Search

In second language teaching and learning, acquisition of knowledge is a multidimensional concept. Several concepts have been advocated by different theorists. All the theories are grounded in peculiar philosophical underpinnings that seem to have sound bases. This current paper critically examines the theories of representation and acquisition of linguistic knowledge from the standpoints of the rationalists and the empiricists. The method used in this paper is qualitative content analysis. With this analysis, the paper is segmented into five themes. These are the introduction, the method, review of literature, pedagogical perspective, and the conclusion. The literature review critically examines the viewpoints of the rationalists and the empiricists on the ultimate source of knowledge, mechanisms of acquisition, and characteristics of the initial state. These parts constitute the pivotal thematic areas of the main argument of the two schools of thoughts.

Learning a dual language at the same time during early childhood has caused the wrong perception. Its false perception makes the parents delay the start of learning a second /foreign language. Therefore, This study aims at analyzing the first and second language acquisition of a child in the Indonesian Language and English. The issues concentrated on the spoken utterances in Indonesian and English and its affecting factors. The research adopted a qualitative approach by using a case study, as the unit analysis is a child of 3 years old. For data collection, I employed The naturalistic approach, which I kept daily notes on the progress of a child’s linguistic and recorded the dialogues. Since it is a longitudinal study, the research was conducted for two years, from 2014 to 2015. The research has revealed that utterances spoken have primarily increased and the child has already understood the commands by following the instructions. Some concepts such as feeling, taste, color, and numbers as well as short phrases and simple words in Indonesian and English at the same time can be understood and uttered. She also can change the affirmative sentence to question in term of objects she sees in her surrounding. Factors such as linguistic inputs, imitation, environment, and significant others as exposure, and language acquisition device affect a child utterance. Thus, it indicates that two languages can be taught at the same time at an early age, and it doesn’t cause misunderstanding or confusion utterance, language acquisition, exposure, L1 and L2

The purpose of this study was to answer the question of what is the pupils' level of English vocabulary proficiency in public and private rural primary schools in Kyuso Division in Kitui County. The study was an attempt to provide relevant data on English vocabulary proficiency in Kyuso area. This study focused on the English vocabulary proficiency in Kyuso area among children in classes’ two to four. Learners from one class to the next depicted some changes hence a level of vocabulary proficiency manifestation. The study was limited to respondents within the sample in rural areas where the language of communication after school was purely Kikamba. The two categories of primary schools in the area were day schools, unlike secondary schools whereby 90% of them are boarding. The assumption was that the pupils had the same school hours, share the same locality and the same parents. The question was why there was a big difference in children from the two categories of schools. The study was based on primary schools, the level where the grammatical rules are initiated, and as the children grow up, they continue to utilize what they continue acquiring. It was observed that competent speakers show up right from primary schools. It is also at the primary level where a child can be ‘modelled' to improve or change to a better person due to their language acquisition device (LAD). In both public and private primary schools there seem to be differences in pupils level of vocabulary proficiency.

The unending controversy of the practicality of the critical period hypothesis and the presence of Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is still a cryptic word to explore and the study will put light on the phonological aspect of language acquisition keeping its focus on the foreign accent. To justify the validity of the study the data have been collected from the students of Bangladesh, who are studying home and abroad. The findings of the paper will demonstrate first, examining and observing the validity of the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) by analyzing the elementary English language learners of Bangladesh and ended up with this conclusion that even if during the period of Critical Period (CP) Bangladeshi learner of English starts to learn English but they fail to communicate in English, although for Bangladeshi learner learning English is a colonial legacy. Ultimately it will focus on the statement that, there may be a critical period but language exposure plays a more important role to learn or acquire any language. Second, the paper will do another quantitative study on the English language learners of Bangladesh taking higher education from home and abroad that will deny the existence of CPH, suggesting certain ways to attain native-like language skills after Critical Period (CP) if the learner is preconditioned with proper language exposure using the technology-based language teaching and learning.

Language skills are abilities that can be possessed by every human being. This ability can be obtained in several ways and methods for foreign language learning. However, the best way or method of language learning, the best way is by the language acquisition method, because the method makes students learn language skills unconsciously, and this condition can instill language skills in a person well, more than normal learning conditions. Furthermore, every human being born has been equipped with a Language Acquisition Device that will greatly assist a person's development in mastering certain languages. In this paper, several theories and hypotheses are also mentioned about the ways, processes and results of language acquisition done by someone.

