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Helms, Kirsten Lindegaard. "The Crosslinguistic Influence of First and Second Language on Third Language Acquisition." Leviathan: Interdisciplinary Journal in English, no. 4 (March 1, 2019): 84–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/lev.v0i4.112682.
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This paper explores the crosslinguistic influences of first and second language on third language acquisition. While it has earlier been argued that Universal Grammar is lost with subsequent language acquisition, some studies indicate that Universal Grammar is not lost and is also applied when acquiring other languages. By drawing on two studies of third language acquisition where the third languages are V2, it is shown that when it comes to acquiring a third language, transfer can happen from both the first and second languages. One study showed that both the first and second languages can influence the acquisition of a third language while another argued in favor of the second language being the most dominant influence. On the basis of an examination of different theoretical approaches to language transfer, this paper argues that the Typological Primacy Model provides the most convincing and pragmatic explanation in that language transfer depends on linguistic circumstances.
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Alsaedi, Naif. "Universal Grammar Theory and Language Acquisition: Evidence from the Null Subject Parameter." International Journal of Linguistics 9, no. 3 (2017): 48. http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/ijl.v9i3.11159.
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This article introduces the Universal-Grammar-based (UG) theory of language acquisition. It focuses on parameters, both as a theoretical construct and in relation to first-language acquisition (L1A). The null subject parameter is used to illustrate how languages vary and explain how a child’s grammar develops into adult grammar over time. The article is structured as follows: the first section outlines crucial ideas that are relevant to language acquisition in generative linguistics, such as the notions of competence, performance, critical period, and language faculty. Section two introduces and discusses the content of language faculty from the perspectives of the Principles and Parameters Theory and the Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory. This section also briefly describes the contrast among languages in regard to whether or not they allow empty categories in subject position in finite clauses. The third section first discusses how children are hypothesised to acquire their native language (L1). Then, in light of findings from the early null subject phenomenon, this section empirically examines the content of grammars that are developed by children at various developmental stages until they acquire the appropriate value for the null subject parameter. The final section highlights the important role of UG theory to L1A.
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Salleh, Rabiah Tul Adawiyah Mohamed, Bruno Di Biase, and Satomi Kawaguchi. "Lexical and morphological development: A case study of Malay English bilingual first language acquisition." Psychology of Language and Communication 25, no. 1 (2021): 29–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/plc-2021-0003.
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Abstract Many first language acquisition (FLA) studies have found a strong correlation between lexical and grammatical development in early language acquisition. For bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA), the development of grammar is also found to be correlated with the size of the lexicon in each language. This case study investigates how a Malay-English bilingual child developed the lexicon and grammar in each of her languages and considers possible evidence of interaction between the languages during acquisition. The study also aims to show that the predominant linguistic environment to which the child was alternatively exposed might have played an important role in her lexical and grammatical development. Thus, the study presents two sets of data: (a) a 12-month longitudinal investigation when the child was 2;10 up till 3;10 in Australia and (b) a one-off elicitation session at age 4;8 when the family was in Malaysia. The findings show that not only the emergence of grammar is linked to the lexical size of the developing languages, but that other variables, mainly the linguistic environment and the bilingual language mode, also influenced the child’s language productions.
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Beresova, Jana. "Using English as a gateway to Romance language acquisition." Global Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 6, no. 1 (2016): 28. http://dx.doi.org/10.18844/gjflt.v6i1.571.
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The paper focuses on Romance language acquisition through English acquired as the first foreign language. A conscious approach to relations between languages enables learners, who acquired certain knowledge, attitudes and skills while learning one language, to learn other languages more easily. Research is based on contrastive analysis of two Romance languages – French and Spanish – and their relations to English. Learning those two Romance languages was carried out through the knowledge of some principles of how languages function and are related to each other. The analysis of vocabulary and grammar focuses on similarities between the three mentioned languages, emphasising the level of intensity in similarity on one hand, and possible problems related to spelling, pronunciation and meaning on the other hand. The research supports the idea of language plurality in education, and the necessity to help learners construct and continuously broaden and deepen their own plurilingual competence. Keywords: pluringuialism; multilingualism; FREPA; contrastive analysis;
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Versteegh, Kees. "Extended grammar: Malay and the Arabic tradition." Histoire Epistémologie Langage 42, no. 1 (2020): 13–31. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/hel/2020006.
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Throughout history, a number of languages have achieved the status of learned language, i.e., a language included in the curriculum of an educational system without yielding any communicational benefits. In large parts of the Islamic world, Arabic was (and still is) such a learned language. Acquisition of the learned language took place through the memorization of texts, with instruction and/or translation in vernacular languages. The vernacular languages themselves were not deemed to be in need of grammatical description, which explains why grammars for them were late to be developed. The present paper focuses on Malay, the lingua franca of choice in Southeast Asia for both Muslim missionaries and British and Dutch colonial administrators, while serving as the auxiliary language in the Islamic curriculum. The first grammars of Malay were published by the British and Dutch. Malay grammars written by native speakers did not make their appearance until the nineteenth century. Their main representative is Raja Ali Haji (d. probably 1873). In his Bustān al-kātibīn, he used the grammatical framework of Arabic grammar for a grammatical sketch of Malay, using in part the Malay terminology that had been developed in traditional education for the study of Arabic grammar and Qurˀānic exegesis.
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Schachter, Jacquelyn. "On the issue of completeness in second language acquisition." Interlanguage studies bulletin (Utrecht) 6, no. 2 (1990): 93–124. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/026765839000600201.
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The issue of completeness in adult second language acquisition is critical in the development of a theory of second language acquisition. Assuming the Chomskyan definition of core grammar as being those aspects of the language determined by the interaction of the innately specified Universal Grammar and the input to which the learner is exposed, we need to ask if it is possible for an adult learner of a second language to attain native-speaker competence in the core aspects of the grammar of the second language. This paper examines evidence for presence or absence of one principle of UG, Subjacency, in the grammars of groups of proficient nonnative speakers of English. There are three groups whose native languages - Korean, Chinese, Indonesian - differ from English with regard to Subjacency, Korean showing no evidence of it, Chinese and Indonesian showing partial evidence of it. There is one group whose native language, Dutch, shows the full range of Subjacency effects that English does. If all groups show the same Subjacency effects in English that native speakers do, then it must be the case UG is still available for adult second language learning and completeness in second language grammars is possible; if not, then completeness cannot be included as a possible characteristic of adult second language acquisition. Proficient nonnative university students with the above native languages were given grammaticality judgement tests on a set of sentences containing a variety of structures (islands) and Subjacency violations involving those structures. Analysis showed that though all groups were able to correctly judge grammatical sentences (containing islands) as grammatical, only the Dutch group was able to correctly judge ungrammatical sentences (containing Subjacency violations) as ungrammatical; the Korean subjects performed randomly on this task. This native language effect was shown not to be due to attribute variables, such as age of first exposure to English, number of months in an English-speaking country, number of years of English study, etc. The results support the conclusion that completeness is not a possible property of adult-acquired grammars since adults no longer have access to UG for the second language learning process.
