Language Acquisition Under Challanging Circumstances s1

Language Acquisition in Special Circumstances Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem Evaluating the critical period hypothesis Evaluating the critical period hypothesis

Reading: Bialystok, E. 1997. The structure of age: in search of barriers to second language acquisition. Second Language Research 13: 116-137.

Are these facts related? Why? How?

 Age – most L2 learners are older than L1 learners  Degree of success attained by the learner  Fossilization – L2 learners often get stuck at a point short of native-like grammar

Is there a critical period for L1 acquisition?

Lennenberg (1967) – A biological basis to the critical period. Around puberty when left hemisphere lateralization is complete. Child aphasics can recover language function, whereas adults cannot.

Seliger (1979) – Plasticity of the left hemisphere. Multiple critical periods. Genie, Chelsea.

Newport (1990) – Three groups of deaf children exposed to ASL at different ages (early childhood, 4-6, 12)

>>> There are several sensitive periods for learning different language functions.

Is there a critical period for L2 acquisition?

Johnson, J. and E. Newport. 1989. Critical period effects in second language learning; The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language. Cognitive Psychology 21: 60-99

A clear relationship between age of arrival to USA (of 46 Korean or Chinese speakers) and the ability to judge grammaticality of English sentences (containing 12 different types of rules).

Long, M. H. 1990. Maturational constraints on language development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 12:251-285

1. Adults proceed through early stages of morphological and syntactic development faster than children (where time and exposure are held constant). 2. Older children acquire faster than younger children (again in early stages of morphology and syntax, where time and exposure are held constant0. 3. Child starters outperform adult starters in the long run. Language Acquisition in Special Circumstances Dr. Sharon Armon-Lotem Flynn, S. and S. Manuel. 1992. Age dependent effects in language acquisition: An evaluation of critical period hypothesis.

More than one critical period. UG is available for adults too.

Birdsong, D. 1992. Ultimate attainment in second language acquisition. Language 68:706-753

L2 learners’ success/ failure to reach ultimate attainment in the L2 is due to the similarity/ variance between the L1 and the L2.

DeKeyser, R. M. 2000. The robustness of critical period effects in second language acquisition. Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

The affect of language aptitude. The affect of structural saliency.

Bialystok 1997 (The structure of age: in search of barriers to second language acquisition) criticizes Johnson & Newport on every possible level: experimental technique, age related factors, etc.

Observations:

 Knowing a system in L1 facilitates its learning in L2 (German and English speakers learning French nominal system).  Length of residence affects judgment, not age of arrival (Chinese speakers’ grammaticality judgment in English)  Different experimental techniques may lead to different conclusions  Children’s successful attainment is due to different learning style

Conclusion:

 All kinds of knowledge are acquired in the same way, the only difference being the amount of past experience which is brought into the process.  There is no evidence for critical period for language learning

Questions:

 Why does the influence of L1 on L2 entail that there is no critical period?  Why can’t different tasks affect the results if there is a critical period?  Correcting written samples is more natural for adult learners  Is translation the same a natural processing?  Isn’t translation the thing that adult learners do, but young ones don’t?  Is it the case that there is no critical period for language learning but there is a critical period for language replacement?