Alan Barnard’s Language in prehistory attempts to find an accommodation between linguistic and evolutionary theory and apply insights from archeology and anthropology to the origins and purposes of language. Rudolph Botha’s Language evolution: The windows approach is a critique of employing evidence from other fields. Botha also critiques conclusions drawn from pidgins and creoles, homesign, motherese, grammaticalization, language acquisition, protolanguage, and comparative animal behaviour. This review attempts in turn to bring into question the appropriateness of applying the framework of generative linguistics, and its style of argumentation, to prehistory. Keywords: Generative Linguistics, Recursion, UG (Universal Grammar), LAD (Language Acquisition Device), grammaticalization, language evolution, language in prehistory Books under Review Barnard, Alan. 2016. Language in prehistory . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. xii, 184 pages. Paperback $24.99. Rudolph Botha. 2016. Language evolution:The windows approach. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 318 pages. Paperback $39.99.

This research study investigates the cognitive, psychological and personal factors affecting the accuracy and fluency of English language usage among Arab learners. Early research led by Chomsky (1965) and Krashen (1981) suggested that an individual’s Language Acquisition Device once triggered at the appropriate time and supported with adequate Comprehensible Input can lead to automatic development of an L2. Relevant research suggests that children are born with the instinct or innate facility for language acquisition provided they have no physical or mental impairment (Al Ghazali, 2006). However, past research (Engin and Seven, 2014; Hanani, 2009; Gupta, 2008; Latu, 1994) has led to the identification of additional factors that go beyond the cognitive domain. These factors were examined individually and against a background of teaching methods, phonetics application, and classroom conditions. In this research, a mixed research study was designed in which a survey and interviews were conducted with a number of university students. With minimal effect from the researcher, the data were collected to examine the influence of these factors on learners’ proficiency of English language and application. The findings reveal that Arab learners’ ability to learn English is dependent on psychological motivation, physical needs to apply it, and personal reasoning.

This study originated from cases of language disorders that occur in society in Pahae Julu district. Language is a need to interact, and humans have been blessed with Language Acquisition Device (LAD) or any language by god. However, if when speaking of someone impaired both LAD and language processing part of the brain, then the communication will not be smooth. The language disorders can happen to anyone. The purpose of this study is to reveal some kinds of language disorders, cases of language disorders and to find out the causes of language disorders experienced by the community in Pahae Julu. The method used in this research is descriptive research method type of case studies.

A Unified Model Of The Origins Of Phonemically Coded Syllable Systems Pierre—yves Oudeyer Sony Computer Science Lab, Paris e—mail : py@csl.sony.fr Abstract Human sound systems are invariably phonemically coded, which means that there are parts of syl- lables that are re-used in other syllables. It is one of the most primitive compositional system in language. To explain this phenomenon, there ex- isted so far three kinds of approaches : “Chom- skyan”/cognitive innatism, morpho-perceptual in- natism and the more recent approach of “language as a complex cultural system which adapts under the pressure of efficient communication”. We pro- posed in (Oudeyer 2002) a new hypothesis based on a low-level model of sensory-motor interactions, characterized by the absence of functional pressure and the use of very generic neural devices. This paper presents a unified model of the origins of syl- lable systems which does allow a comparison of the different hypothesis on the same ground. We show that our hypothesis is the only one to be suflicient, and that all others are not necesary. Moreover, the model we present the first that shows how a popula- tion of agents can build culturally a complex sound systems without the assumption that they already share a phonemic repertoire. What does explain phonemically coded syllable systems ‘.7 Human sound systems have very particular proper- ties. Perhaps the most basic is that they are phone- mically coded. This means that syllables are com- posed of re-usable parts. These are called phonemes. Thus, syllables of a language may look rather like la, li, na, ni, bla, bli, etc than like la, ze, fri, won, etc This might seem unavoidable for us who have a phonetic writing alphabet, but in fact our vocal tract allows to produce syllable systems in which each syl- lable is holistically coded and has no parts which is also used in another syllable. Yet, as opposed to writing systems for which there exists both “pho- netic” coding and holistic/pictographic coding (for e.g. Chinese), all human languages are invariably phonemically coded. The question is then : Why is this so ? How did it appear ? What are the genetic, glosso- genetic / cultural, and ontogenetic components of this formation process ? These questions are of particu- lar interest and generality since phonemic coding is a form of primitive compositionality. Compositional- ity is thought to be the keystone of syntax, and thus understanding how it appeared might help a lot to understand syntactic languages which make humans unique. Several approaches have already been pro- posed in the literature. The first one, known as the “post—structuralist” Chomskian view, defends the idea that our genome contains some sort of program which is supposed to grow a language specific neural device (the so—called Language Acquisition Device) which knows a priori all the algebraic structures of language. This con- cerns all aspects of language, ranging from syntax to phonetics (Chomsky and Halle, 1968). In particular this neural device is supposed to know that sylla- bles are composed of phonemes which are made up by the combination of a few binary features like the nasality or the roundedness. Learning a particular language only amounts to the tuning of a few param- eters like the on or off state of these features. It is important to note that in this approach, the innate knowledge is completely cognitive, and no reference to morpho-perceptual properties of the human artic- ulatory and perceptual apparatuses appears. This view is becoming more and more incompatible with neuro-biological findings (which have basically failed to find a LAD), and genetics / embryology which tend to show that the genome can not contain specific and detailed information for the growth of so complex neural devices. Another approach is that of “morpho-perceptual” innatists. They argue (Stevens 1972) that the prop- erties of human articulatory and perceptual sys- tems explain totally the properties of sound systems. More precisely, their theory relies on the fact that the mapping between the articulatory space and the acoustic and then perceptual spaces is highly non- linear : there are a number of “plateaus” separated by sharp boundaries. Each plateau is supposed to naturally define a category. Hence in this view, phonemic coding and phoneme inventories are di- rect consequences of the physical properties of the body. Yet, it seems that there are flaws to this view : first of all, it gives a poor account of the great diversity that characterize human languages. All humans have approximately the same articu