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White, Lydia. "Universal Grammar, crosslinguistic variation and second language acquisition." Language Teaching 45, no. 3 (2012): 309–28. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0261444812000146.
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According to generative linguistic theory, certain principles underlying language structure are innately given, accounting for how children are able to acquire their mother tongues (L1s) despite a mismatch between the linguistic input and the complex unconscious mental representation of language that children achieve. This innate structure is referred to as Universal Grammar (UG); it includes universal principles, as well as parameters which allow for constrained variation across languages.
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Bley-Vroman, Robert. "THE EVOLVING CONTEXT OF THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE HYPOTHESIS." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 31, no. 2 (2009): 175–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263109090275.
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Foreign language learning contrasts with native language development in two key respects: It is unreliable and it is nonconvergent. At the same time, it is clear that foreign languages are languages. The fundamental difference hypothesis (FDH) was introduced as a way to account for the general characteristics of foreign language learning. The FDH was originally formulated in the context of the theory of rich Universal Grammar, and this theory has guided much foreign language acquisition research over the past two decades. However, advances in the understanding of language have undermined much of the supporting framework.The FDH—indeed all of SLA research—must be rethought in light of these advances. It is proposed here that (a) foreign language grammars make central use of patches, which are also seen as peripheral phenomena in native languages; (b) non-domain-specific processes are used in foreign language acquisition, but that these are also employed—although more effectively because they are integrated into the language system—by native language development; and (c) foreign language online processing relies heavily on the use of shallow parses, but these are also available in native language processing, although less crucially.
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HAWKINS, ROGER. "The contribution of the theory of Universal Grammar to our understanding of the acquisition of French as a second language." Journal of French Language Studies 14, no. 3 (2004): 233–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0959269504001784.
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Human beings have a genetically-determined capacity to walk, rather than to fly or swim. People can learn to swim, but it is not something that is genetically programmed. Do humans have a genetically-determined capacity to acquire language? Universal Grammar is a theory that assumes that they do. Except in cases of genetic disorder, humans have specialised mental architecture which is uniform across the species in its initial state, and which determines the ways in which samples of language encountered are converted into mental grammars. The specialised architecture is Universal Grammar, and it underlies our capacity to acquire particular languages like English, French, Chinese and so on. Two questions that need to be asked immediately about Universal Grammar if it is to be of any interest in understanding the acquisition of French as a second language are: (i) What evidence is there that Universal Grammar is operating when people who have already acquired a native language learn French as a second language? (ii) What insight does the adoption of a theory of Universal Grammar bring to understanding the processes involved, the course of development over time and the nature of the end state grammars that learners achieve? The article presents empirical evidence from a selection of studies bearing on these questions. It will be argued that the assumption that humans have mental architecture dedicated specifically to language acquisition – Universal Grammar – even in the case of second language acquisition, has allowed considerable progress to be made in understanding second language French.
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Lightfoot, David. "Problems with variable properties in syntax." Cadernos de Linguística 2, no. 1 (2021): 01–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.25189/2675-4916.2021.v2.n1.id306.
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Like those birds born to chirp, humans are born to parse; children are predisposed to assign linguistic structures to the amorphous externalization of the thoughts that we encounter. This yields a view of variable properties quite different from one based on parameters defined at Universal Grammar (UG). Our approach to language acquisition makes two contributions to Minimalist thinking. First, in accordance with general Minimalist goals, we minimize the pre-wired components of internal languages, dispensing with three separate, central entities: parameters, an evaluation metric for rating the generative capacity of grammars, and any independent parsing mechanism. Instead, children use their internal grammar to parse the ambient external language they experience. UG is “open,” consistent with what children learn through parsing. Second, our understanding of language acquisition yields a new view of variable properties, properties that occur only in certain languages. Under this open UG vision, specific elements of I-languages arise in response to new parses. Both external and internal languages play crucial, interacting roles: unstructured, amorphous external language is parsed and a structured internal language system results. My Born to parse (Lightfoot 2020) explores case studies that show innovative parses of external language shaping the history of languages. I discuss 1) how children learn through parsing, 2) the role of parsing at the two interfaces between syntactic structure and the externalization system (sound or sign) and logical form, 3) language change, and 4) variable linguistic properties seen through the lens of an open UG. This, in turn, yields a view of variable properties akin to that of evolutionary biologists working on Darwin’s finches; see section 7.
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Lightfoot, David. "The ecology of languages." DELTA: Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada 23, spe (2007): 17–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0102-44502007000300004.
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This paper discusses the life-cycle of languages: languages die, new languages are born, and languages undergo radical changes in form and structure. This paper considers three changes in the history of English: loss of split genitives, introduction of new inflectional categories, and loss of verb movement. The proposal is that these changes are the result of children's reanalysis during language acquisition, based on the interaction between primary linguistic data and universal grammar. These processes of I-language reanalysis lead to the gradual emergence of new E-languages.
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Gonçalves, Perpétua. "The role of ambiguity in second language change: the case of Mozambican African Portuguese." Second Language Research 18, no. 4 (2002): 325–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/0267658302sr209oa.
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In this article, my point of departure is that language change is driven by acquisition, and I argue that the triggers for establishing the properties of language-specific grammars differ according to whether first language (L1) or second language (L2) acquisition is involved. The reason for this is that in L2 acquisition evidence about the target grammar may be ambiguous in ways which do not occur in L1 acquisition. To illustrate the argument, I present two case studies of Mozambican African Portuguese, a nonnative variety of Portuguese acquired during childhood by L1 speakers of Bantu languages. These case studies show that strings generated by the grammar of European Portuguese may trigger ‘wrong/new’ parameter values which, although nonexistent in the original grammatical system, are perfectly legitimate from the point of view of the speakers’ L1 grammars. In both cases, although the new parameter settings (NPSs) are not convergent with the target grammar, resetting is blocked because the new parameter values successfully analyse the input. The nonresetting of the ‘wrong/new’ parameter values in the direction of the target European norm can be attributed to the social context of language acquisition, where the original European model is considerably diluted, and the surface effects they set off appear to be denser since the L2 speakers are in the majority.
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Schwegler, Armin. "Herman Wekker (ed.), Creole languages and language acquisition. (Trends in linguistics: Studies and monographs, 86.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1996. Pp. vi, 205. Hb DM118.00." Language in Society 28, no. 3 (1999): 473–77. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0047404599313063.
