, rather than defaulting to the regular ending.

Interaction Hypothesis

Credited to Michael Long. A theory of SLA which states that the development of L2 proficiency is promoted by face-to-face interaction and communication. Strong form: interaction is necessary for L2 development. Weak form: interaction merely provides learning opportunities. Comprehensible input is important for L2 learning. Interaction provides comprehensible input because learners have to negotiate for meaning, resulting in: -slower speech -more deliberate speech -requests for clarification -paraphrases -negative evidence: feedback on what they said wrong; how it contributed to miscommunication; how their utterance was different from the NS model

Interlanguage

Defn: an L2 learner's knowledge of the L2. They don't know nothing, but they don't have the same knowledge as a native speaker. The language system that each learner constructs at any given point in development. Typically possesses characteristics influenced by previously learned languages, characteristics of the L2, and other characteristics, such as omission of the function words and grammatical morphemes. Interlanguages have been found to be systematic but continually evolving.

Language dominance

Describes a situation in which one of a bilingual child's languages is more advanced or developing faster than the other. Important in identifying types and degrees of bilingualism. (A balanced bilingual does not exhibit language dominance.) Has a role in predicting or explaining outcomes of acquisition: certain features of a child's non-dominant language may fail to develop fully or be lost (e.g. literacy)

Cross-linguistic influence

Different ways in which different language systems in the mind interact and affect linguistic performance or linguistic development. Sharwood Smith (1983) e.g. The influence of Korean on a Korean NS who is learning Japanese or French

Input (positive evidence)

Exposure to the target language that learners receive either in a naturalistic setting (authentic input) or in an instructional setting (modified language, metalinguistic information). Positive evidence is always grammatical - it provides learners with what is correct in the target language.

Corrective feedback

Feedback that an L2 learner receives about his/her language errors. Lyster & Ranta identified six types: 1. Explicit correction - clearly indicating the utterance was incorrect and providing the correct form 2. Recast - reformulating the error, without indicating the utterance was incorrect 3. Clarification request - indicates the message was not understood and reformulation is needed 4. Metalinguistic feedback - questions or comments about grammar 5. Elicitation - directly elicits the correct form 6. Repetition - teacher repeats error and adjusts intonation to draw attention to it Lyster and Ranta found that teachers preferred recasts, but that this type of feedback was ineffective at eliciting student repair. Elicitation, metalinguistic feedback, clarification requests, and repetition were more effective at eliciting repairs.

Task-based learning

Focuses on the use of authentic language and on asking students to do meaningful tasks in the target language. Such tasks can include visiting a doctor, conducting an interview, or calling customer service for help. Assessment is based on successful task outcome rather than on accuracy of prescribed language forms. TBL develops target languish fluency and student confidence.

Categorical perception

Infants from birth are able to make categorical discriminations for speech sounds. Such categories include place of articulation, manner of articulation, voicing. •e.g. They can differentiate between /b/ and /p/ (voicing); /b/ and /w/ (stop vs. glide); /b/ and /m/ (stop vs. nasal); /i/ and /u/ (back-front discrimination) Eimas (1971) found that one-month-old infants could discriminate between /b/ and /p/

Connectionism

Infants' cognitive skills are enough for the complexity of the task to be learnt. Infants have an innate ability to find patterns and remember them (thanks to their cognitive abilities). They use these patterns to figure out the rules of the language. Language learning is a general cognitive skill. There is no LAD.

Individual differences

L1 acquisition: Children vary in their rate of acquisition, but all receive full competence in their mother tongue (unless severely deprived socially). L2 learners vary in their speed of acquisition and their ultimate attainment. Individual differences in L3 learners include: -affect (embarrassment and mistakes) -anxiety -attitude toward the L2 -language learning aptitude -learning strategies -learning styles -memory capacity -motivation •e.g. recasts are more beneficial to a highly motivated learner -personality (esp. openness to experience) •extroverts: advantages in fluency •introverts: advantages in complexity and lexical richness -sociocultural factors

Scaffolding

Language learning help from another, more proficient person. All the strategies people use to help children and L2 learners. Vygotsky (1962): The development of language is a complex interaction between the child and the environment; it is influenced by both social and cognitive development. •adults provide scaffolding to children in order to reach the next level of a particular area •adults work within the child's "zone of proximal development," which is the gap between their current linguistic knowledge and the next level of potential development •e.g. asking questions to elicit more info in a narrative (elaborative questions)

Nativism

Language learning is innate. Children are born with a language acquisition device. Infants' cognitive skills are no match for the task to be learnt. Feedback and imitation are largely irrelevant. The ability to take linguistic data and form linguistic rules is innate and guided by the LAD. The LAD constrains the rules children form. Creativity: innate rules allow for an infinite number of sentences.