The first part of this paper discusses the rationale for universal grammar (UG) theory to explain first language acquisition. It also illustrates the issues of language acquisition Chomsky argued which could not be supported by behaviourist theories and shows how Chomsky proposed a solution to this problem through his theoretical model of universal grammar. The next part outlines this theory’s key tenets, arguing that these principles must be an innate endowment of the human mind. Moreover, the study illustrates specific examples of grammatical phenomena that universal grammar seeks to explain. Lastly, it shows that certain distinct grammatical features are linked and that these connections can be explained within the Universal Grammar theoretical framework. The only reasonable explanation for the first language learning needs only limited linguistic exposure to activate them and set criteria for the language being learned for children whose minds have already been wired with essential language concepts.

This paper looks into how two main frameworks view the acquisition of syntax. These are the nativist approach which claims that language is acquired because human beings are equipped with a language acquisition device in the form of grammatical knowledge, and the cognitivist approach which views language like the other cognitive skills and so claims that we acquire language using general cognitive mechanisms that are not specific to language. The paper reviews a number of studies that report on the acquisition of various aspects of the syntax of natural language; the studies are from both frameworks. The paper then evaluates the claims of the reviewed studies in light of the respective findings, as well as in light of how the findings may be interpreted by the other framework. The paper also presents an analysis of the argumentation techniques that the respective authors use, as well as of how effective they are. It concludes with a proposal for a line of research which is based on research techniques and findings in second language acquisition.

As we all know, every human being has LAD (Language Acquisition Device), which helps to learn, to understand and to speak a language. We all human being learn or understand at least one language by birth, which we call mother tongue or first language and it comes with feelings inside us automatic. If we think something in our mother tongue, then we can describe it very easily, without any hesitation. To speak or to understand mother tongue, there is no need to learn or study properly, it comes from inside. But while learning a second language or foreign language we face many challenges, like: mother tongue influence, social background, cultural background, pronunciation, medium language and teaching methods too. In this article I want to focus on some problematic points of French Language. Learner coming from Hindi Speaking background, which they have faced during whole learning periods. Some points vary person to person, but some points are same and some points change with time. At every learning phase there are different problems. For beginners there are some other problems and another side for next level learners there are some other problems. These problems vary not only with learning phase but also vary with age groups, because teenagers learn more than their experience-literally, so they have different types of problems and other side adults learn not only in class room rather they learn with their experiences too, so they have some other types of problems. Every language has its own grammatical rules to frame the sentences. Speaking part of French Language is a bit complicated; because it is totally different from other language. In this article we will read about some logical differences and barriers, which are affecting capacity of Indian learners.

Traditional linguistics was based on the idea that language is an activity that links sounds and meaning, an idea that has been referred to as 'the code view of language' because codes are the most familiar processes that generate meaning. Ever since the work of Noam Chomsky, however, this view has been increasingly replaced by 'the syntax view of language', the idea that children learn a language because they have an innate mechanism that allows them to grasp the syntax of whatever language they grow up with. This innate mechanism has been given various names - first Universal Grammar, then Language Acquisition Device (LAD), and finally Faculty of Language - but despite decades of research attempts there still is no evidence that such a device actually exists. At the same time, it has become increasingly clear that codes are not the sole processes that generate meaning. Another such process is the ability of higher animals to interpret what goes on in the world, and interpretation is different from coding because it is not based on fixed rules but on a process that Charles Peirce called abduction. This allows us to generalize the code view of language into the semantic view of language, a theory which maintains that language is primarily a semantic activity that gives meaning to sounds either by codes or by processes of interpretation. This view, furthermore, gives us a new theoretical framework for studying the origin of language without resorting to any deus ex machina device. In this framework the origin of language is compared with the origin of life and the origin of mind, because those mega transitions generated the three great families of codes that we find in Nature - the organic codes, the neural codes and the cultural codes - and it is possible that a comparative study allows us to catch a glimpse of the mechanisms that gave origin to language.