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This slender, neatly typeset volume contains a selection of the papers presented at an international three-day workshop on creole languages and language acquisition, held at the University of Leiden in 1990. Entitled “The logical problem of language acquisition,” the workshop set out to investigate the acquisition of parts of the grammar by children and adults. The purpose of the Leiden gathering was to bring together linguists from essentially two fields (language acquisition theory and pidgin/creole studies) in order to “solve the ‘logical problem of language acquisition’ from as many perspectives as possible” (p. 6).1 The central issue examined during the workshop was whether the specific circumstances of the genesis of a creole language have implications for theories of language acquisition in general. Conversely, the organizers and participants hoped that their discussions would shed new light on the early history of existing creole languages.
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Felix, Sascha W. "Universal Grammar in Language Acquisition." Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 33, no. 4 (1988): 367–93. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0008413100013189.
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Progress in linguistic theory during the past 20 years has made it increasingly clear that language acquisition must be viewed as an essentially deductive process in which the child analyzes the input data s/he is exposed to on the basis of an innately specified set of restrictive principles — technically known as Universal Grammar — which narrowly constrain the kinds of hypotheses a child will consider vis-à-vis a given set of data (cf. Chomsky 1980, 1981, 1986; Hornstein and Lightfoot 1981; White 1982; Felix 1987). As a consequence, there is a growing interest in the question of how exactly principles of Universal Grammar interact with the child’s linguistic experience during the course of language acquisition (see e.g., Pinker 1984; Hyams 1986; Lust 1986b; Roeper and Williams 1987 among others for some more recent proposals). It appears that there are currently at least two competing views about the nature of this interaction. One of these views which I shall call “perceptionism” holds that the task of Universal Grammar (UG) is essentially restricted to constraining the types of intermediate grammars that the child will construct, while the developmental process itself is essentially data-driven, i.e., driven by the child’s (changing) perception of the external evidence. The other view which may be termed “maturationism” claims that UG is both responsible for the types of (intermediate) grammars that in principle may emerge and at the same time for the specific nature of the developmental process. Under the maturationist view language acquisition is therefore seen as a process that is driven primarily by internal, i.e., biologically determined maturational mechanisms.
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ROEPER, THOMAS. "Minimalism and bilingualism: How and why bilingualism could benefit children with SLI." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 15, no. 1 (2011): 88–101. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728911000605.
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We begin with the hypothesis that all people are “bilingual” because every language contains ingredients from several grammars, just as English exhibits both an Anglo-Saxon and a Latinate vocabulary system. We argue that the dominant grammar is defined by productivity and recursion in particular. Although current evidence is sparse, in principle, for a child who shows Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in a bilingual environment, richer modules in one grammar may help trigger more obscure modules in another language. Thus, if one language has a rich case system, it may help a child see an impoverished case system in another grammar. Examples from prepositional systems, wh-movement, recursive possessives and others are discussed. In general, a second language can be beneficial to the SLI child in the acquisition of both languages. Minimalism offers a level of abstraction where these cross-language connections can most naturally be stated.
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Llopis García, Reyes. "Cognitive grammar: marking new paths in foreign language teaching." Verba Hispanica 19, no. 1 (2011): 111–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.4312/vh.19.1.111-127.
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This article analyzes the usefulness of cognitive grammar for teaching foreign languages, also because of a growing interest for this discipline in recent years. First the author exposes an overview of cognitive grammar, a language model framed in the cognitive linguistics. Although the concept exists since the late 1980s, its applications for second language acquisition is very recent. In the second part of the article the author explains basics of the cognitive grammar, as well as its most important concepts.
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González Alonso, Jorge, Eloi Puig-Mayenco, Antonio Fábregas, Adel Chaouch-Orozco, and Jason Rothman. "On the status of transfer in adult third language acquisition of early bilinguals." PLOS ONE 16, no. 3 (2021): e0247976. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247976.
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The study of linguistic transfer—understood here in terms of the copying of previous linguistic representations—seeks to reveal how domain-relevant prior language knowledge impacts the acquisition and development of new mental representations more generally. Studying sequential multilingualism offers a natural laboratory to observe cognitive-economical mechanisms that avoid redundancy in language learning. One of the key dividing questions between theories of transfer in sequential multilingualism is the extent of transfer, that is, whether a whole previous grammar is transferred (full transfer) or a potentially different source language is selected for each linguistic property (property-by-property transfer). We adopted a novel methodological approach to this question, examining four different linguistic properties from unrelated domains of grammar across the three languages of a heterogeneous population of highly proficient, early Catalan/Spanish bilinguals with different degrees of language dominance and order of acquisition, at the very beginning of (adult) L3 English. Results are variably complex across the different properties, but compatible with a scenario where one of the previous languages, Catalan, was selected as the basis for the initial L3 English grammar of these speakers. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings.
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HUSSEIN, ABDEL-HAMID. "Language Universals, Universal Grammar and Language Acquisition." Journal of King Abdulaziz University-Arts and Humanities 1, no. 1 (1988): 21–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.4197/art.1-1.3.
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Minami, Masahiko. "The development of language processing strategies: A cross-linguistic study between Japanese and English. Reiko Mazuka. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1998. Pp. 156." Applied Psycholinguistics 22, no. 1 (2001): 134–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716401231075.
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One of the most fundamental, yet often neglected, or even paradoxical questions in the field of language acquisition is how children who have not yet acquired stable grammar can process language and still manage to acquire new grammar. This question is further complicated by cross-linguistic differences, such as how English- and Japanese-speaking children process complex sentences in their respective languages. To answer these two intricate questions, we need to identify cross-linguistically common – possibly universal or quasi-universal – characteristics in terms of the development of language processing strategies. At the same time, we also need to know whether different language processing strategies are used by children who speak different languages. We thus need to take both developmental and cross-linguistic issues into consideration simultaneously.
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Ellis, Nick C. "Sequencing in SLA." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 18, no. 1 (1996): 91–126. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263100014698.
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This paper provides an overview of sequencing in SLA. It contends that much of language acquisition is in fact sequence learning (for vocabulary, the phonological units of language and their phonotactic sequences: for discourse, the lexical units of language and their sequences in clauses and collocations). It argues that the resultant long-term knowledge base of language sequences serves as the database for the acquisition of language grammar. It next demonstrates that SLA of lexis, idiom, collocation, and grammar are all determined by individual differences in learners' ability to remember simple verbal strings in order. It outlines how interactions between short-term and long-term phonological memory systems allow chunking and the tuning of language systems better to represent structural information for particular languages. It proposes mechanisms for the analysis of sequence information that result in knowledge of underlying grammar. Finally, it considers the relations between this empiricist approach and that of generative grammar.
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Bhatti, Natalia, Ekaterina Kovsh, Elena Kharitonova, and Irina Sapranova. "Grammar aspect of English and German acquisition in Russian medium." E3S Web of Conferences 210 (2020): 21005. http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202021021005.