Dual route model

Nativist approach to morphological acquisition. Children have two separate cognitive mechanisms for dealing with morphology. •regular words are computed by a rule •irregular words are stored in memory The default rule is applied unless a lexical entry for an irregular form blocks its application. Words in Rules Model •general rule (e.g. verb+ing) •memorized exceptions •blocking principle: more specific exceptions block the general rule Evidence in aphasic patients who can produce the irregular forms early but who cannot produce the regular forms (or vice versa) -> evidence for two separate cognitive mechanisms

Emergentism

Neighbors of the connectionists They say that we are not born with linguistic rules. We construct language piece by piece as we interact with people. The rules of language emerge over time.

"Less is more" hypothesis

Newport Possible explanation for why children acquire language more easily than adults do. According to Newport, children are better able to learn language than adults because they have fewer cognitive resources available to them. These limited cognitive resources cause children to only focus on small parts of the language at a time. In contrast, adult learners tend to try to take everything in. They run into difficulties when they try to analyze complexity from the start. In the lab, Newport found that children were better able to regular patterns and rules. Children "start small." As people age, an increase in cognitive ability leads to a decrease in language learning ability, according to this theory.

Fast mapping

Refers to a child's ability to rapidly learn a new vocabulary word, even after hearing it only once. Explains how children's vocab expands so rapidly. Carey and Bartlett (1978): •four and five year olds •"Give me the chromium tray; not the red one, the chromium one." •children knew chromium must be a color and were able to select the correct tray •several weeks after this one exposure to the word, children were able to remember it •therefore, not only do children make rapid inferences about word meaning, but they remember it quite tenaciously

Markedness constraints

Require that output forms be unmarked in structure. Unmarked structure - common cross-linguistically, basic and less complex. e.g. *COMPLEX prohibits consonant clusters. It is a soft constraint; it is lowly ranked in English, and highly ranked in Fijian.

Noticing hypothesis

Schmidt, 1990 Concept in SLA Nothing is learned unless it is first noticed. Noticing does not itself result in acquisition, but is the essential starting point. There is debate over whether learners must consciously notice something, or whether noticing is subconscious to a degree. Noticing: the brain registers there is something new, even if it doesn't understand how the element works.

Child-directed speech

Specific method of talking to children by adults. Phonological features: higher pitch, greater range of frequencies, slower rate of speech, clearer enunciation, emphasis on one or two words in a sentence, special pronunciation of individual words Lexical features: substitution, diminutives, semantically inappropriate words, use of child's nonce words Syntactic features: more grammatically simple phrases, shorter phrases, use of nouns in lieu of pronouns Conversational features: more questions, fewer declaratives, restricted topics, repetitions of utterances, recasts Although some studies show that children do prefer this type of speech (Decasper & Fifer, 1980), it is not necessary for acquisition. In Samoan and Kaluli cultures, for example, this type of speech is not used. Samoans talk about the baby rather than to the baby, and the Kaluli people hold the baby up and speak for it (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984).

Faithfulness constraints

Specify that the mental representations that you have inside your head of a word should match the sounds that come out of your mouth.

Output hypothesis

Swain (1985) found that children in immersion situations had insufficient opportunities to use language in meaningful ways. This led to deficits in grammatical and sociolinguistic competence. Concluded that producing the target language forces the learner to pay attention to the grammatical elements necessary to produce what they need to say. Production engages crucial acquisition-related processes because it pushes the learner slightly beyond what they can currently handle in speaking or writing. Destabilizes internal interlanguage representations. Taking risks increases competence and drives learning.

Fossilization

Term coined by Selinker (1972) used to characterize cases of "permanent lack of mastery of a target language despite continuous exposure to the TL input, adequate motivation to improve, and sufficient opportunity for practice" Schumann (1978) reported on Alberto, a 33-year-old Costa Rican living in Massachusetts. After ten months of study which included specific instruction, Alberto never showed improvement in question formation. Schumann theorized that Alberto went through a process of pidginization; he constructed a basic lingua franca for the limited social purposes that brought him into contact with English speakers. Some researchers think that fossilization is inevitable to some degree, although cases of talented language learners provide counterevidence to this claim.

