Can a dog tell another dog a joke?Or can a cat (other than Garfield) describe an experience so vividly that it makes the other cats feel like they just ate the same lasagna?Language. It’s an exclusively human condition. Other species definitely do communicate through movements and sounds, but they’re definitely not in the same class as humans.A poet can write lines that can make any woman swoon.
“Immersion doesn’t mean you have to pack your bags and move to Europe”.
Language Acquisition Questions and Answers - Discover the eNotes.com community of teachers, mentors and students just like you that can answer any question you might have on Language Acquisition. There are several theories on language acquisition. During our first years of life, the human brain develops rapidly. Many things take place as we learn to speak and understand language. In this article we will look at some of the most widely accepted theories in psycho-linguistics of how we learn languages.
A 140-character tweet can spark a revolution. Even can tease an acquaintance to tears.But how did we?We’ll look into that in this post. We’ll examine the differences between first language and second language acquisition, as well as some of the leading theories presented on the topic.And have you always wondered what terms like “syntax,” “semantics” and “phonology” are really about? They won’t be so mysterious after this post. We’ll peak behind the curtain and talk about the five characteristics of languages.Finally, to finish things up, we’ll touch on the four language skills you need to speak a language.So, ready to go?
Language Learning 101: What Is Language Acquisition?Have you had the wonderful experience of gazing at a newborn baby through a hospital nursery window? You know full well that those babies can’t appreciate your soulful admiration, right? They can’t understand a word you say, much less talk to you.But what kind of awesomeness happens in so short a time, that turns this ball of pure cuteness into a determined fellow pointing at everything in the grocery store, having a fit when you don’t get him what he wants?Language acquisition is that process of building the ability to understand a language, using it to communicate with others. It’s the process of going from a wordless wonder into somebody who can’t stop talking during class.That’s language acquisition or, more specifically, first language or native language acquisition. If you were born in Korea to parents who speak Korean with you, you’ll naturally end up talking Korean. The same goes for whatever native language you’re taught.Another type of language acquisition is the one that happens after you’ve acquired your native tongue—aptly named “second language acquisition.”Maybe you’re an English speaker who wants to learn Mandarin or Spanish. Maybe you’re taking a German class.
Most readers of this blog are probably in this same boat, tremendously enriching their lives by learning a second (or third) language.There’s a lot of difference between native language and second language acquisition. When you learned your native tongue, you weren’t given a long list of vocabulary words to memorize or a thick grammar textbook to sink your teeth into. You were just with mom and dad, who always told you what to eat and when to sleep.Your experience was highly immersive, and it was largely unconscious. You probably can’t even remember how you picked up your native tongue. Yet, while waiting for your first formal English lessons to begin, before Mrs. Johnson even set foot in that class, you were already chatting away with your seatmate Steve, asking him if he saw the new Mentos commercial.Second language acquisition, on the other hand, happens at a very different time and place. Usually, it happens when you’re older, maybe inside a school or university classroom, or nowadays even a virtual one.Maybe you’re learning a new language because your new job requires you to do it to speak with customers.
Or maybe you just want to learn how to flirt in a new language. Whatever the reason, the methods used are quite different from what happens in childhood. You consciously study grammar. You have your word lists with their corresponding pictures and translations. You have apps, podcasts and YouTube videos.Many people successfully learn a second language, but not everybody gets there.
On the other hand, we know first language acquisition is amazingly effective. The 7.5 billion native speakers today who speak their respective languages with finesse and flair that take our breaths away, making us wish we were born in a different country. It’s led many to believe that learning a language is the sole province of the young—people in the “critical period,” whose highly elastic brains absorb language like a sponge.But while it’s true that our brains rapidly develop in our early years,. We can create novel neural connections and learn something new at any age. That means you can embark on a language learning journey at any stage in life, your stabilized brain notwithstanding.Studies have pointed out that there are indeed other factors that exert a stronger influence than age on an individual’s language performance. For example, found that a person’s motivation is a better predictor of linguistic success than age. Just because you’re young, doesn’t mean you’ll pick up the language no problem.What is it that drives you to learn the second language?