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Bilingualism and multilingualism in education has become a reality in the modern multi-cultural world. In recent years, there have been numerous studies proving benefits from bilingual and multilingual approaches in education. Proficiency in second or third languages has many benefits starting from excellence in academic studies and easier access to global information resources and ending with personal awareness of cultural diversity of the world and global mobility. There is overwhelming evidence that English and German are the most popular languages chosen for the Unified State Exam in a foreign language in Russia. The study shows that a worthwhile investment of time and effort into grammatical aspect of language acquisition is of great value. The research is based on the data collected in an experiment involving 38 senior students of gymnasium 6 in Ivanteevka (Moscow Region, Russia). The result of the experiment proves the efficiency of the translanguaging approach to teaching English or German grammar. The successful formation of grammar skills in oral and written speech is based on the comparative analysis of the languages (L1, L2, L3). The mistakes which were predetermined by the differences in grammatical features of the target languages were eliminated by laying emphasis on developing mostly productive rather than reproductive skills. The cognitive exercises used the experiment enlarged the students` meta-disciplinary knowledge and helped them to master analytical skills. By comparing cultural, linguistic and social phenomena existing in L1, L2 and L3 the experimentees came to realize their belonging to the global community and the necessity of application of their language skills to successfully function as an equal member of this community. This approach could be widely used in comprehensive schools in the Russian Federation, adding to the positive effects on intellectual growth and enhancing students` linguistic, emotional and personal development.
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MÜLLER, NATASCHA. "Transfer in bilingual first language acquisition." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 1, no. 3 (1998): 151–71. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728998000261.
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Much research on bilingual first language acquisition has stressed the role of the dominant or preferred language when the two languages have some influence on one another. The present paper tries to look at transfer or interference from the perspective of the input the child is exposed to. Transfer will be argued to occur in those domains of the grammar where the language learner is confronted with ambiguous input. The bilingual child may, as a relief strategy, use parts of the analysis of one language in order to cope with ambiguous properties of the other. Ambiguity of input is crucial and will be evaluated through a comparison with monolingual language acquisition: if monolingual children have problems with the language material in question, it may be suggested that the input contains evidence for more than only one grammatical analysis. A quantitative difference between monolingual and bilingual language acquisition will be interpreted as evidence in favor of cross-linguistic influence in bilingual language development. The paper reviews longitudinal studies on the acquisition of word order in German subordinate clauses.
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Mudogo, Benard Angatia. "The Semantic Field Theoretical Approach in the teaching of English and its Grammatical Implication to Second Language Development." International Journal of English Language Studies 3, no. 3 (2021): 01–06. http://dx.doi.org/10.32996/ijels.2021.3.3.1.
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The Semantic Field Theory (SFT) has been widely used in teaching English as a second Language to preschool children in Kenya. In the SFT approach, the grammars of two or more languages are in contact. The grammar of languages involved in the SFT approach may be similar or different. However, studies have indicated that where the grammar of two languages in contact differ, syntactic mismatches are likely to result. It was against this background that the investigation was undertaken to establish the potential syntactic mismatches between English and Lukabarasi when using the SMT approach and the possible grammatical implications to English language development lessons. Contrastive Analysis (CA) by Lado (1967) was used in the comparison of the structures of Lukabarasi and English in order to identify syntactic similarities and differences in The First Language (L1) and The Second Language (L2). A sample of 10 key informants teaching English as a second language in rural pre-schools were purposively sampled to help collect the songs. Two songs were purposively sampled for collecting the relevant data. Content analysis guided the data analysis to identify the parts of the songs that were relevant to the achievement of the research objective. The findings indicated that teachers used Lukabarasi songs during English development lessons to enhance vocabulary acquisition using the SFT approach. Further, rules of the two languages were not observed and finally, there were syntactic mismatches during the teaching of English lessons. The findings revealed that extensive use the SMT approach and failure to follow rules of languages during L2 lessons may affect second language development. The findings recommend use of SFT approach when necessary in teaching English and adherence to rules of the two languages during English lessons to reduce negative transfer and to enhance L2 development.
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MEISEL, JÜRGEN M. "Bilingual language acquisition and theories of diachronic change: Bilingualism as cause and effect of grammatical change." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 14, no. 2 (2010): 121–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728910000143.
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Children acquiring their first languages are frequently regarded as the principal agents of diachronic change. The causes and the precise nature of the processes of change are, however, far from clear. The following discussion focuses on possible changes of core properties of grammars which, in terms of the theory of Universal Grammar, can be characterized as reflecting different settings of parameters. In such cases, learners develop grammatical competences differing from those of speakers of the previous generation who provided the primary data serving as input for the developmental processes. It has been argued that reanalyses of this type must be conceived of as instances of transmission failure. Yet acquisition research has demonstrated that the human Language Making Capacity is extraordinarily robust, thus leading to the question of what might cause unsuccessful acquisition. Changing frequencies in use or exposure to data containing ambiguous or even contradictory evidence are unlikely to suffice as causes for this to happen. Language acquisition in multilingual settings may be a more plausible source of grammatical reanalysis than monolingual first language development. The study of contemporary bilingualism can therefore contribute to an explanation of diachronic change. Yet one such insight is that simultaneous acquisition of two languages (2L1) typically leads to a kind of grammatical knowledge in each language which is qualitatively not different from that of the respective monolinguals, obliging us to look for other sources of transmission failure. 2L1 acquisition in settings where one language is “weaker” than the other has been claimed to qualify as such. But I will argue that even such problematic cases do not provide convincing evidence of reanalysis. If, on the other hand, children receive sustained input from second language learners, or if their onset of acquisition is delayed, this can indeed lead to incomplete acquisition. I conclude that successive acquisition of bilingualism plays a crucial role as a source of grammatical change. In order for such changes to happen, however, grammar-internal and language-external factors may have to concur.
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Hulk, Aafke, and Natascha Müller. "Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3, no. 3 (2000): 227–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728900000353.
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This paper has as its starting point the assumption that in acquiring two languages from birth, bilingual children separate their grammars from very early on. This does not, however, exclude cross-linguistic influence – the possible influence of one language on the other. The main focus of the paper is on the acquisition of syntax in a generative framework. We argue that cross-linguistic influence can occur if (1) an interface level between two modules of grammar is involved, and (2) the two languages overlap at the surface level. We show that both conditions hold for object drop, but not for root infinitives. Root infinitives satisfy the first condition: they involve the interface between syntax and pragmatics. However, they do not satisfy the second condition. Therefore, we expect cross-linguistic influence to occur only in the domain of object drop and not in the domain of root infinitives. Comparing the development of the two phenomena in a bilingual Dutch–French and a German–Italian child to the development in monolingual children, we show that this prediction is borne out by our data. Moreover, this confirms the hypothesis that cross-linguistic influence is due to language internal factors and not to language external factors such as language dominance: the periods during which we observe influence in the domain of object drop and non-influence in the domain of root infinitives are identical.
