chapter odf linguistic

LIR RESPATI BUMIDAYA
 

: FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

A.     Language Development in Children

1.     Infants usually start their babbling stage at the age of six months old. The sounds produced in this period seem to include the sounds of human languages.

2.     Yes, deaf children also babble. Their early babbling seems similar to that of normal children. Normal children of dead parents also babble. Thus babbling does not depend on the presence of acoustic auditory input.

3.     The universal babbling pattern is later modified by phonetics features of the language to which infants are exposed to.

4.     Steinberg confirms that only very few studies indicate that infants maintain the babbled repertoire in their first speech. Only some of the sounds which they hav uttered in babbling appear in speech.

5.     The babbling sounds are dominated by “stops [b p], nasals [m n], glides [y w] with a small amount of fricatives [f s h] and affricates [c j] and no liquids [l r]”.

6.     Infants usually start to say their first words at around 10-12 months old.

7.    It refers to holophrastic.

8.    Adults will use whole sentences to understand it.

9.    Children simplify complex syllable structures by:

-          Dropping certain sounds à the final C in CVC      : Boot        - [bu]

                                                 One C in a cluster : Drum     - [dam]

                                                 An unstressed syllable       : Banana  - [nana]

                                                 The final syllable   : Water     - [wawa]

-          Substituting sounds, presumably an easy repertoire consonant for a difficult non repertoire one à stops for fricatives                : that       - [daet]

                                      Glides for liquids              : little      - [wita]

                                      Front consonant for back ones     : cu : ri    - [tui]

                                      Vowel for syllabic C                    : apple     - [p]

-          Using single word to refer to objects or things and express complex thoughts which move those objects à mama : I want my mama

10.  Children begin to produce two-word utterances around the age of 18 to 24 months.

11.  The utterance involve such semantic relations and concepts such as agent, action, experiencer, receiver, state, object, possession location, attribution, equation, negation, and quantification.

12.  Children have acquired a significant aspect of the grammar of English which will later enable them to comprehend and produce appropriate utterances.

13.  Pivot is do fixing points around which the sentences seem to be organized. This word occurs in the same position and every sentence and rarely stands alone. Some only occurs in the first position and some only occur in the second position. Pivot words are a very small class.

14.  It is around 25 months to 28 months old or so.

15.  The characteristics are:

-          The sentence is short and simple made up primarily of content words, usually nouns and verbs.

-          Usually the function or grammatical words such as the, to, in, at, is, can, etc. are missing.

-          Only the words that carry the main message or the content words such as mommy, eat, cookie, candy, hungry, doggie, etc. occur.

B.     Caretaker Speech

1.     Caretaker speech is a speech addressed to infants by adults. Caretaker speech is also referred to as motherese, care giver speech, adult to child language (ACL) and child direct speech (CDS). Steinberg coined a term parentese to refer to this speech. Most of these terms indicate the fact that children receive linguistic input from different sources especially the people around them such as mother, father, siblings, relatives, and friends.

2.     Caretaker speech attracts great attention of psycholinguists because of many reasons as follows.

-          It has specific characteristic

-          It provides examples of language model infants are usually exposed to.

-          The caretaker speech provides an indirect measure of how much children understand.

3.     Adults usually use three types of attention getters: names, exclamation, and modulation.

-          Adults very often use the child’s name at the beginning of their speech. For examples: Andri, here is your car.

-          Adults often use exclamation to get children’s attention, such as ‘look!’ or ‘hey!’ as a preface to each utterance.

-          Adults use modulations in order to distinguish speech addressed to young children from the speech addressed to other listeners (adults). For examples: the high pitch voice and whispering.

4.     Characteristics of caretaker speech:

-          Caretaker speech tends to consists of short sentence with simple structure.

-          Adults generally exaggerate intonation and use a slower tempo and frequently repeat or rephrase what they or their children say.

-          Adults’ speech addressed to children often contains baby talk.

5.     According to Kess, baby talk only fulfils a pseudo-function in linguistic terms. It is only a marker of affection and caring. This function is supported by the findings that babies typically prefer voices that employ baby talk features.

C.     Theory of First Language Acquisition (Language Acquisition Device)

1.     LAD stands for Language Acquisition Device. It refers to the set of language learning tools, provided at birth.

2.     LAD stands for Language Acquisition Device. It refers to the set of language learning tools, provided at birth.

3.     Chomsky propose a term universal grammar (UG) to refer to the same thing, innate knowledge of universal language. Humans are born with minds, which contains knowledge concerning with a number of different areas. One such area of the mind concerns with language. Chomsky refers this area is currently  as universal grammar.

4.    Accessibility UG in SLA:

a.       SLA has no access to UG. Some scholars’ views have been represented by the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (FDH). The FDH claims that there are differences between child and adult language acquisition. This hypothesis presents the differences between first and second language acquisition. It asserts that the nature of the difference is internal, linguistic, and qualitative.

