Gestures and Some Key Issues in the Study of Language Development Gullberg, Marianne; De Bot, Kees; Volterra, Virginia
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19 First Language Acquisition
466 Brian MacWhinney 19 First Language Acquisition BRIAN MACWHINNEY Nothing can make a parent prouder than a child’s first word. Whether it be “Mama,” “Papa,” or even “kitty,” we all recognize the first word as a major milestone in the child’s development – a clear token of the child’s entrance into a fuller membership in human society. We emphasize the child’s first word, because of the enormous importance that we place on language as a way of communicating with other people After all, we reason, the only species that uses language is the human species. Moreover, it is through language that we come to understand the deepest secrets of other people and come to appreciate the extent to which we share a common humanity. Fortunately, the ability to acquire language is present in almost every human child (Lenneberg 1967). Children who are born blind have few problems learning to speak, although they may occasionally be confused about words for colors or geographic locations. Children who are born deaf readily acquire a rich system of signs, as long as they are exposed to native sign language speakers. Even a child like Helen Keller, who has lost both hearing and sight, can still acquire language through symbols expressed in touch and motion. Children with neurological disorders, such as brain lesions or hydrocephalus, often acquire complete control over spoken language, despite a few months of early delay. Children with the most extreme forms of mental retardation are still able to acquire the basic units of human communication. Given the pervas- iveness and inevitability of first language acquisition, we often tend to take the process of language learning for granted. -
Introduction: Reconciling Approaches to Intra-Individual Variation in Psycholinguistics and Variationist Sociolinguistics
Linguistics Vanguard 2021; 7(s2): 20200027 Lars Bülow* and Simone E. Pfenninger Introduction: Reconciling approaches to intra-individual variation in psycholinguistics and variationist sociolinguistics https://doi.org/10.1515/lingvan-2020-0027 Abstract: The overall theme of this special issue is intra-individual variation, that is, the observable variation within individuals’ behaviour, which plays an important role in the humanities area as well as in the social sciences. While various fields have recognised the complexity and dynamism of human thought and behav- iour, intra-individual variation has received less attention in regard to language acquisition, use and change. Linguistic research so far lacks both empirical and theoretical work that provides detailed information on the occurrence of intra-individual variation, the reasons for its occurrence and its consequences for language development as well as for language variation and change. The current issue brings together two sub- disciplines – psycholinguistics and variationist sociolinguistics – in juxtaposing systematic and non- systematic intra-individual variation, thereby attempting to build a cross-fertilisation relationship between two disciplines that have had surprisingly little connection so far. In so doing, we address critical stock-taking, meaningful theorizing and methodological innovation. Keywords: psycholinguistics, variationist sociolinguistics, intra-individual variation, intra-speaker variation, SLA, language variation and change, language development 1 Intra-individual variation in psycholinguistics and variationist sociolinguistics The overall theme of this special issue is intra-individual variation, that is, the observable variation within individuals’ behaviour, which plays an important role in the humanities area as well as in the social sciences. While various fields have acknowledged the complexity and dynamism of human behaviour, intra-individual variation has received less attention in regard to language use. -
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Salem State University From the SelectedWorks of Sovicheth Boun March 24, 2014 A Critical Examination Of Language Ideologies And Identities Of Cambodian Foreign-Trained University Lecturers Of English Sovicheth Boun Available at: https://works.bepress.com/sovicheth-boun/2/ Table of Contents General Conference Information ....................................................................................................................................................................... 3-‐13 Welcome Messages from the President and the Conference Chair ........................................................................................................................ 3 Conference Program Committee .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Registration Information, Exhibit Hall Coffee Hours, Breaks, Internet Access, Conference Evaluation ................................................ 4 Strand Coordinators and Abstract Readers .................................................................................................................................................................. 5-‐6 Student Volunteers, Individual Sessions and Roundtable Sessions Instructions ............................................................................................ 7 Conference Sponsors ............................................................................................................................................................................................................. -
Part I: Perspectives on Usage in L2 Learning and Teaching