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Saffran, Jenny R. "Statistical Language Learning." Current Directions in Psychological Science 12, no. 4 (2003): 110–14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.01243.
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What types of mechanisms underlie the acquisition of human language? Recent evidence suggests that learners, including infants, can use statistical properties of linguistic input to discover structure, including sound patterns, words, and the beginnings of grammar. These abilities appear to be both powerful and constrained, such that some statistical patterns are more readily detected and used than others. Implications for the structure of human languages are discussed.
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Genesee, Fred. "Bilingual first language acquisition: exploring the limits of the language faculty." Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 21 (January 2001): 153–68. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0267190501000095.
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Most general theories of language acquisition are based on studies of children who acquire one language. A general theory of language acquisition must ultimately accommodate the facts about children who acquire two languages simultaneously during infancy. This chapter reviews current research in three domains of bilingual acquisition: pragmatic features of bilingual code-mixing, grammatical constraints on child bilingual code-mixing, and bilingual syntactic development. It examines the implications of findings from these domains for our understanding of the limits of the mental faculty to acquire language. Findings indicate that infants possess the requisite neuro-cognitive capacity to differentially represent and use two languages simultaneously from the one-word stage onward, and probably earlier. Detailed analyses of the syntactic organization of bilingual child language indicates, moreover, that it conforms to the target systems and, thus, resembles that of children acquiring the same languages monolingually, for the most part. At the same time, bilingual children acquire the distinctive capacity to coordinate their two languages in grammatically constrained ways and in conformity with the target grammars during online production. In short, current evidence attests to the bilingual capacity of the human mind and refutes earlier conceptualizations which viewed bilingualism and bilingual acquisition as burdensome and potentially disruptive to development.
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Hudgens Henderson, Mary, Miho Nagai, and Weidong Zhang. "What languages do undergraduates study, and why?" Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 5, no. 1 (2020): 722. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v5i1.4704.
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Language attitudes and motivations are among the most important factors in language acquisition that condition the language learning outcomes. College students enrolled in first-semester and second-semester courses of Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish at a Midwest American university completed a survey eliciting instrumental motivations, integrative motivations, and language attitudes. The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions the learners of that language(s) held and how their language attitudes and motivations correlate with specific world languages. There was strong interest in using Chinese and Spanish for careers, while participants in Japanese were more interested in using the language for personal enjoyment. American-raised participants take Spanish and Asian-raised students take Chinese and Japanese for much the same reasons, in that they perceive the languages to be easy. Implications for world language programs recruitment are discussed, along with what world language educators can do to take advantage of these pre-existing attitudes and motivations to deliver high quality instruction beyond simply grammar.
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Méndez, Lucía I., and Gabriela Simon-Cereijido. "A View of the Lexical–Grammatical Link in Young Latinos With Specific Language Impairment Using Language-Specific and Conceptual Measures." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 62, no. 6 (2019): 1775–86. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/2019_jslhr-l-18-0315.
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Purpose This study investigated the nature of the association of lexical–grammatical abilities within and across languages in Latino dual language learners (DLLs) with specific language impairment (SLI) using language-specific and bilingual measures. Method Seventy-four Spanish/English–speaking preschoolers with SLI from preschools serving low-income households participated in the study. Participants had stronger skills in Spanish (first language [L1]) and were in the initial stages of learning English (second language [L2]). The children's lexical, semantic, and grammar abilities were assessed using normative and researcher-developed tools in English and Spanish. Hierarchical linear regressions of cross-sectional data were conducted using measures of sentence repetition tasks, language-specific vocabulary, and conceptual bilingual lexical and semantic abilities in Spanish and English. Results Results indicate that language-specific vocabulary abilities support the development of grammar in L1 and L2 in this population. L1 vocabulary also contributes to L2 grammar above and beyond the contribution of L2 vocabulary skills. However, the cross-linguistic association between vocabulary in L2 and grammar skills in the stronger or more proficient language (L1) is not observed. In addition, conceptual vocabulary significantly supported grammar in L2, whereas bilingual semantic skills supported L1 grammar. Conclusions Our findings reveal that the same language-specific vocabulary abilities drive grammar development in L1 and L2 in DLLs with SLI. In the early stages of L2 acquisition, vocabulary skills in L1 also seem to contribute to grammar skills in L2 in this population. Thus, it is critical to support vocabulary development in both L1 and L2 in DLLs with SLI, particularly in the beginning stages of L2 acquisition. Clinical and educational implications are discussed.
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Meisel, Jürgen M. "Diversity and divergence in bilingual acquisition." Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 40, no. 1 (2021): 65–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/zfs-2021-2025.
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Abstract Bilingual settings are perceived as exemplary cases of linguistic diversity, and they are assumed to trigger cross-linguistic interaction. The rationale underlying this assumption is the belief that when more than one language is processed in a brain, this will inevitably affect the way in which linguistic knowledge is acquired, stored and used. However, this idea stands in conflict with results obtained by research on children acquiring two (or more) languages simultaneously. They have been demonstrated to be able to differentiate languages from early on and to develop competences qualitatively identical to those of monolinguals. These studies thus provide little evidence supporting the idea that bilingualism must lead to divergent grammatical development. The question then is what triggers alterations of bilinguals’ grammars, especially of the syntactic core, possibly resulting in non-native competences. This has been claimed to occur in the acquisition of second languages, weaker languages of simultaneous bilinguals, or heritage languages. These acquisition types differ from first language development in that onset of acquisition of one language is delayed or that the amount of exposure to one language is reduced. I will argue that age at onset and severely reduced amount of exposure are potential causal factors triggering divergent developments, whereas bilingualism on its own is not a sufficient cause of divergence.
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Guilfoyle, Eithne, and Máire Noonan. "Functional Categories and Language Acquisition." Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 37, no. 2 (1992): 241–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0008413100021976.
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Many theorists (e.g., Hyams 1987; Pinker 1984) working in the framework of generative grammar have assumed the “Continuity Hypothesis”. Under this view language acquisition is made up of a series of continuous stages. The child moves from one stage to another, and at each stage the grammar posited by the child is determined by Universal Grammar (UG). The motivation for the movement from one stage to another comes from a trigger in the language environment which causes the child to restructure her grammar, and so move on to the next stage. The Continuity Hypothesis has provided an explanation for the acquisition of many linguistic structures; however, in many instances it has been difficult to explain exactly which data in the language environment act as a trigger, and why they have an effect on the child’s grammar.
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Hohaus, Vera, and M. Ryan Bochnak. "The Grammar of Degree: Gradability Across Languages." Annual Review of Linguistics 6, no. 1 (2020): 235–59. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev-linguistics-011718-012009.