Please fill up the following information accurately. (Please use Times New Roman, 12 pt. Understanding the linguistic variation in English as a lingua franca among Arab siblings This study investigated the various linguistic, psychological, and sociocultural variables that explain the variation in English as a Lingua Franca among Arab siblings. The variables are not predetermined but extracted from the participants’ contributions and data in a grounded theory research. The siblings participated in this study (N=15) are university undergraduates, who are educated in the UAE schools. Results showed that the existence of the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is not evidence that siblings progress in language acquisition at the same rate. The discourse analysis showed noticeable variation between siblings in the same and/or other groups. Sibling pairs proved to have variation in their linguistic levels exhibiting dissimilar levels of accuracy, fluency, L1 interference, spontaneity, and automaticity of speech. Some of these siblings have equal opportunities for improving their English; however, the analysis showed other affective variables influencing the development of language skills among them. The thematic analysis signalled three variables namely exposure to quality input and interaction opportunities, provision of quality education, and autonomy and independent activities. Eight of the fifteen participants attributed their deficiency in English to the inefficiency of the education system that did not facilitate sufficient exposure to linguistic input. Autonomy and independence proved to be effectual in creating the variation among siblings as well. This study sheds light on the significance of contextual factors in influencing proficiency levels among EFL learners in the UAE. The implications and recommendations of research findings are discussed. Information about Author(s)* Author 1 Author (Last name, First name) Al Ghazali, FawziAffiliated institution (University) ALHOSN UniversityCountry United Arab EmiratesEmail address fawzi_alghazali@yahoo.comDepartment & Rank Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social SciencesCorresponding author (Yes/No) Write only one corresponding author. Yes Author 2 Author (Last name, First name) Affiliated institution (University) Country Email address Department & Rank Corresponding author (Yes/No) Author 3 Author (Last name, First name) Affiliated institution (University) Country Email address Department & Rank Corresponding author (Yes/No) Author 4 Author (Last name, First name) Affiliated institution (University) Country Email address Department & Rank Corresponding author (Yes/No)

It is no understatement to say that the central issue in the theory of language acquisition is whether children actually learn language and construct a grammar based on the data to which they are exposed, or whether they set the parameters of an autonomous language acquisition device (LAD), which is itself a theory of universal grammar (UG). Some of the arguments which have been taken to be the most compelling for the parameter-setting approach come from two types of cases; 1. the existence of a universal grammatical principle for which there seems to be no evidence available to children in the input, and 2. the production of forms during language development which have no direct model in the adult speech to which children are exposed but which are a possibility sanctioned by UG and which occur in other languages. WH-questions and their acquisition provide important examples of both types and have been cited in the literature as strong evidence in favor of the parameter-setting model (e.g., Chomsky, 1986; Crain, 1991; de Villiers & Roeper, 1991).

One of the great scientific achievements of the second half of the twentieth century was the advance in linguistics. Noam Chomsky was one of its foremost exponents. Chomsky and his followers claim that human beings have an inbuilt ‘language acquisition device’ which allows children to acquire language with extraordinary ease. Language is as much part of human nature as flying is that of birds. This paper argues that, like language, the propensity to trade is an inbuilt characteristic of human beings. Language permeates all human faculties including the ability to plan for the future. As a result human economic activity shares many important features with language, in particular its recursive and unbounded character. There is also evidence that the concept of property is innate. It follows that attempts to frustrate or limit the exercise of property rights and their use in trade works against the grain of human nature. Limits on the natural expression of entrepreneurship may be as damaging as other constraints on human flourishing.

In this paper we describe how children acquire foreign language. It is well known that the very early age is a most suitable time to start foreign language learning. This is partly because up to the certain age every child learns foreign language as a part of a natural process. For our research we had to study theories of language learning, predominantly nativists’ theory, where Chomsky argues that there is an innate factor, known as Language Acquisition Device, and further development made by Lennenberg, but also empiricists – behaviourists’ theory upholding the element of imitating (Skinner) and cognitivists’ theory that argues that cognition precedes the language development (Bruner, Piaget, Vygotsky, Sapir–Whorf). We are giving an overview of the process and ways of acquiring foreign language we studied the phases of language learning and connections to the brain´s developmental stages. It is established that the most suitable age for starting the learning process should begin at preschool age, when children are mostly intrinsically motivated. For the evaluation of the process we suggested the simple quantitative and qualitative method, suitable for educators and parents and for the scientific purposes there is a micro genetic research method for deeper understanding of the learning process and changes that occur.

