Language acquisition

Language acquisition is the process by which language develops in humans. First language acquisition concerns the development of language in children, while second language acquisition focuses on language development in adults as well. Historically, theories and theorists may have emphasized either nature or nurture (see Nature versus nurture) as the most important explanatory factor for acquisition.

Most researchers, however, acknowledge the importance of both biology and environment. One hotly debated issue is whether the biological contribution includes language-specific capacities, often described as Universal Grammar. For fifty years linguists Noam Chomsky and the late Eric Lenneberg strongly argued for the hypothesis that children have innate, language-specific abilities that facilitate and constrain language learning.

Other researchers, including Elizabeth Bates, Catherine Snow, and Michael Tomasello, have hypothesized that language learning results only from general cognitive abilities and the interaction between learners and their surrounding communities. Recent work by William O'Grady proposes that complex syntactic phenomena result from an efficiency-driven, linear computational system. O'Grady describes his work as "nativism without Universal Grammar". One of the most important advances in the study of language acquisition was the creation of the CHILDES database by Brian MacWhinney and Catherine Snow.

Nativist theories

Linguistic theories hold that children learn through their natural ability to organize the laws of language, but cannot fully utilize this talent without the presence of other humans. This does not mean, however, that the child requires formal teaching of any sort. Chomsky claims that children are born with a hard-wired language acquisition device (LAD) in their brains. They are born with the major principles of language in place, but with many parameters to set (such as whether sentences in the language(s) they are to acquire must have explicit subjects). According to nativist theory, when the young child is exposed to a language, their LAD makes it possible for them to set the parameters and deduce the grammatical principles, because the principles are innate.

Mark Baker's work, The Atoms of Language (2004) presents arguments that there are not only certain "parameters" (as Chomsky called them) that are innate switches in our LAD, but we are very close to the point where these parameters could be put together in a "periodic table of languages" as determined by their parameter features. Baker's work is very controversial, however, because he has argued (1996: 496-515) that principles and parameters do not have biological or sociological origins, but instead were created by God (i.e. creationism).

In contrast to Baker's theological creationism, Chomsky argues that language "... can be studied in the manner of other biological systems." ^*. In addition, there are significant studies in biogenetics that strongly suggest that the genetic factors that combine to build the brain contain redundant systems for recognizing patterns of both sight and sound.

Central to Chomsky's view is the notion of Universal Grammar, which posits that all languages have the same basic underlying structure, and that specific languages have rules that transform these underlying structures into the specific patterns found in given languages. This is important in 20th Century philosophy because it directly counters Wittgenstein's key assertion that grammar is just surface and arbitrary, like the rules of a chess game.

Chomsky claims that without an innate ability for language, human infants would be incapable of learning such complete speech patterns in a natural human environment where complete sentences are the exception. This is sometimes mischaracterised as the poverty of the stimulus argument.

In contrast, psychologist Catherine Snow at Harvard argues that children do not have to deduce the principles of language from impoverished and ungrammatical scraps of talk, but are presented with the evidence they need through parent-child interaction. Some studies of child directed speech or CDS suggest that speech to young children is usually slow, clear, grammatical, and very repetitious, rather like traditional language lessons. Others have argued that "baby talk" is not universal among the world's cultures, and that its role in "helping children learn grammar" has been overestimated.'

It can be argued that Chomsky's views contradict those of B.F. Skinner.

Non-nativist theories

Non-nativist theories include the Competition model and Social interactionism. Social-interactionists, like Snow, theorize that adults play an important part in children's language acquisition. However, some researchers claim that the empirical data on which theories of social interactionism are based have often been over-representative of middle class American and European parent-child interactions. Various anthropological studies of other human cultures, as well as anecdotal evidence from western families, suggests rather that many, if not the majority, of the world's children are not spoken to in a manner akin to traditional language lessons, but nevertheless grow up to be fully fluent language users. Many researchers now take this into account in their analyses. Furthermore, as any parent knows, children often pay scarce attention to what they are told to say, instead sticking to their own ungrammatical preferences.

Nevertheless, Snow's criticisms might be powerful against Chomsky's argument, if the argument from the poverty of stimulus were indeed an argument about degenerate stimulus, but it is not. The argument from the poverty of stimulus is that there are principles of grammar that cannot be learned on the basis of positive input alone, however complete and grammatical that evidence is. This argument is not vulnerable to objection based on evidence from interaction studies such as Snow's.