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In this review, we discuss the empirical landscape of degree constructions cross-linguistically as well as the major analytical avenues that have been pursued to account for individual languages and cross-linguistic variation. We first focus on comparatives and outline various compositional strategies for different types of comparative sentences as well as points of cross-linguistic variation in the lexicalization of comparative operators and gradable predicates. We then expand the discussion to superlatives, equatives, and other degree constructions. Finally, we turn to constructions beyond the prototypical degree constructions but where degree-based analyses have been pursued; we focus on change-of-state verbs and exclamatives. This is an area that is especially ripe for future cross-linguistic research. We conclude by mentioning connections to other subfields of linguistics, such as language acquisition, historical linguistics, and language processing.
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Sokolova, M., and E. Plisov. "CROSS-LINGUISTIC TRANSFER CLASSROOM L3 ACQUISITION IN UNIVERSITY SETTING." Vestnik of Minin University 7, no. 1 (2019): 6. http://dx.doi.org/10.26795/2307-1281-2019-7-1-6.
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Introduction: the paper investigates cross-linguistic influences between the two previously learnt languages and their effects on classroom L3 acquisition. The study checks the predictions of the existing theories of mechanisms of transfer into the L3 attested for naturalistic learners. The main predictions get confirmed with the population of classroom learners of English as the L3. All the participants are native speakers of Russian. They all learnt their dominant foreign language, either French or German, in the classroom. The results suggest a governing role of the Universal Grammar in classroom language learning. Materials and Methods: the experiment uses three production tasks: written production, oral production and pronunciation task. The written assignment asks the participants to translate sentences from Russian into English. The target sentence contains the existential there are that does not exist in Russian. The way the participants structure the target sentence in English allows for conclusion about possible influences of the first foreign language on the development of their L3- English. In the oral production task, the participants are prompted to produce negative sentences. The influences from previously learnt languages is traced through the placement of the negation not. In the pronunciation task Praat was used to measure the duration and the formant frequency of the nasal [N] in English. Differences in sound quality trace back to the influences from the previously learnt languages. The data were analyzed with one-way ANOVA for between and within group differences. Results: in the written task, the participants who studied German as their first foreign language prefer verb final placement in the subordinate, which is ungrammatical in English but grammatical in German. The L2-French group put the verb in the right place, but they do not use the existential there are, which required in English. In the oral task, the placement of negation is Russian-like in both groups. In pronunciation, the quality of English [N] is influenced by the amount of nasality the participants learnt before, i.e. French influences make the English [N] more nasalized than the [N] in the group with German as the first foreign language. Discussion and Conclusion: classroom learners of English as the L3 experience influences from all the previously learnt languages, the native language and the first foreign language. These findings pattern with the assumptions of the main generative theories of naturalistic L3 acquisition. Concluding that classroom language learning is governed by universal grammar, the teaching can benefit from predicting what cross-linguistic influences can be facilitative or not for the acquisition of the target language.
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Endress, Ansgar D. "A Simple, Biologically Plausible Feature Detector for Language Acquisition." Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 32, no. 3 (2020): 435–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01494.
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Language has a complex grammatical system we still have to understand computationally and biologically. However, some evolutionarily ancient mechanisms have been repurposed for grammar so that we can use insight from other taxa into possible circuit-level mechanisms of grammar. Drawing upon recent evidence for the importance of disinhibitory circuits across taxa and brain regions, I suggest a simple circuit that explains the acquisition of core grammatical rules used in 85% of the world's languages: grammatical rules based on sameness/difference relations. This circuit acts as a sameness detector. “Different” items are suppressed through inhibition, but presenting two “identical” items leads to inhibition of inhibition. The items are thus propagated for further processing. This sameness detector thus acts as a feature detector for a grammatical rule. I suggest that having a set of feature detectors for elementary grammatical rules might make language acquisition feasible based on relatively simple computational mechanisms.
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Slabakova, Roumyana. "Features or parameters: which one makes second language acquisition easier, and more interesting to study?" Second Language Research 25, no. 2 (2009): 313–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658308100291.
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While agreeing with Lardiere that the `parameter-resetting' approach to understanding second language acquisition (SLA) needs rethinking, it is suggested that a more construction-based perspective runs the risk of losing deductive and explanatory power. An alternative is to investigate the constraints on feature assembly/re-assembly in second language (L2) grammars. A model of grammatical organization is adopted from Ramchand and Svenonius (2008) in which properties of the conceptual—intentional (C—I) module of mind are universal, and variation between languages is determined by the extent to which such properties are grammaticalized or determined by context. Predictions are then made about the degree of difficulty involved in determining the appropriate mapping from the C—I module to grammar or context when a learner's first language (L1) is similar to or different from the L2.
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Grima, Antoinette Camilleri, and Jacqueline Żammit. "acquisition of verbal tense and aspect in Maltese by adult migrants." Journal of Multilingual Theories and Practices 1, no. 2 (2020): 149–67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/jmtp.13426.
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This article considers the relevance of second language acquisition research for the development of pedagogical grammar. As an example it looks at the acquisition of verbal tense and aspect by intermediate-to-advanced level learners of Maltese, and more specifically the extent to which the perfett and imperfett verb forms are used by the learners when compared with L1 users of Maltese. Sixteen adult migrant learners, and 15 L1 Maltese users, took part in the study. All but one of the 16 migrant learners knew at least two other languages. Two of the participants had Arabic as their L1, and three others had learned Arabic as an L2, while the remaining learners spoke a variety of first languages. On a picture interpretation task, L1 speakers of Arabic performed very much like Maltese L1 speakers, predominantly using the perfett, perfective aspect in the past. All the other migrant learners, including those who had learned Arabic well as an L2, used the imperfett, imperfective/unrestricted habitual aspect. This evidence has important implications for the formulation of pedagogical grammar for foreign learners of Maltese. It also sheds light on the relevance of language typology in foreign language acquisition.
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Gavarró, Anna. "L1 variation in object pronominalisation, and the import of pragmatics." Probus 31, no. 2 (2019): 299–322. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/probus-2016-0011.
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Abstract Much work on referential expressions in monolingual and bilingual acquisition rests on the assumption that early grammars licence null objects even when they are not possible in the corresponding target grammar, in virtue of discourse-pragmatic licencing. This proposal has been made mainly with reference to third person object pronominalisation. Less attention has been given to other pronouns. Here, I show how the pragmatic account of third person object pronouns (along the lines of Serratrice et al. [2004, Crosslinguistic influence in the syntax-pragmatics interface: Subjects and objects in English-Italian bilingual and monolingual acquisition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 7(3). 182–205], in the spirit of Hulk and Müller [2000, Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3(3). 227–244], Müller and Hulk [2001, Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 4(1). 1–21]) does not extend to clitics instantiating other person specifications or other grammatical functions. I present an alternative analysis, in terms of the Unique Checking Constraint (Wexler [1998, Very early parameter setting and the unique checking constraint: A new explanation for the optional infinitive stage. Lingua 106. 23–79]) that offers a generalisation over other clitics, in particular indirect object clitics and first person object clitics, which are generally preserved in child grammar – as witnessed by two experiments run on Catalan L1 reported here.