Part I: Perspectives on usage in L2 learning and teaching Brian MacWhinney Multidimensional SLA Complex natural phenomena, such as human language, are shaped by processes operating on very different scales in both time and space (MacWhinney, in press). Consider the case of timescales in Geology. When geologists study rock outcrops they need to consider the results of general processes such as vulcanism, orogeny, glaciation, continental drift, erosion, sedimentation, and metamorphism. Within each of these larger processes, such as vulcanism, there are many microprocesses operating across smaller timescales. For example, once the pressure in the magma chamber reaches a certain level, there can be a slow outpouring of lava or sudden explosions. Pressure can be released through steam vents with geysers operating at regular intervals. The lava may enter lakes or oceans forming pillows or it may rest in underground chambers forming columnar basalt. The variations in these volcanic processes and their interactions with each other and plate tectonics are extensive. The same is true of human language. Within human populations, the ability to articulate and process sounds has emerged across millennia of ongoing changes in physiology and neurology. Within particular language communities, ongoing change is driven by language contact, dialect shift, and group formation. Within individuals, language learning involves a continual adaptation for both first and second languages. Within individual conversations, all of these forces come together, as people work out their mutual plans, goals, and disagreements, using language. Each of these space-time frames interacts with the others at the actual moment of language use. To fully understand the process of second language acquisition (SLA), we must place it within this multidimensional context, both theoretically and prac- tically. -
Viewpoints W 113
International Journal of Applied Linguistics w Vol. 15 w No. 1 w 2005Viewpoints w 113 Viewpoints “Globalisation” and Applied Linguistics: post-imperial questions of identity and the construction of applied linguistics discourse Janina Brutt-Griffler University of York “Where are you from?” It’s a question we’ve all been asked at some point, in some place, in some language. It’s probably a question we’ve all put to someone else. When we ask it of others we attribute it to curiosity. When it is put to us, we attribute it to difference, since when posed by strangers, as it most often is, it is as a general rule based either on how we sound or how we look. And yet both our interrogator and we ourselves understand at some level that the question is meaningless, even impertinent. It is rooted in a mythical sense of space and place. Lurking just below the surface is an unasked, ultimately unanswerable question: “Where do you belong?” Like every other notion, that of belonging is not some natural idea with which all of us come into the world but one constructed socially, and therefore ultimately historically. It is rooted in a particular social order, one that seeks to assign persons to definite geographical and social spaces. When we invoke this notion of space and place – the attempt to assign, as if by natural dispensation, persons to particular ethnic, national or other origins or identities – we draw, consciously or unconsciously, on received notions inherited from the past. Linguistics has long established that any child born into this world can learn any language natively. -
Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) Approach in SLA
International Society of communication and Development among universities www.europeansp.org Modern Language Studies, ISSN: 0047-7729 Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) Approach in SLA Muhammad Makhdoumi, Hanye davatgari Asl, Masoud Zoghi Department of English Language Teaching, Ahar branch, Islamic Azad University, Ahar, Iran Abstract The essence of Complex, Dynamic Systems Theory is that there is no stasis, only change. The processes of change are the consequences of interactions of variables over time. At least forty theories of SLA have been proposed, but it seems none of them gives a complete explanation of this complex process. The purpose of the study to recognize CDS features, controlling parameters, and SLA theories to support the idea that SLA is complex and dynamic process. Considering the proposed theories in SLA, features of complex systems and controlling parameters in SLA, the researcher has proposed a model based on CDST approach to explain the complexity involved in learning a second language. The method was narrative review research. Results will be advantageous for methodologies, theoreticians, syllabus designers and teachers, to involve social, cultural, factors in SLA processes. It will be also helpful to solve some of the long-lasting problems and present the fascinating, promising approach of CDST. © 2016 The Authors. Published by European Science publishing Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of European Science publishing Ltd. Keywords: CDS, CDST, SLA, language learning theories, CDS features. 1. Introduction This study maintains that previous endeavors to explain SLA and FLL should not be ignored. When different learning theories are combined, they provide a deeper and broader view of the learning process. -
Language Learning Research at the Intersection of Experimental, Computational and Corpus-Based Approaches Patrick Rebuschat