However, an argument against Chomskian views of language acquisition lies in Chomskian theory itself. The theory has several hypothetical constructs, such as movement, empty categories, complex underlying structures, and strict binary branching, that cannot possibly be acquired from any amount of input. Since the theory is, in essence, unlearnably complex, then it must be innate. A different theory of language, however, may yield different conclusions. Examples of alternative theories that do not utilize movement and empty categories are Head-driven phrase structure grammar, Lexical functional grammar, and several varieties of Construction Grammar. While all theories of language acquisition posit some degree of innateness, a less convoluted theory might involve less innate structure and more learning. Under such a theory of grammar, the input, combined with both general and language-specific learning capacities, might be sufficient for acquisition.

The Critical Period Hypothesis

Linguist Eric Lenneberg (1964) stated that the crucial period of language acquisition ends around the age of 12 years. He claimed that if no language is learned before then, it could never be learned in a normal and fully functional sense. This was called the "Critical period Hypothesis."

An interesting example of this is the case of Genie, also known as "The Wild Child". A thirteen-year-old victim of lifelong child abuse, Genie was discovered in her home on November 4th, 1970, strapped to a potty chair and wearing diapers. She appeared to be entirely without language. Her father had judged her retarded at birth and had chosen to isolate her, and so she had remained until her discovery.

It was an ideal (albeit horrifying) opportunity to test the theory that a nurturing environment could somehow make up for a total lack of language past the age of 12. She was unable to acquire language completely, although the degree to which she acquired language is disputed. ^*

Detractors of the "Critical Period Hypothesis" point out that in this example and others like it (see Feral children), the child is hardly growing up in a nurturing environment, and that the lack of language acquisition in later life may be due to the results of a generally abusive environment rather than being specifically due to a lack of exposure to language.

A more up-to-date view of the Critical Period Hypothesis is represented by the University of Maryland, College Park instructor Robert DeKeyser. DeKeyser argues that although it is true that there is a critical period, this does not mean that adults cannot learn a second language perfectly, at least on the syntactic level. DeKeyser talks about the role of language aptitude as opposed to the critical period.

Additional arguments for nativism

However, there exists emerging evidence of both innateness of language and the "Critical Period Hypothesis" from the deaf population of Nicaragua. Until approximately 1986, Nicaragua had neither education nor a formalized sign language for the deaf. As Nicaraguans attempted to rectify the situation, they discovered that children past a certain age had difficulty learning any language. Additionally, the adults observed that the younger children were using gestures unknown to them to communicate with each other. They invited Judy Kegl, an American linguist from MIT, to help unravel this mystery. Kegl discovered that these children had developed their own, distinct, Nicaraguan Sign Language with its own rules of "sign-phonology" and syntax. She also discovered some 300 adults who, despite being raised in otherwise healthy environments, had never acquired language, and turned out to be incapable of learning language in any meaningful sense. While it was possible to teach vocabulary, these individuals seem to be unable to learn syntax.

The developmental period of most efficient language learning coincides with the time of rapid post-natal brain growth and plasticity in both humans and chimpanzees. Prolonged post-natal brain growth in humans allows for an extended period of the type of brain plasticity characteristic of juvenile primates and an extended time window for language learning. The neotenic pattern of human brain development is associated with persistence of considerable language learning capacity into human adulthood.

Derek Bickerton's (1981) landmark work with Hawaiian pidgin speakers studied immigrant populations where first-generation parents spoke highly-ungrammatical "pidgin English". Their children, it was found, grew up speaking a grammatically rich language -- neither English nor the broken pidgin of their parents. Furthermore, the language exhibited many of the underlying grammatical features of many other natural languages. The language became "creolized," and is known as Hawaii Creole English. This was taken as powerful evidence for children's innate grammar module.