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Tzakosta, Marina, and Anthi Revithiadou. "A Grammar Inclusion Hypothesis of child language variation." Journal of Greek Linguistics 7, no. 1 (2006): 49–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jgl.7.04tza.
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AbstractThis paper examines variation in language development based on production data from three Greek-speaking children. Variation suggests that children employ more than one grammar during the acquisition process. This naturally raises the question of how ‘unwanted’ grammars gradually give way to the one that relates to the adult/target grammar. To account for variation, we implement partial ordering (Anttila 1997a, 1997b) to Tzakosta’s (2004) Multiple Parallel Grammars model of language development. More specifically, we propose that, in the intermediate stage of acquisition, constraint permutation of the initial Markedness » Faithfulness ranking leads to grammar explosion. We view the resulting grammars as partial orders that contain sets of totally ranked grammars (subgrammars). The pivotal claim is that only those subgrammars that are typologically closer to the target one will eventually survive. This is stated as the Grammar Inclusion Hypothesis. The theoretical gain of the proposed model is that it provides a principled basis to define developmental paths and also to distinguish between smart and non-smart paths. The latter are partial orders that do not contain the target grammar as a total order and hence are doomed to extinction. The former, on the other hand, are partial orders that contain at least one total order that relates to the target grammar and, crucially, connect the running state of acquisition with the end state of language development. Our hypothesis finds empirical support by both inter-child and intra-child language acquisition data.
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Pinker, Steven, and Ray Jackendoff. "The reality of a universal language faculty." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 32, no. 5 (2009): 465–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x09990720.
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AbstractWhile endorsing Evans & Levinson's (E&L's) call for rigorous documentation of variation, we defend the idea of Universal Grammar as a toolkit of language acquisition mechanisms. The authors exaggerate diversity by ignoring the space of conceivable but nonexistent languages, trivializing major design universals, conflating quantitative with qualitative variation, and assuming that the utility of a linguistic feature suffices to explain how children acquire it.
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Parodi, Teresa. "Finiteness and verb placement in second language acquisition." Second Language Research 16, no. 4 (2000): 355–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/026765830001600403.
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The relationship between finiteness and verb placement has often been studied in both first language (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition and many studies claim that, while there is a correlation between finiteness and verb placement in L1 acquisition, these areas represent separate learning tasks in second language acquisition (SLA). The purpose of this article is to provide a new perspective on this elusive question, analysing data from speakers of Romance languages learning German as a second language (L2). Verbs are classified as thematic and nonthematic and analysed with respect to overt subject–verb agreement and verb placement as seen in negation patterns. A clear association between subject–verb agreement and verb placement is seen for nonthematic verbs: they are in most cases morphologically finite and show the syntactical distribution of finite verbs. These verbs are interpreted as a spell-out of agreement features, differing both from the speakers' L1 and from the L2, but conforming to a universal grammar (UG) option.
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Anderson, Rachel T. "AN INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTIC THEORY AND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Stephen Crain and Diane Lillo-Martin. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. Pp. xii + 424. $36.95 paper." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 23, no. 3 (2001): 440. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263101253066.
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This enjoyable, informative book would serve as an excellent introductory text in a beginning course on language acquisition or linguistics. The content is somewhat narrower than the title suggests: The book deals exclusively with L1 acquisition, and its focus is Chomskyan syntax and Universal Grammar, with a bit of semantics presented toward the end (i.e., phonology is not addressed). Most of the data is from English, though other languages are explored (e.g., French, Japanese), with three very interesting chapters on American Sign Language.
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Müller, Natascha, and Aafke Hulk. "Crosslinguistic influence in bilingual language acquisition: Italian and French as recipient languages." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 4, no. 1 (2001): 1–21. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728901000116.
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In this paper we want to compare the results from monolingual children with object omissions in bilingual children who have acquired two languages simultaneously. Our longitudinal studies of bilingual Dutch–French, German–French, and German–Italian children show that the bilingual children behave like monolingual children regarding the type of object omissions in the Romance languages. They differ from monolingual children with respect to the extent to which object drop is used. At the same time, the children differentiate the two systems they are using. We want to claim that the difference between monolingual and bilingual children concerning object omissions in the Romance languages is due to crosslinguistic influence in bilingual children: the Germanic language influences the Romance language. Crosslinguistic influence occurs once a syntactic construction in language A allows for more than one grammatical analysis from the perspective of child grammar and language B contains positive evidence for one of these possible analyses. The bilingual child is not able to map the universal strategies onto language-specific rules as quickly as the monolinguals, since s/he is confronted with a much wider range of language-specific syntactic possibilities. One of the possibilities seems to be compatible with a universal strategy. We would like to argue for the existence of crosslinguistic influence, induced by the mapping of universal principles onto language-specific principles – in particular, pragmatic onto syntactic principles. This influence will be defined as mapping induced influence. We will account for the object omissions by postulating an empty discourse-connected PRO in pre-S position (Müller, Crysmann, and Kaiser, 1996; Hulk, 1997). Like monolingual children, bilingual children use this possibility until they show evidence of the C-system (the full clause) in its target form.
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Nerea, Madariaga. "The category of animacy and its acquisition in the grammars of Russian and Spanish." Cuadernos Iberoamericanos, no. 2 (June 28, 2018): 48–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.46272/2409-3416-2018-2-48-57.
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The category of animacy is the expression in grammar of the opposition between animate and inanimate beings. This category does not grammaticalize in every language and, even if it does, it almost never grammaticalizes in the same way. To show this, I will analyze here the animacy effects in two languages, which seem to grammaticalize in similar ways (Spanish and Russian). In these two languages, animacy mainly affects differential object marking (the so-called DOM). Unlike other European languages, both Russian and Spanish make use of DOM for animate objects (Veo a mi amigo / Я вижу своего друга), but there are independent factors that distinguish the Russian and the Spanish patterns. Having in mind the difficulties that learners of Russian and Spanish must face, I will offer a brief comparative of the acquisition of the DOM in these two languages by different types of speakers (speakers of L1, heritage language speakers and speakers of L2).
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PYE, CLIFTON, and BARBARA PFEILER. "The Comparative Method of language acquisition research: a Mayan case study." Journal of Child Language 41, no. 2 (2013): 382–415. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0305000912000748.
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ABSTRACTThis article demonstrates how the Comparative Method can be applied to cross-linguistic research on language acquisition. The Comparative Method provides a systematic procedure for organizing and interpreting acquisition data from different languages. The Comparative Method controls for cross-linguistic differences at all levels of the grammar and is especially useful in drawing attention to variation in contexts of use across languages. This article uses the Comparative Method to analyze the acquisition of verb suffixes in two Mayan languages: K'iche' and Yucatec. Mayan status suffixes simultaneously mark distinctions in verb transitivity, verb class, mood, and clause position. Two-year-old children acquiring K'iche' and Yucatec Maya accurately produce the status suffixes on verbs, in marked distinction to the verbal prefixes for aspect and agreement. We find evidence that the contexts of use for the suffixes differentially promote the children's production of cognate status suffixes in K'iche' and Yucatec.