The parsing-to-learn hypothesis (Fodor, 1998) identifying the parser as the language acquisition device (PLAD) is discussed for second-language (L2) grammatical acquisition. Parsing is assumed to involve concomitant UG-sanctioned structure generation and licensing by a parameterized lexicon. In this architecture, licensing induces immediate changes to the lexical knowledge base as new feature matrices for categories and their exponents are registered. Stages arise as these matrices are increasingly activated and can be accessed within the narrow window imposed by working-memory limitations. Specifically, the PLAD instantiates feature re-assembly (Lardiere, 2009) in response to licensing failures (Clark & Roberts, 1993), characterizing transitions between grammatical states (Gregg, 1996, 2003) in the Full Transfer/Full Access model (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1994, 1996). The PLAD is examined in light of current research and of evidence showing mandatory engagement of syntax, breakdown reflecting feature organization, and domain-specificity. The PLAD offers potentially fruitful insights about L2 parsing and grammatical development.

Desde la segunda mitad del siglo XX se configuró un movimiento científico que clamaba por una mayor colaboración entre la lingüística y la biología, y el término Biolingüística comenzó a fraguar un nuevo horizonte interdisciplinario que tenía un preclaro objetivo: estudiar el lenguaje como un fenómeno eminentemente natural. Dado que en la última década del siglo XX hubo la concurrencia de dos avenidas científicas impactantes (los estudios sobre el cerebro con nuevas técnicas muy poderosas y la irrupción del programa minimalista en la teoría lingüística), el sueño del proyecto de la biolingüística comenzó a cristalizarse y en el nuevo milenio ha tenido unos prolegómenos bastante promisorios: la fundación de una revista especializada, la publicación de manuales actualizados y el trayecto serio de programas de doctorado.En este marco interdisciplinario, surge la necesidad de replantear la cuestión del innatismo asociado al dispositivo de adquisición del lenguaje (o la denominada gramática universal). Una respuesta sugerente puede provenir del análisis desprejuiciado de la relación entre genes y lenguaje. El engarce entre el genotipo lingüístico (la gramática universal) y el fenotipo lingüístico concebido como un proceso madurativo (con algunos aspectos de epigénesis) entraña hacer una reconsideración sobre el innatismo, postulado raigal de la tradición generativa. La comprensión de las bases ontogenéticas y filogenéticas del lenguaje nos conduce a sostener la siguiente hipótesis: en la forja de la gramática universal ha intervenido el mecanismo conocido como efecto Baldwin, lo que cabe interpretar, como señalan Calvin y Bickerton, dentro del marco evolutivo más ortodoxo. Asimismo, el programa biolingüístico entraña hacer una reducción definitoria del lenguaje: este se conceptúa stricto sensu, siguiendo el criterio sintactocéntrico, como un mecanismo de fusión (Merge) y recursión. Así se puede concluir que el lenguaje está genéticamente determinado, no como una metáfora sugerente, sino como un constructo teórico bien cimentado.

The article presents studies which examine the impact of level of education on the knowledge of language. A study of adult native speakers of Dutch discovered large individual differences in lexical memory, lexical fluency and lexical knowledge. Another study of Dutch native speakers showed that level of education (LoE)-low and senior participants performed significantly lower compared to LoE-high and younger participants, but the sizes of LoE and age effects were small.

This article discusses Krashen's Monitor Model and the attendant five hypotheses. Since its 1977 publication, Krashen, through a series of revisions, have tried to explain the way learners acquire a second language. This article closely looks at his basic premises and the criticism they have generated to better understand both the Monitor Model and its various lacunae and biases.Key words: Affective Filter; Krashen; Language Acquisition Device (LAD); Monitor Model; Second Language Acquisition (SLA).DOI: 10.3329/dujl.v2i4.6903Dhaka University Journal of Linguistics Vol.2(4) August 2009 pp.139-146

S. Oyama’s prominent account of the Parity Thesis states that one cannot distinguish in a meaningful way between nature-based (i.e. gene-based) and nurture-based (i.e. environment-based) characteristics in development because the information necessary for the resulting characteristics is contained at both levels. Oyama as well as P. E. Griffiths and K. Stotz argue that the Parity Thesis has far-reaching implications for developmental psychology in that both nativist and interactionist developmental accounts of psychological capacities that presuppose a substantial nature/nurture dichotomy are inadequate. We argue that well-motivated abandoning of the nature/nurture dichotomy, as advocated in converging versions of the Parity Thesis in biology, does not necessarily entail abandoning the distinction between biologically given abilities necessary for the development of higher psychological capacities and the learning process they enable. Thus, contrary to the claims of the aforementioned authors, developmental psychologists need not discard a substantial distinction between innate (biologically given) characteristics and those acquired by learning, even if they accept the Parity Thesis. We suggest a two-stage account of development: the first stage is maturational and involves interaction of genetic, epigenetic and environmental causes, resulting in the endogenous biological ‘machinery’ (e.g. language acquisition device), responsible for learning in the subsequent stage of the developmental process by determining the organism’s responses to the environment. This account retains the crux of nativism (the endogenous biological structure determines the way the organism learns/responds to an environment) whilst adopting the developmentalist view of biology by characterizing environments as distinctly different in terms of structure and function in two developmental stages.