What gets you over the speedbumps? Why do you do it when you could’ve done something else? These are more important than what you write on the blank after “Age.”that does better than age to predict language acquisition is the quality of inputs. That is, even if you start learning a language later in life, you can still be better off than those who started early, as long as you spend considerable time interacting with native speakers or use authentic materials in your study.
The quality of inputs determine your linguistic success.So really, it’s not that second language acquisition is unnatural or that it’s only for the gifted. It’s just that we need better tools and methods to do it.The good news is that in addition to people looking into the mechanisms of first language acquisition, taking a page or two and applying it to second language acquisition, we’re developing better tools and methods on a daily basis—and we’ll talk about some of them out in this post.But whether it’s first or second language acquisition, how do these processes actually take place in the mind of a language learner? Psychologists and linguists have put forth several theories over the decades to explain the phenomenon, and we’re going to look into three of the most influential ones in the next section.
What Is Chomsky's Theory Of Language Acquisition?
3 Competing Schools of Thought About Language AcquisitionPhilosophers have always been fascinated by the human linguistic ability, particularly its initial acquisition.Ever since Socrates intoned “Know thyself,” we have tried to peek behind the curtain and find out how we are actually able to learn language and use it for a myriad of communicative purposes.Here are some theories on the matter: 1) Behaviorism Whether you learned about it in your Psych 101 class or from, you’ve probably heard of work with canines. He’s the guy who was studying salivation in dogs as a response to being fed.Pavlov noticed that the dogs started salivating as soon as he (or his associate) entered the room, even when no visible food was presented. Somehow the dogs learned to associate food with his presence. They were conditioned to salivate upon seeing him!That’s all part of behaviorism, which had its heyday from the 1900s to the 1950s and held its sway in how we think about language acquisition. B.F.
Skinner, an eminent behaviorist, proposed that language acquisition is really one big and complex case of conditioning. At its core, it’s all pattern recognition—associating words with meaning.For example, if a baby hears the word “milk” often enough right before being fed from the bottle, he’ll soon learn what that word means. If he always hears the word “ball” right before being handed a spherical object, he’ll begin to associate “ball” with its referent.Through a process of trial and error, a child (or a second language learner) will be able to learn correct grammar.
Language acquisition, in this view, is a stimulus-response mechanism. A child will get to the correct form of the language when he observes reinforcing behavior from those around him—a smile, a nod or being handed a spherical object when he says “ball.” These all tell him that he’s thinking in the right direction.And one of the fastest ways of getting to the right form or use of the language, instead of going at it through personal trial and error, is imitation. A child can simply imitate what an adult says or how she says it.
That’s why accents can be contagious. If you live in a southern state like Texas or Arkansas, your English will likely have that sexy southern drawl.In the behaviorist view, language is simply reinforced input. 2) Universal Grammar In the 1960s, the field of behaviorism came under serious attack from the likes of Noam Chomsky, a man recognized as the father of modern linguistics, and about as decorated a scholar as any.He pointed out that if you really look closer, parents give only very little linguistic input for tots to run with.
Chomsky argued that parent-child interactions are limited to repeated utterances of things like “Put that back” and “Open your mouth”–not very likely to make significant dents towards the cause of language learning. And besides, when a child says, “I swimmed today,” he didn’t really get that from any adult figure in his life. That’s not imitation.So how does one account for the fact that children learn to speak their native tongues in spite of the “poverty of the stimulus”? One is left with the conclusion, Chomsky argues, that if not from the outside, external input, then the ability must have been there all along.Chomsky asserts that human beings are biologically wired for language—that we have a “language acquisition device” that allows us to learn any language in the world.
Linguistic ability is innate to us.Proof of this are the emergent abilities that have no external source. For example, we know that writing comes later in the language learning process, perhaps in the classroom. But how then do children make out the individual words in the string of sounds that they hear, when they haven’t seen a single written form of those words?Chomsky would argue that children use this “language acquisition device” to figure out the rules specific to their native language.