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Kuznetsova, O., and V. Zlatnikov. "APPROACHES AND EFFECTIVE METHODS OF INSTRUCTION IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE FOR SPECIAL PURPOSES." Visnyk Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Military-Special Sciences, no. 1 (45) (2021): 17–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.17721/728-2217.2021.45.17-20.
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At the present stage of expanding international contacts in various fields of activity for students it is becoming increasinglyimportant to expand their knowledge of languages outside of everyday foreign language (English). Learning foreign languages hasa number of benefits, including facilitating effective communication and building partnerships, business and military relationships with people from other countries/cultures. Since there are a number of factors that affect the effective acquisition of a foreign language in the context of bilin gualism, modern methods of teaching foreign languages have their own characteristics, considering the target areas and standards. There are many approaches to foreign language teaching developed at the end of the last centurythat have become widely used in teaching foreign languages for special purposes in higher education at the present stage of learning. The range of teaching methods varies depending on which aspects of language acquisition they emphasize – from teaching grammar to the lexicographic component of modern English-language culture of business and professional communication, which are seen as an element of communication skills of young military and civilian professionals [1]. As there is a wide range of different approaches and methods of teaching a foreign language for professional purposes used in lessons, the question will be whether there is evidence that some methods are more effective in acquiring and maintaining acquired skills. The article presents practical recommendations for motivating students to free oral/written communication in a foreign language, taking into account professional needs; the sequence of stages at which new programs for studying a foreign language of special purpose are logically executed, and also offers concerning a vocabulary is provided. The article evaluates and analyzes the latest trends in the methodology of teaching foreign languages, which provides a basis for effective study of a foreign language for professional purposes, taking into account the communicative orientation military, business and professional communication.
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Bassano, Dominique, Katharina Korecky-Kröll, Isabelle Maillochon, and Wolfgang U. Dressler. "L’acquisition des déterminants nominaux en français et en allemand." Language, Interaction and Acquisition 2, no. 1 (2011): 37–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lia.2.1.02bas.
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In many languages, noun determiner acquisition is a central aspect of the emergence of grammar in children. The study compares the development of determiners — between one and three years of age — in the spontaneous productions of two children who acquire French and Austrian German, respectively. Starting with the contrast between Romance and Germanic languages and focusing on morphosyntactic factors, it evaluates the impact of typological and language-specific differences on determiner acquisition. We examine the prediction that determiners should emerge earlier in French than in German and classical hypotheses concerning the pre-eminence of definite over indefinite, masculine over feminine, and singular over plural in the light of developmental data.
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Tomescu, Veronica, and Larisa Avram. "Peripheral cross-linguistic interference in the acquisition of accusative clitics by Romanian–Hungarian simultaneous bilinguals." Probus 31, no. 2 (2019): 323–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/probus-2016-0014.
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Abstract This paper presents the results of the first study of the acquisition of Accusative clitics in Romanian by Romanian–Hungarian bilingual children. Our data show that the acquisition route is similar to the one in a monolingual setting. An interesting observation which arises from this study is that two structures which are superficially similar in the two languages favour the occurrence of non-target constructions, unavailable in either of the two languages. They occur under bilingual conditions via non-language-specific mechanisms, such as comparison and analogy. This is why their use, age of onset, and end of influence are subject to individual variation. Their analysis reveals that even structures which are the result of non-language-specific mechanisms, when drawing on morpho-syntactic knowledge, can fall within the range of constructions made available by Universal Grammar. The same superficial similarity seems to boost the acquisition of clitics by Romanian–Hungarian bilinguals.
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LOPES, Ruth E. Vasconcellos. "Language acquisition and the minimalist program: a new way out." DELTA: Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada 17, no. 2 (2001): 245–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0102-44502001000200004.
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Our aim in this paper is to show that Chomsky's Minimalist Program brings in a new way to conceive the Language Faculty and, thus, the Universal Grammar as well. Therefore, it opens up a whole range of possibilities for the language acquisition field. Explanations have to be motivated by virtual conceptual necessity: either through bare output conditions imposed by the interfaces, or through economy conditions of the computational system. Our point is that it should work likewise for language acquisition. If economy conditions play a role in the Language Faculty, then they must be important for the language acquisition process. If interface levels are essential for the Language Faculty, then they must play a role in the acquisition process as well. In order to pinpoint such issues we will discuss some evidence from the asymmetry between the child's initial production of subject and object in different languages. Our guiding hypothesis is that the basic syntactic relation that is privileged by the child acquiring a language is c-command.
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ABUTALEBI, JUBIN, and HARALD CLAHSEN. "Critical periods for language acquisition: New insights with particular reference to bilingualism research." Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 21, no. 5 (2018): 883–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s1366728918001025.
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One of the best-known claims from language acquisition research is that the capacity to learn languages is constrained by maturational changes, with particular time windows (aka ‘critical’ or ‘sensitive’ periods) better suited for language learning than others. Evidence for the critical period hypothesis (CPH) comes from a number of sources demonstrating that age is a crucial predictor for language attainment and that the capacity to learn language diminishes with age. To take just one example, a recent study by Hartshorne, Tenenbaum and Pinker (2018) identified a ‘sharply-defined critical period’ for grammar learning, and a steady decline thereafter, based on a very large dataset (of 2/3 million English Speakers) that allowed them to disentangle critical-period effects from non-age factors (e.g., amount of experience) affecting grammatical performance. Other evidence for the CPH comes from research with individuals who were deprived of linguistic input during the critical period (Curtiss, 1977) and were consequently unable to acquire language properly. Moreover, neurobiological research has shown that critical periods affect the neurological substrate for language processing, specifically for grammar (Wartenburger, Heekeren, Abutalebi, Cappa, Villringer & Perani, 2003).
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McWhorter, John M. "The radically isolating languages of Flores." Journal of Historical Linguistics 9, no. 2 (2019): 177–207. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jhl.16021.mcw.
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Abstract The languages of central Flores are all but devoid of affixation, despite that this is hardly typical of the Austronesian languages of their family, including closely related languages elsewhere on the island and nearby ones. A traditional approach to these central Flores languages’ typology is to ascribe their analyticity to grammar-internal drift, under which the disappearance of this affixal battery was due merely to fortuitous matters of stress, analogy, reanalysis, etc. Here I argue that a great deal of evidence suggests that these languages actually underwent heavy second-language acquisition by adults at some point in the relatively recent past, most likely by male invaders from a different island. The evidence includes phenomena familiar from recent developments in creolization theory, as well as a cross-linguistic approach to analyticity and its causes.