Input enhancement

Term coined by Sharwood Smith Methods language teachers use to clarify details of a second language for students. -draw attention to important features -slow down speaking speed -use exaggerated stress and intonation -extensive repetition of words and phrases -highlighting, bolding, or underlining in texts

Whole object assumption

The Nativist belief that when children encounter a new word, they assume that it applies to the whole object and not to a part or an attribute. Nativists would say this was a specifically linguistic ability. Connectionists would say that this was just a feature of children's cognition: they pay attention to the big picture of everything. Hall et al.: introduced children to a new adjective. They pointed to an unfamiliar object and said "that's a fep one." They showed two more objects. One had the same salient property. One was the same kind. "Can you find another one that is fep?" The children pointed to the object of like kind, ignoring grammatical cues that "fep" was an adjective. The whole object was more salient.

Metalinguistic awareness

The ability to consciously reflect on the nature of language by using the following skills: •an awareness that language has a potential greater than that of simple symbols •an awareness that words are separable from their referents As metalinguistic awareness grows, children begin to recognize that statements may have a literal meaning and an implied meaning. •more frequent and sophisticated use of metaphors •start to recognize irony and sarcasm •understand the subtleties of an utterance's social and cultural context

Mutual exclusivity constraint

The assumption that only one label can be applied to each object in early word learning. Helps children override the whole object assumption, thereby enabling them to acquire terms other than object labels. Markman & Wachtel (1988) demonstrated that 3- and 4-year-old children can use mutual exclusivity to learn words for parts and substances. When a novel label was mentioned in the presence of an object with a known label, children rejected the term as a second label for the object and interpreted it instead as a label for a part of the object or its substance. Nativists would say that this is a linguistic ability. Connectionists would say it is simple logic.

Two-word stage

The beginning of productive word combinations Age 18-24 months The child can better define items and personal belongings by combining two words at a time (mommy car). Put words in an order which closely resembles the order they should be in for a fully-formed sentence.

Working memory

The cognitive space in which we actively process new information or information that is currently in focus. AKA short-term memory. Instrumental in the acquisition of vocabulary and in more global measures of acquisition. FLA: Daneman and Green (1986) - children with higher working memory span more easily extracted word meanings from context. SLA: Ando et al. (1992) - working memory span played a significant role in SLA.

Noticing the gap

The idea that, in order to overcome errors, learners must make conscious comparisons between their own output and target language input (related to Schmidt's Noticing Hypothesis)

Attrition

The loss of a first or second language, or of a portion of that language. Bilinguals can lose proficiency in their L1 when another language starts to play a more dominant role in their life. Different abilities can attrite, e.g. speaking, listening, literacy, vocab. L2 learners can experience attrition in their L2 when they use their L1 more frequently.

Optimality theory

The nativist approach to explaining phonological acquisition. We are born with two types of linguistic constraints: faithfulness constraints and markedness constraints. It is the child's task to figure out how the constraints are ranked, based on their L1 input. The child runs each possible pronunciation through the constraint hierarchies.

Continuity assumption

The nativist belief that children and adults have the same underlying linguistic knowledge. Children's emerging linguistic systems ought to be explained in terms of the same abstract principles invoked in accounts of adult grammar. Basically, the nativist view that children's and adults' grammars are fundamentally alike. Challenged by findings from DeVilliers et al. (1990), who found that children's knowledge of the island constraint improved significantly with age.

Poverty of the stimulus

The nativist notion that the input children receive is impoverished, yet the children still end up knowing sophisticated and complex linguistic structures. Impoverished input: -They can't hear every possible sentence. -Some of what they hear is incorrect. Children are not cognitively advanced. They still avoid making gross errors. Therefore, the basic building blocks of language must be innate. Chomsky, 1965: children use their innate ability to produce the grammar of the language they are exposed to, filling in the gaps from the impoverished input.

Universal grammar

The nativist view that children are born knowing al possible rules of human grammar. Children set the parameters for their own language's grammar based on input they receive.

Speech perception

The process by which the sounds of language are heard, interpreted, and understood Includes a child's ability to: •segment speech into meaningful chunks of sounds and words •distinguish phonemes •distinguish speech from non-speech sounds •recognize native language •recognize that one sound spoken by different people is the same sound Nativists found that young children have an amazing ability to distinguish phonemes. Werker and Tees (1984): Six-month-old Hindi and English learning babies could tell the difference between retroflex and dental stop consonants in Hindi. By 11 to 12 months, only the Hindi babies could tell the difference.

Joint attention

The shared focus of two individuals on an object. One individual alerts another to an object by means of eye gazing, pointing, or other verbal or non-verbal indications. Enables subsequent communication by allowing for coordination between speaker and addressee. This is a social cue to word information. It plays a crucial role in word learning. Scaife and Brown (1975) found that most 8- to 10-month-olds followed a line of regard, and all 11- to 14-month-olds did.