Neural Modeling (Representation) of Language Acquisition:

About 100 thousand years ago, the Neanderthal man with his shallow forehead got on to the track of speech and auditory skills and evolved into modern Homo sapiens with a raised forehead and cranial structure . Of course, all cerebral cortex he developed in course is not solely utilized for linguistic skills. Language enabled him to interact closely with his associates and nature and to fine-tune his mental faculties via moderations applied on to his limbic-system driven emotional attitudes, to develop himself to be a cerebral-cortex mediated rational species to dominate this globe; his clan who could not catch on went extinct. Language is a facility evolved in human mind to represent objects, events and facts symbolically via ‘quantization’ of information in words and thereby enable easy and reasonably accurate communication. So, science of Language, Linguistics, needs to be holistically pursued within the frameworks of human brain-mind mechanisms and features of real world objects and events. A few concepts are abstracted here on neural representation of words, nouns and verbs, and their meanings in our brains as also on perception and comprehension of sentences in our minds.

Concurrent Model for Nouns and their Meanings:

Human brain is composed of about 100 billion neurons divided mainly into four functional organs: spinal cord and forebrain that keep us alive, limbic system that provides us our emotional survival kit, cerebellum that supervises our balancing systems and cerebral cortex that rationalizes us. Our linguistic skills, centered in the cortex are only well documented. Babies at birth are endowed with narrow vocal cord in their throats and thin graded hair-cells within their cochleas. Guided by abundant speech phoneme signals all around they instinctually prune-in the prolific axonal growth on their cortex and tune their vocal cord and auditory hair-cells to accommodate the speech phonemes ². By about six months, their sight-related occipital region on the rear and sound-related auditory region at left mid-posterior brain will have been well delineated. Now then, when they watch a teddy toy, the optic signals, incident on their retinae, are transduced into neuro-electric pulse trains and are pre-analyzed and relayed to a micro-neuron pool in their occipital regions to excite a persistent ‘image’ there; similarly, when they hear a word, ‘teddy’, a corresponding ‘image’ is excited at certain micro-neuron pool in their auditory region. After sufficiently trained to obtain focused images at respective regions, their nascent brains, with proliferation of axons, proceed on hunt for further ‘order’ in nature ^{Next, when an affectionate mentor close by, holds a teddy toy in his hands, and repeatedly pronounces the word, ‘teddy’, the baby innately recognizes a problem in his associational cortex and a neuro-axonal circuit gets developed conjoining the two, visual and auditory images. The baby gets exhilarated and trims down the conjoining path to optimize it, and proceeds further, on hunt for such pairs of loose information packets ^{perceive the word, cake. It is inadvisable at this stage to speculate on the physiology and complexity of the ‘conjoining circuit’; however in view of our understanding of the delineated physical layouts for sensory, motor and other zones in our brains, as also of the relatively large size and disposition of ‘associational cortical region’^*," target="_blank" >one can be reasonably confident of the physical structure for the conjoining circuits. It is further interesting to note that the pyramidal neurons that populate all, 2 to 5 layers of our cerebral cortex with their centrally placed pyramidal body surrounded all around by abundant spiny dendrites and a long axon are geometrically ideally suited for the bi-directional integration and analysis of the signals as demanded in this configuration ^{[2, 5}. Physiological understanding of pyramidal neurons has however remained rather obscure, vis-a'vis, the typical relay neurons. In conclusion, it is known that natural objects with multiple characterizing features cast multiple images in various sensory regions of the brain; toddlers instinctually prune in prolific axonal growth in their associational cortex to retain optimal neuronal pool with branches reaching out to the sensory regions to abstract and relay the ‘image’ data to the neuronal pool for analysis and synthesis which connotes ‘representation’ of the object in terms of its vocal name as also other features. However, this method of representation is somewhat externally imposed. It appears that as toddlers advance to acquire ‘verbs’, they get to be more objective and develop a ‘utility’ based representation for the objects within their brains.}}

References: 1. Bransford J D, Brown A L and Cucking R L.,: NRL, Brain, Mind, Experience, School, Chapter 5, Minds and Brain. (http://www.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/index.html).