Grammar is now widely regarded as a substantially biological phenomenon, yet the problem of language evolution remains a matter of controversy among Linguists, Cognitive Scientists, and Evolutionary Theorists alike. In this paper, I present a new theoretical argument for one particular hypothesis—that a “Language Acquisition Device” of the sort first posited by Noam Chomsky might have evolved via the so-called “Baldwin Effect”. Close attention to the workings of that mechanism, I argue, helps to explain a previously mysterious feature of the Language Acquisition Device—the sheer variety of languages it allows the child to learn—thereby revealing a far stronger case than adherents of the hypothesis have previously supposed. A further unheralded consequence of the hypothesis is a conceptual shift in the Chomskyan understanding of language, wherein the essentially public nature of language is freshly emphasised. This has the effect of bringing the Chomskyan view into closer accord with Saussurean accounts of language, as well as with recent trends in evolutionary theory.

Introduction Two pieces of literature appeared quietly and without fanfare in 1957. Each book unalterably affected how we have come to view language, human behavior, and language learning. In 1957, Noam Chomsky published Syntactic Structures (1957), his germinal work that established the foundations of psycholinguistics. This work, in combination with a second publication, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Chomsky, 1965), broadly influenced research in linguistics and the theoretical relationships between the mind and language. Together, they represented a firm anchor point on one end-the nativistic end-of the philosophical continuum established in 1957. With regard to explaining language development, one of the more publicized features of this theory was the Language Acquisition Device, or LAD. Although there was no intention to correlate this "device" to any underlying neurological structure, Chomsky proposed the LAD as the presumed innate mechanism in the human brain (or mind) to explain the apparent ease and rapidity with which children acquire language. Although the concept of the LAD has been modified through the years, in the 1960s it became the widely accepted explanation for children's acquisition of language, largely removing caregivers from any active role in their children's language abilities. The opposite anchor point-the behavioral end-on this philosophical continuum was established that same year, when B.F. Skinner published Verbal Behavior (1957). (See Hegde, in this issue, for a comprehensive review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior.) In contrast to Chomsky's approach, Skinner proposed an analysis of verbal behavior based on a natural science account of behavior that had evolved since the earlier publication of his The Behavior of Organisms (1938). In Verbal Behavior, Skinner applied a functional analysis approach to analyze language behaviors in terms of their natural occurrence in response to observable environmental circumstances and the measurable effects they have on human interactions. In this view, language was characterized as the result of, as opposed to the reason for, complex human behavior. The complexities of language do not exist prior to or independent of human behavior; instead the complexities of language behavior reflect our capacity to respond verbally to the complex and subtle intricacies inherent in human experiences and interactions. In Verbal Behavior, Skinner (1957) did not emphasize explaining the nature of early language development; perhaps the explanation seemed obvious to him from the fact that he had invoked an operant model in the overall analysis. Verbal Behavior primarily focused on an explication of the causal variables for the verbal interactions of accomplished speakers and listeners whose learning histories were in place and preceded the verbal behaviors in question-in essence, adult speakers. It is perhaps unfortunate that Skinner emphasized this level of analysis-adult verbal interactions-throughout Verbal Behavior as it ostensibly posed difficulty for some who have tried to explain the development of language under his model. Chomsky critiqued Skinner's functional analysis in a book review that many found puzzling due to several lengthy criticisms put forth by Chomsky that did not relate to principles or concepts contained in Verbal Behavior. Specifically, Chomsky criticized Skinner for proposing imitation and conscientious parental tutoring as the major explanations for language development. Chomsky also took Skinner to task for his supposed reliance on memorized Markovian chains as an explanation for grammar. However, none of these elements were included in Skinner's model. Over the years, attempts to describe how Skinner's model might be applied to children's language development, including recent sources (Owens, 2005; Berko Gleason, 2005; Hulit, 2006), have continued to rely on perpetuating these misconceptions contained in Chomsky's (1959) "bewildering" (MacCorquodale, 1970, p. …