 

b.      SL has direct access to UG. UG is just as active in SLA as it was in first language. There are no clear distinctions regarding UG. Learners are considered to be unaware of what they are learning and need nothing other than positive evidence to set values of parameters and to instantiate principles.

 

c.       SLA has indirect access to UG. SLA is not guided by principles of UG in the same ways as L1 acquisition.

 

D.    Theories of Second Language Acquisition/Learning

The Acculturation Model

1.     Several benefits for study of SLA:

-          The second language teaching profession.

-          SLA process facilities learners subsequent attempts at the target language learning.

-          SLA may prove helpful as well in language studies for mentally retarded individuals.

-          SLA may prove helpful as well in facilitate acquisition of a spoken language by deaf individual already fluent in a sign language.

2.     SLA has two major goals:

a.       Description is to identify how learners acquire a second language.

b.      Explanation is to identify the external and internal factor that account for why learners acquire an L2 in the way they do.

3.     Factors which influences the learners’ acquisition of SLA:

a.       The external factors are the social milieu ant the input. Social milieu often influences the opportunity for the learners to acquire the language as well as the attitudes they develop toward it.

b.      The internal factors include the followings:

-       The learners’ cognitive mechanism to extract information about L2 from the input.

-       The learners’ previous knowledge of their L1 to which they often draw on when they learn an L2.

-       The learners’ communicative strategies that can help them make effective use of their L2 competence.

-       The learners’ language aptitude and attitude.

4.     Second language acquisition is just one aspect of acculturation and the degree to which a learner acculturates to the target language group will control the degree to which he acquires the SLA. From this perspective, acculturation is determined by the degree of social and psychological distance between the learner and the target language culture.

5.    Acculturation degree:

a.       Social distance is the result of a number of factors which affect the learner as a member of a social group in contact with the TL group.

b.      Psychological distance is the result of various affective factors which concern the learner as an individual such as language shock, culture shock, culture stress, etc.

6.     The social variables govern whether the overall learning situation is good or bad.

a.       An example of good learning situation is described as follows:

-       The TL and L2 groups view each other as socially equal.

-       The TL and L2 groups are both desirous that the L2 group will assimilate.

-       Both the TL and L2 groups expect the L2 group to share social facilities with the TL group.

-       The L2 group is small and not very cohesive.

-       The L2 group’s culture is congruent with that of the TL group.

-       Both groups have positive attitudes to each other.

-       The L2 group envisages staying in the TL area for an extended period.

b.      An example of good learning situation is when the conditions are opposite to the ones described above.

7.     Two types of acculturation:

a.       Hat the learners are both socially integrated into the target language community and psychologically open to the target language.

b.      The learners are socially integrated and psychological open. They also consciously or unconsciously wish to adopt the lifestyle and the value system of the target language community.

Monitor Theory

1.     Five major hypotheses in Krashen’s theory.

a.       Acquisition-Learning hypothesis

It claims hat there are two independent ways of learning a second language: acquisition and learning.

-          Acquisition is the subconscious process generally used by children to develop their first language.

-          Learning is a conscious process, which result in a separate system of simple grammar ruler, or knowing about language.

b.      The monitor hypothesis

It concerns the relationship between the acquired system and learned system during second language performance. Three conditions in order the monitor can function.

-      The speaker has to have enough time.

-      The speaker must focus on the form not on meaning.

-      The speaker must know the grammatical rules.

c.       The natural order hypothesis

It is based on research findings which suggested that they acquisition of grammatical structures follows a natural order which is predictable. The implication of this hypothesis is not that a language program syllabus should be based on the order found in the studies.

d.      The input hypothesis

According to this hypothesis, the learners improve and progresses along the natural order when they receive second language input that is one-step beyond their current stage of linguistic competence.

e.       The affective filter hypothesis

This hypothesis embodies Krashen’s view that a number of a affective variables play a facilitative, but non-causal, role in second language acquisition. These variables include motivation, self-confidence, and anxiety. The affective filter hypothesis captures the relationship between affective variables and process of SLA by positing that acquisition vary with respect to the strength or level of their affective filters.

Cognitive Theories in Second Language Learning

1.         Cognitivists view L2 learning as one instantiation of learning among many others and they believe we can understand the L2 learning process better by first understanding how the human brain process and learners know information.

2.         Basic concepts within cognitive theories:

a.       Declarative Knowledge refers to things (in the world) that we know about—that we have gained access to and can be stored in our memory. Procedural knowledge refers to the ability to perform or manipulate various mental procedures.

b.      Automatization is the process in which learners move from the first stage of full conscious attention to the stage of effortless production.

c.       Restructuring means the process in which learners organize and link new information that is acquired to old information.

3.         O’Malley designs a cognitive three-staged development which can be sketched for second language, which include:

a.       The cognitive stages involves conscious activity in L2 on the part of the learners (i.e. the knowledge that is acquired is purely declarative such as vocabulary memory, grammatical rules, etc.)

b.      The associative stage represents the trial and errors period in which L2 attempts to map onto L1.

c.       The autonomous stage involves declarative knowledge is converted into procedural knowledge—L2 performance becomes fine-tuned or even mastered.