2. Guyton A C. (1981),: Textbook of Medical Physiology, p 560. (Saunders, Tokyo).

3 Gopnik A., Meltzoff A, and Kuhl P, (1999): How Babies Think - Science of Childhood. pp 102-108, (Widenfeld & Nicholson, London). 4.. Clarke R. (2003) : Linguistics 101, Lecture 10, Language Processing in Brain. (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~rclark/summer_2003/ling001

5. \Website of Viktor Kharazia - Cortical Nural Structure 3..htm,; http://tonto.stanford.edu/~viktor/index.html

Bio-neural Software Model for Verbs:

For representation of nouns, the concurrent logical model could be developed because the meaning data set consisted of static information that could be abstracted via various bodily sensor transducers and presented in place for the model development. But verbs represent dynamic events, and this methodology fails to be adoptable. Hence, it appears that toddlers delay acquisition of verbs for a while. As has been brought out under Basis for Linguistic Syntax, Declensions on Nouns^{by about a year, a toddler instinctually acquires a few physical acts or events, such as, eating, giving, walking etc., via developing in her brain a few facilitations that may be termed, by Computational Theory of Mind, as ‘bio-neural soft ware’. Subsequently at an occasion when her mummy offers a piece of cake and cajoles her to ‘eat it fast’, being already familiar with vocal representations of nouns, and by the contiguous nature of the scenario, it flashes to her to try out labeling the word ‘to eat’ for the act; mummy’s reactions support and enthrall her. Earlier it was believed that young toddlers lazed their times sleeping them out, whereas recent studies have revealed that their, ‘firming-up-winning-synapses’ methodology based learning rates are fastest ^{Broca’s region show indications of agrammatical-aphasia, wherein certain physical actions as well as grammastical expression and comprehension showed significant deficiencies^{[4" target="_blank" >^*}. In conclusion, it appears that all event-procedures and related verbs get represented in our brains as, some sort of, bio-neural software. The software serves as ‘meaning’ for the vocal, ‘verb’ located at auditory cortex.}}

References:

1. Syntax/Wikipedia/: Section 2: Basis for Linguistic Syntax.

2.Bransford J D, Brown A L and Cucking R L.,: NRL, Brain, Mind, Experience,School,Chapter 5, Minds and Brain. (http://www.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/index.html 3.Gopnik A., Meltzoff A, and Kuhl P, (1999): How Babies Think - Science of Childhood. pp 102-108, (Widenfeld & Nicholson, London).

4. Federmeier K D, Segal J B, Lombrozo T and Kutas M.(2000) : Brain responses to nouns, verbs and class-ambiguous words in context. Brain, 123, 12, pp 2552-2562.

Perception and Comprehension of Sentences:

Now that the neural models for nouns and verbs, that together form simple sentences, have been figured out, what more is required to perceive a sentence? A verb represents an action executable via certain procedure(s) by one or more actors, nouns and, in general, the status of the actors gets changed following any action. Such changes would be of use or utility, and thereby, of value for live actors. At a simplistic level, the ‘utility’ ie, the ‘vital force’ linking worldly acts and ‘life’ systems gets determined in terms of requirements of ‘sustenance of internal homeostasis’; eg, a starved baby feels instinctually or naturally away from homeostasis; whereas, a baby habituated to be close to his mummy for long hours would be by habituation or nurturally away from homeostasis when he misses her for a while longer. Toddlers, subconsciously recognize simple objective acts, implementation of verbs, as means of narrowing down any miss-matches that might arise in their internal homeostasis. This prompts them, or, induces intentionality in them, to acquire, ie, to develop and hold, around their Broca’s regions ^{^*} a library of ‘algorithms’, bits of bio-neural software that they may act out or may participate in ongoing acts as and when required. A few sketchy details on such soft ware will be further elaborated later on. Here, it can be summarized that sentences are verbal representations of objective acts that would result in status changes of the actors, and we as human beings perceive meanings of sentences in terms of resulting status shifts of our internal homeostatic states. That is how A feels satiated after having taken a meal as also understands, perceives B’s statement, a sentence of having had his dinner. Comprehension of the sentences, on the other hand is a very complex process: eg; for a query, such as ‘what is the time?’, a simple perception may beget a reply, ‘half past eight,’ whereas, a good comprehension might offer varieties of replies, such as: ‘oh, it’s already half past eight’ to ‘I misplaced my wrist watch, What a traffic on the roads! or, 'Time! what? That depends!!’, etc. Studies on comprehension are placed under ‘Linguistic Semantics’.

Reference: ^*:. Federmeier K D, Segal J B, Lombrozo T and Kutas M.(2000) : Brain responses to nouns, verbs and class-ambiguous words in context. Brain, 123, 12, pp 2552-2562.