Greer &. Ross (2007): Verbal Behavior Analysis: Inducing and Expanding New Verbal Capabilities in Children with Language Delays Language impairments affect 7% of preschool children (Ziegler, 2005). Some of these children will "catch up" to their peers, but many will continue to have problems at school age. For example, Paul (2000) found that 16% of children with expressive language delays at age 2 continued to present with language impairments at the age of 7. Additionally there is evidence that early problems with oral language are related to later problems with the development of literacy skills (Bartlett, et al., 2002). Moreover, when language impairments accompany developmental disabilities (e.g., autism, mental retardation), they are likely to remain a life-long challenge. Professionals from a variety of disciplines have developed approaches to language intervention over the past 80 years (Paul, 2007). Within that context, behavioral approaches have emerged among the most effective, especially for teaching children with autism and related disabilities (Goldstein & Hockenberry, 1991). Traditionally, behavioral approaches emphasized modeling, imitation, systematic prompting, differential reinforcement and discrete trial instruction as a primary instructional format (e.g., Lovaas, 1981). However, more recently the behavioral framework has been expanded to include an emphasis on functional analysis and especially Skinner's (1957) functional analysis of verbal behavior. Additionally, natural environmental teaching (NET) strategies (e.g., incidental teaching, mand-model) were added to the repertoire of important instructional formats, and a review of recent studies supports the effectiveness of these formats (Petersen, 2006 for children with language delays. Skinner (1957) originally developed the verbal behavior model to account for the continuity between operant behavior and language. Others are responsible for applying the model to language instruction (e.g., Sundberg & Partington, 1998; Greer & Ross, 2007). These applications have gradually come to be known as the verbal behavior (VB) approach. Carr and Firth (2005) recently reviewed the published literature on VB practices and pointed to the need for additional research. We believe that his call for research has been addressed in part by Greer and Ross's (2007) book: Verbal Behavior Analysis: Inducing and Expanding New Verbal Capabilities in Children with Language Delays. This book represents the culmination of considerable research, practice, and critical thinking by a Greer and his colleagues (e.g., Greer & Keohane, 2006; Greer, Keohane, & Healy, 2002; Tsai, & Greer, 2006). It addresses many interesting and important questions about the verbal behavior approach, and it offers an evidence-based framework for best practices in behavioral language intervention, including detailed information about assessment, instructional strategies, and procedures for evaluating treatment efficacy. It is highly engaging and conveys complex theoretical information in a clear and reader-friendly style. It is an excellent source of information for students planning a career in communicative disorders, for behavior analysts who wish to enhance their understanding of Skinner's verbal behavior framework, for parents of children with communicative disorders, and for professionals in the fields of developmental disabilities and early intervention. An important feature of this book is that it includes an empirical account of verbal behavior development, and it t may be the first comprehensive account of language development that incorporates Skinner's (1957) verbal behavior model. It describes a developmental trajectory marked by developmental cusps (Rosales-Ruiz & Baer, 1966; Bosh & Hixson, 2004). In some linguistic and cognitive accounts of language development, stages of language growth have been attributed to neurological factors such as a language acquisition device (e. …

Today’s speech recognizers use very little knowledge of what language really is. They treat a sentence as if it would be generated by a random process and pay little or no attention to its linguistic structure. If recognizers knew about the rules of grammar, they would potentially make less recognition errors. Highly linguistically motivated grammars that are able to capture the deeper structure of language have evolved from the natural language processing community during the last few years. However, the speech recognition community mainly applies models which disregard that structure or applies very coarse probabilistic grammars. This paper aims at bridging the gap between statistical language models and elaborate linguistic grammars. Firstly an analysis of the need to integrate the conventional Statistical Language Models with the modern Linguistic Knowledge based language models is made, thereby justifying the Statistical and Linguistic Knowledge based Speech Recognition System which is asymptotically error free.

Research on bilingualism has focused on the areas of grammar that require greater effort to reach native-like attainment. It questioned whether simultaneous or sequential bilingual acquirers can achieve linguistic knowledge and language processing strategies to a similar extent as monolingual speakers who are exposed to efficient and continuous linguistic input and, if not, which areas of grammar are more demanding in this regard. Various bilingual groups have been tested in an attempt to identify the areas of grammar that are prone to: CLI effects, language dominance and quality and quantity of input in simultaneous and sequential bilingual acquisition (Hulk and Muller 2000; Muller and Hulk 2001; Argyri and Sorace 2007; Paradis and Navarro 2003; Hacohen and Schaeffer 2007), Language attrition effects (Gurel 2004; Tsimpli et al. 2004) Difficulties for near-native level attainment in L2 learners (Sorace and Filiaci 2006; Sorace 1999) The common denominator in the outcome of these studies is bilinguals’ non-native-like behavior in structures that require the integration of grammatical knowledge into contextual settings, i.e., at semantics-syntax and pragmatics-syntax interfaces. Before presenting these bilingual studies in the following chapter, this chapter first provides various theoretical assumptions on the modular mind and the interface phenomenon and then presents earlier research on the interface phenomenon in child and agrammatic speech as well as the theoretical accounts that resulted from these investigations. This chapter presents the theoretical assumptions on the function and the internal organization of the mind in Sect. 2.1, and informs on Fodorian modularity thesis, Chomskian ideas on the Language Acquisition Device, and Jackendoff’s parallel architecture module. In Sect. 2.2 it presents previous research on child and agrammatic speech which investigated linguistic interfaces.