Language socialization

Through language interactions, children are both socialized to use language and socialized through language use. Ochs and Schieffelin (1984) studied language socialization features among the Kaluli, the West Samoans, and the US middle class. Kaluli: The mother faces the baby to the group and speaks for it, rather than directly addressing the baby. Older children are pushed into interactions and told what to say. Samoa: The child makes her wishes known to a high-ranking caregiver, who then delegates responsibility to a low-ranking caregiver. In these two cultures, the child is "adapted to the situation." In the US, the situation is adapted to the child. -child-directed speech -mother tries to expand on child's utterances -mother tries to take child's perspective Through language and with language, children learn to behave in socially appropriate ways.

Sensitive period hypothesis

Throughout the lifespan, our language abilities decline. However, there can be some people who learn a second language late but nonetheless achieve native-like proficiency. Ioup - learner of late Arabic who began in her 20s. When tested, her grammar and pronunciation were nearly indistinguishable from that of a native speaker. There is no LAD; we just get worse at learning language because we get worse at learning everything in general.

Interdependence hypothesis

Two first languages acquired simultaneously progress separately for the most part, but do influence each other somewhat (Cummins, 1979). In a later study, Mishina-Mori (2005) found evidence supporting this hypothesis. •examined question words in Jap/Eng bilingual children •English questions: question word appears in front •Japanese questions: does not need to be placed in front •the children were placing Japanese question words in front (sentence-initially) •English word order was influencing Japanese syntax -> evidence for the notion that bilingual first languages emerge independently Also, Paradis 2001

Input processing theory

Van Patten (2002) A connectionist principle of SLA Learners will process content words before anything else. Learners will process lexical items before synonymous grammatical items (yesterday before -ed) Learners will process semantic items before formal ones (he before 3rd person singular -s) Learners will interpret first nouns as subjects. Second language acquisition entails overcoming these strategies and forming new ones that will work better in the L2. This theory is far too metaphorical "to take a research program far enough into actual explanations."

Fusion hypothesis

Volterra and Taechner, 1978 A theory of bilingual development which stated that children initially create one system that combines the two languages they hear. 3 stages: 1. Single linguistic system 2. Separate lexicons, 1 syntax 3. Two systems Came about from the observation that bilinguals tend to mix languages within a conversation, a turn, or an utterance. Linguists used to interpret this mixing as linguistic confusion, and hence saw bilingualism as a threat to the intellectual development of the child, or a cause of deficiency in one or both languages. Children have exhibited evidence of code switching as early as 2 (e.g. they choose the language according to the addressee). Therefore, language mixing beginning at age 2 can be explained as code switching, not the fusion of two languages.

Overextension

When a child uses a word more broadly than the meaning allows. Example: the child calls all four-legged animals "dog." Caused by limitations in lexical inventory. •weak knowledge •immature retrieval ability Diminishes over time, as children acquire more differentiated vocabulary.

Underextension

When a child uses a word too narrowly. Example: the child uses "dog" to apply to collies and spaniels, but not to chihuahuas. Can also apply to verbs: e.g. "sit" only for when the dog sits, but not other family members. As children grow, their vocabularies grow, and instances of underextension decline.

Negative evidence

When a language learner learns what is wrong or impossible in the target language. Can come about as a result of miscommunication. Learners realize their utterance was incorrect or incomprehensible and thus endeavor to repair it to make themselves understood. Includes explanation, expansion, explicit grammar teaching and correction of wrong sequences or ungrammatical sentences. Children acquire language without the need for negative evidence. L2 learners make use of negative evidence, depending on their learning style.

Specific language impairment

Williams syndrome and autism Seemingly supports the nativist view that there is a separate module for language = dissociation between language and cognition

Function words

Words that have little lexical meaning, or ambiguous meaning, but instead serve to express grammatical relationships with other words within a sentence. Signal the structural relationship that words have with one another. Closed-class words: prepositions, pronouns, aux verbs, conjunctions, articles, particles. Usually the hardest part to learn for adults. For children, these words are acquired after content words.

Stages of L1 acquisition

•Newborn: crying, vegetative sounds •6-8 weeks: cooing, laughter •16-30 weeks: vocal play: playing with different sounds - first vowels, then velars, then more front consonants •6-9 months: canonical babbling; then non-reduplicated babbling •9-18 months: one-word stage •18-24 months: two-word stage •24-30 months: telegraphic stage/early multiword stage •30+ months: later multiword stage