Language Acquisition
He even goes on to assert that there is such a thing as a “Universal Grammar.” For how else did the different languages end up with the same categorization of words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) when there’s an infinite number of ways words can be categorized? We always have nouns, verbs and adjectives.Chomsky’s work represented the “nature” side of the “,” while the Behaviorists account for language as part of “nurturing.”Of course, because of its sweeping and seemingly simplistic assertions, Chomsky’s theory has its own set of strong dissenters. Let’s talk about them next. 3) Cognitive Theory Your churning brain might already be asking any number of questions:“So what proof do we have for this ‘language acquisition device’? Where in the brain is it located? Can we see it in action?”“Have we studied all the languages of the world to conclude that there is indeed ‘Universal Grammar’?”These and other queries prompted a different approach to the whole question of language acquisition.
And as is often the case, subsequent theories, like new kids on the block, often point out the weaknesses of those that came before them.Chomsky’s theory did that to Behaviorism, and in turn, those that follow will try to fill in the gaps. And instead of taking a side on the nature-nurture debate, the cognitive theory of language acquisition recognizes that both processes have their roles to play.The psychologist Jean Piaget is a major proponent of this cognitive model, which sees language acquisition in light of the developing mental capacities. The idea here is that we’re able to learn language because of our ability to learn. It’s because of our cognitive development. Our brains become more complex, and we learn so many things so fast.Babies initially don’t talk because their brains and mental capacities still lack the experience and scaffolding necessary for language. But as babies grow, as they interact with adults, as they gain more experience, as they observe more things and as they learn more concepts, language becomes the inevitable result.Piaget believed that the understanding of concepts must first come before language.
When a child says, “Ball is red,” he must first understand what a ball and the color red are before he can comment.So if you notice how language develops, it follows the complexity of our thinking. The more nuanced and layered our thinking, the more textured the language that comes out. That’s why children talk one way, and adults talk a different way.In this model, language is seen as part of our advancing mental capacities—alongside our ability to reason or to think in the abstract. We are rational beings, information processors that interact and learn from experience.Those are three of the most influential theories on language acquisition.
Each has its merits and each gives a certain view of how we learn language. Needless to say, more research and study is needed on the topic. There’s still so much to discover, and so much to learn in this area of linguistics.When we say “language acquisition,” what is it exactly that we acquire?
Well, we now go to the next section to find out. The 5 Characteristics of a LanguageHere we get into the nitty-gritty of languages, and look under the hood to see their basic components.We need to meet the things that animate languages, behind the scenes, in order to have a proper appreciation of them. I’m talking here about the five characteristics of a language: syntax, semantics, phonology, morphology and pragmatics. Whatever language you’re considering, it has them. And they work awesomely with each other, as you’ll see. Syntaxis really just another word for grammar.
Language Acquisition Device
Languages are governed by rules. Without them, language would be a jumbled mess of words, phrases and concepts that would be very difficult to understand and therefore barely useful.Each language has a specified arrangement of words and phrases. Because of the specific ways the elements are arranged, we can decipher meaning and understand each other.
Syntax doesn’t exist so that “Grammar Nazis” can oppress those who don’t know the codified rules. Grammar is there to facilitate meaning and help us communicate the correct information or message to each other.Without syntax, we’d have sentences like: Robert Susan killed dog the pet of.Whoa, what happened in this sentence? Who killed whom?Without a consistent arrangement of words, we can never figure it out. Semanticsis all about meaning in a language—what words, phrases and sentences actually mean.
Semantics works hand in hand with syntax because different arrangement of words can create different meanings. For example, we have a sentence:“She tapped him on the shoulder.”Let’s say we’ll insert the word “ only” somewhere in the statement.
Notice how this changes the whole meaning and complexion of the statement, depending on where exactly we place a single word.Only she tapped him on the shoulder. (Nobody else did.)She only tapped him on the shoulder. (She didn’t punch him.)She tapped only him on the shoulder. (Nobody else got a similar treatment.)She tapped him only on the shoulder.
(Not on his head or anywhere else.)She tapped him on the only shoulder. (What sort of a man is this?!)Meaning can change depending on how you arrange specific words. And not only that, meaning can also change depending on the form of individual words. Let’s talk about that next. Morphologyis about the form of words. It’s best observed in the written form of a language.
Change in form often brings with it a change in meaning.Root words—the most basic word forms—can be decorated with a bunch of prefixes and suffixes to form new words, each with a different meaning.