Recent findings have shown that people with higher musical aptitude were also better in oral language imitation tasks. However, whether singing capacity and instrument playing contribute differently to the imitation of speech has been ignored so far. Research has just recently started to understand that instrumentalists develop quite distinct skills when compared to vocalists. In the same vein the role of the vocal motor system in language acquisition processes has poorly been investigated as most investigations (neurobiological and behavioral) favor to examine speech perception. We set out to test whether the vocal motor system can influence an ability to learn, produce and perceive new languages by contrasting instrumentalists and vocalists. Therefore, we investigated 96 participants, twenty-seven instrumentalists, thirty-three vocalists and thirty-six non-musicians/non-singers. They were tested for their abilities to imitate foreign speech: unknown language (Hindi), second language (English) and their musical aptitude. Results revealed that both instrumentalists and vocalists have a higher ability to imitate unintelligible speech and foreign accents than non-musicians/non-singers. Within the musician group, vocalists outperformed instrumentalists significantly. Conclusion: first, adaptive plasticity for speech imitation is not reliant on audition alone but also on vocal-motor induced processes. Second, vocal flexibility of singers goes together with higher speech imitation aptitude. Third, vocal motor training, as of singers, may speed up foreign language acquisition processes.

A new solution is offered to the Infant Language Acquisition Problem, rejecting both of Chomsky’s alternatives. It proposes that the infant does not acquire his mother tongue by mastering its grammar, whether by inference from personal experience or via an innate Language Acquisition Device such as the UG, but that the language he hears is all saved in his extremely plastic and capacious brain, where it is stored in such a way as to organize it while populating it. The brain is thus transformed into a mind by language. Support for this theory is drawn from such topics as feral children and linguistic experiments with bonobos.

A bibliometric approach is used not only to sketch out the development of CALL during the last 25 years, but also to assess the contribution of educational technology to 21st century foreign-language teaching and learning. This study is based on the six instalments of the author’s International (and multilingual) Bibliography of Computer Assisted Language Learning and the 5,301 entries contained therein. The once text-based bibliography has been transformed into a searchable database. Since index terms to describe both the contents and the nature of individual publications have been attached to the bibliographic data, it is now possible to query whether the 25,000 descriptors cluster around certain topics and to depict developments chronologically. The statistical evaluation of a large corpus also avoids the pitfalls of selective interpretation. Recent controversies about the chronologisation of CALL events as well as the internal consistency of such time chunks are addressed. The data suggest that the online/offline divide occurs around 1993 and that the latest additions to the foreign language teacher’s tool box – from e-mails to voicechats – overcome the language acquisition/language learning barrier. New and student-oriented forms of dealing with foreign language learning come to the fore. This has induced some researchers to concentrate on events where conversation breaks down, because learners must then ask for modified input or negotiate the meanings of lexical items. Such a strategy promises success in instructed second-language acquisition. It is suggested, however, that the foreign language teacher’s intervention is a necessary complement to second-language developmental processes. Educational technology may allow the teacher to let nature run its course nowadays. But when nature is unsympathetic to the cause of foreign language learning the teacher must rein in the student’s language acquisition device to protect him or her from certain sanctions the target community holds in store for the unsuccessful learner.

The outcome of scientific research depends on how a phenomenon is viewed and how the questions are phrased. This applies also to the nativist view of language acquisition. As a complement to MacWhinney’s discussion of nativism from the viewpoint of cognitive psychology, I would like to devote this commentary to the question of the title from the viewpoint of computational linguistics. Formally, the nativist approach has been based on a distinction between finite and infinite sets. Chomsky defines a language as an infinite set of strings (sequence of word forms) and a grammar as a filter which picks the grammatically correct strings from the free monoid over the finite lexicon of the language. 1 Language acquisition is described in terms of a language acquisition device (LAD) which has the task of selecting from the infinite set of possible grammars the one which is correct for the language in question. The ‘ logical problem of language acquisition ’ is how the LAD can select a grammar which is correct for an infinite language, even though the data presented to the LAD (observed sentences) are necessarily finite. This problem is only made worse by Chomsky’s alleged degeneracy of input and poverty of negative evidence, focused on by MacWhinney. Given that humans can obviously learn language anyway, something in addition to a finite set of data is required. According to Chomsky, it is some innate universal grammar, common to all languages. Differences between languages are attributed to different parameter settings of the universal grammar. As empirical proof for the existence of a universal grammar we are offered language structures claimed to be learned ERROR-FREE. They are explained