Versatility of the Bio-Neural Verbal Software

It has been brought out above how a bio-neural verbal software model contributes to emergence of ‘intentionality’ in humans, as also other life systems, to participate in real world acts and how it facilitates humans to transliterate such acts into sentences and also to perceive such sentences. A few more features of such soft ware are informative and easy to identify though not strongly related to Language Acquisition:

Up gradation of the Verbal Software

Obviously, for a baby in arms, ‘to eat’ consists only of moving his jaws and tongue whenever any soft food is tucked in his mouth and swallowing it, plus, crying aloud when he felt starved, whereas for a toddler, one option for ‘to eat’ may consist of a race to the kitchen and a search for the sweet piece of cake in the fridge etc. More over, in course, two distinct parts in this soft ware get delineated. ie an action procedure part controlling body muscles to sit on a chair, use a fork to tuck the food to mouth, grind it leisurely etc and an interface, ie, a participant characterization part detailing, what, when, how much and what not to eat and when to stop etc. This soft ware gets continually up graded as one advances in age..

Establishment of Relations between Objects

It has already been seen that all actions call for one or more participants with explicit characteristics to take on distinct roles, eg, one may eat only specific items, may give away only whatever he possesses and so on. A verb thus defines a character-based or procedural relation between the participant nouns. There is no doubt that toddlers do subconsciously get the rudiments of such constraints early though they may vocalize them quite later.. Thus, by about two to three years, they would have learnt to relate and classify the objects in terms of their characteristics or utilities. Such classification and utility based perception of objects help them improve their knowledge base at faster rates. In course, the utility based perception is preferred to the concurrent model based perception wherever possible.

--Prabhakar P Rao 05:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Spatial and Temporal Perceptions

All actions invariably follow certain definite procedures and are spread over certain durations. Cause and effect relation, ie, causality is recognized early by toddlers followed soon by deliberate ‘manipulability’. Many of us would have relished sometime or other, watching, sharing with some toddler, a sense of ‘amazement mixed with achievement ‘ after pressing a switch ‘on’ and gazing at the glowing light and staring all around, trying to share his overwhelmed feelings with others.. It is rather surprising that even young toddlers feel it necessary to share their overwhelmed feelings with others..

Besides, in all actions, there is an element of gradualism in change of status of the participants as also an end. Having eaten sufficient food, they no longer need it; having twitched and stretched a teddy toy for a while, they no longer relish it, even if you urge them to continue with them: perhaps acquisition of rudiments of past and present tenses take root on such innate habituations.

For toddlers, things exist even after they are removed from their presence; in reality, it is the memory of things that persists in their brains, ever ready to be recalled. “Load of objects not in presence on the present, is not much”, that is perhaps the secret of childish joy. By about three to five years of age, toddlers would have acquired a good fraction of their instinctual, natural bodily physical action procedures inhering the universal syntactic rudiments awaiting their vocal realization into the environmentally acceptable format, the mother tongue or the first language as case declensions, tense indicators or word ordering schemes under amiable, parental or social, nurtural care.

External links

Birth Of A Language - regarding Nicaraguan Sign Language.
Open Directory Project: Language Acquisition
Language Acquisition Device Found: A satirical look at the concept of the LAD.
Notes from a language learner of two years
Mentalcode Customized Memory Exercises, a free, web-based flashcard program especially for learning foreign languages. Users share practice sets. Full-fledged courses will follow.

Bibliography

Bhatia, Tej K. (2006). Bilingualism and Second Language Learning. Encyclopedia of Linguistics, pp. 16-22. Oxford: Elsevier Ltd.
Bickerton, D. (1981). Roots of language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma
Baker, M. (1996). The polysynthesis parameter. New York: Oxford University Press.
MacFarquhar, L. (2003). The Devil's accountant: Noam Chomsky's isolation and influence. The New Yorker. March 31, 2003: 64-79.
Robertson, P. (2002). The critical age hypothesis. A critique of research methodology. The Asian EFL Journal Vol 4(1) http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/marcharticles_pr.php

Zhao, A., & Morgan, C. (2004). Consideration of Age in L2 Attainment - Children, Adolescents and Adults. The Asian EFL Journal Vol 6(4) http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/december_04_ahqz_cm.php