4.         Richard defines second language learning as the process by which learners incorporate a new learning item into his or her developing system or interlanguage. He believes that a number of processes appear to be involved in second language learning, namely:

a.       Noticing, learners need to recognize differences between forms they are using and target like forms.

b.      Discovering level, learning also involves identification of the grammatical variables which operate in the TL and which account for the specific linguistic characteristics of that language.

c.       Accommodation and restructuring are processes which mediate the incorporation of intake and the developing systems.

5.         Kumara Vadevelu points one of the notable conceptions of L2 learning is learner processes, the operations that are required for language learning, which reflect individual cognitive capability. There are two types process involved, namely:

a.       The linguistic processes include grammaticalization and language transfer. Grammaticalization is a process that takes into account the role played by UG and language transfer is a process that takes into account the interlingual identification from L1 to L2 input.

b.      The cognitive processes guide what learners have to develop their L2. There are three processes that influence it, namely:

-          Inferencing means deriving working hypotheses about the language system from the three knowledge sources available to the learner: the implicit knowledge, knowledge of the world, and context knowledge.

-          Structuring, influenced as it is by the three knowledge sources, helps learners to construct and organize mental representation of the language.

-          Restructuring process devotes the change of mental representation once new information is detected.

CHAPTER 5: BIOLOGICAL ASPECT OF LANGUAGE

A.     Language and Brain

1.     The brain of the average human adult weighs from 1 to 1.5 kg or 2.25 to 3.25 pounds. It increases in weight most rapidly between ages 1 and 2. The brain is divided into two vertical halves: a left hemisphere and a right hemisphere. The two hemispheres are connected with one another by a bundle of fibers called the corpus callosum. Each cerebral hemisphere is divided into four parts or lobes:

a.       The frontal lobe contains the areas that control movements, namely the primary motor cortex, the pre-motor cortex, and speech production called the Broca’s area.

b.      The parietal lobe contains the primary somesthetic cortex which is responsible for body sensation. It also contains a language area called the angular gyrus.

c.       The temporal lobe contains the primary auditory cortex involved in hearing and a language area called Wernicke’s area.

d.      The occipital lobe contains the visual cortex which processes visual information.

2.     The left hemisphere controls the movements of the right side of the body and the right hemisphere controls the movements of the left side.

3.     Discussion:

a.       Right-handers        : in most people left hemisphere dominates the right one. They tend to use the right hand and foot.

b.      Left-handers          : among left-handers there are a greater proportion of artists, musicians, and writers, than is found among right-handers.

c.       Ambidextrous        : people who can use both hands equally well.

4.     Broca’s area gives rise to a speech disorder. The speech is formulated in Broca’s area and the articulated through the motor area. Thus, the damage in the Broca’s area results in typical aphasia which is called Broca’s aphasia.

5.     Wernicke’s area is another area in the brain which is involved in the process of speech comprehension. Thus, damage in the Wernicke’s area results in speech disorder called Wernicke’s aphasia.

6.     Arcuate fasciculus is a band of nerve fibers which connect Wernicke’s area with Broca’s area. It also links between Wernicke’s area and auditory areas as well as between Broca’s area and the motor area.

7.     Angular gyrus is an area which connects between visual area, auditory area, and Wernicke’s area. It interrupts the communication between the visual area and Wernicke;s area so that comprehension of written message is impaired.

8.     Current discovery of right hemisphere language areas:

It is discussed that the most language processing occurs in language areas of the left hemisphere, including Broca’s area, Wernicke;s area, arcurate fasciculus, and angular gyrus. Recent discover indicates that the right hemisphere too is involved in language processing. Current studies have found out that the right hemisphere is more adept at processing single lexical items and the semantic relations between them. The research evidence also shows that the right hemisphere is critical for understanding discourse. It has an ability to use knowledge of the world involved scripting, where a number of sentences are related to a topic. Right hemisphere is also involved in language tasks. Such task may involve the ability to understand the meaning of information, to interpret emotional intentions, and to appreciate social meaning.

B.     Brain Lateralization and Critical Period Hypothesis

1.     Lateralization is the idea that the two halves of the brain’s cerebral cortex execute different functions. Aphasia studies have provided good evidence that language is primarily processed in the left hemisphere. Studies in the field have shown that the left hemisphere of the brain is specialized for language, logical and analytical operations, abstraction, structure, discipline and rules, time sequences, categorizing, logic and rationality and deductive reasoning, and higher mathematics. Much evidence for brain lateralization is provided by patients who have split-brain, that is a brain whose two hemispheres function independently.

2.    The brain undergoes a gradual process of lateralization during which the left brain hemisphere and the right hemisphere develops their specialized functions.

3.    Critical age hypothesis refers to a biologically determined period in life when language can be acquired more easily and beyond which time language is increasingly difficult to acquire.