Language learning research at the intersection of experimental, computational and corpus-based approaches (1,2) (2,3) (1,4) Patrick Rebuschat , Detmar Meurers , and Tony McEnery (1) (2) Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University; LEAD Graduate (3) School and Research Network, University of Tübingen; Seminar für Sprachwissenschaft, (4) University of Tübingen; ESRC Centre for Corpus Approaches to Social Science Keywords: Psycholinguistics; corpus linguistics; computational linguistics; natural language processing; first language acquisition; second language acquisition; multimethod approaches; interdisciplinary research Acknowledgements: Our research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council, UK (grant ES/K002155/1) and by the LEAD Graduate School & Research Network (grant DFG-GSC1028), a project of the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments. Correspondence: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Patrick Rebuschat, Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YL, United Kingdom, E-mail: [email protected]. Language acquisition occupies a central place in the study of human cognition, and research on how we learn language can be found across many disciplines, from developmental psychology and linguistics to education, philosophy and neuroscience. It is a very challenging topic to investigate given that the learning target in first and second language acquisition is highly complex, and part of the challenge consists in identifying how different domains of language are acquired to form a fully functioning system of usage (Ellis, this volume). Correspondingly, the evidence about language use and language learning is generally shaped by many factors, including the characteristics of the task in which the language is produced (Alexopoulou et al, this volume). -
Language Attrition: the Next Phase Barbara Köpke, Monika Schmid
Language Attrition: The next phase Barbara Köpke, Monika Schmid To cite this version: Barbara Köpke, Monika Schmid. Language Attrition: The next phase. Monika S. Schmid, Barbara Köpke, Merel Keijzer, Lina Weilemar. First Language Attrition: Interdisciplinary perspectives on methodological issues, John Benjamins, pp.1-43, 2004, Studies in Bilingualism, 9027241392. hal- 00879106 HAL Id: hal-00879106 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00879106 Submitted on 31 Oct 2013 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Language Attrition: The Next Phase Barbara Köpke (Université de Toulouse – Le Mirail) and Monika S. Schmid Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Barbara Köpke Laboratoire de Neuropsycholinguistique Jacques Lordat Institut des Sciences du Cerveau de Toulouse Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail 31058 Toulouse Cedex France [email protected] Monika S. Schmid Engelse Taal en Cultuur Faculteit der Letteren Vrije Universiteit 1081 HV Amsterdam The Netherlands [email protected] Published in : M.S. Schmid, B. Köpke, M. Keijzer & L. Weilemar (2004). First Language Attrition. Interdisciplinary perspectives on methodological issues (pp. 1-43). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Köpke, B. & Schmid, M.S. (2004). Language Attrition: The Next Phase. In M.S. Schmid, B. -
Preprint Ellis, NC (2013). Second Language Acquisition. in Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar
Second Language Acquisition Nick C. Ellis University of Michigan [email protected] preprint Ellis, N. C. (2013). Second language acquisition. In Oxford Handbook of Construction Grammar (pp. 365-378), G. Trousdale & T. Hoffmann (Eds.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1. Introduction Usage-based approaches hold that we learn linguistic constructions while engaging in communication, the “interpersonal communicative and cognitive processes that everywhere and always shape language” (Slobin 1997). Constructions are form-meaning mappings, conventionalized in the speech community, and entrenched as language knowledge in the learner’s mind. They are the symbolic units of language relating the defining properties of their morphological, syntactic, and lexical form with particular semantic, pragmatic, and discourse functions (Bates and MacWhinney 1987; Lakoff 1987; Langacker 1987; Croft 2001; Croft and Cruse 2004; Goldberg 1995, 2003, 2006; Tomasello 2003; Robinson and Ellis 2008; Bybee 2008). Broadly, Construction Grammar argues that all grammatical phenomena can be understood as learned pairings of form (from morphemes, words, and idioms, to partially lexically filled and fully general phrasal patterns) and their associated semantic or discourse functions. Such beliefs, increasingly influential in the study of child language acquisition, have turned upside down generative assumptions of innate language acquisition devices, the continuity hypothesis, and top-down, rule-governed, processing, bringing back data-driven, emergent accounts of linguistic systematicities. Constructionist theories of child first language acquisition (L1A) use dense longitudinal corpora to chart the emergence of creative linguistic competence from children’s analyses of the utterances in their usage history and from their abstraction of regularities within them (Goldberg 1995, 2006, 2003; Diessel, this volume; Tomasello 1998; Tomasello 2003). -
Co-Adaptation Processes of Syntactic Complexity in Real-Time Kindergarten Teacher-Student Interactions
1 Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 229-260. 2 © 2019 Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences 3 Co-Adaptation Processes of Syntactic Complexity in 4 Real-Time Kindergarten Teacher-Student Interactions 5 Astrid Menninga, Marijn van Dijkler1, Ralf Cox, Henderien Steenbeek 6 and Paul van Geert, University of Groningen 7 Abstract: Under the premise that language learning is bidirectional in nature, 8 this study aimed to investigate syntactic coordination within teacher-student 9 interactions by using cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA). Seven 10 teachers’ and a group of their students’ interactions were repeatedly measured in 11 the course of an intervention in early science education. Results showed changes 12 in the proportion of recurrent points; in case of simple sentences teachers and 13 students became less coordinated over time, whereas in case of complex sentences 14 teachers and students showed increasing coordination. Results also revealed less 15 rigid (more flexible) syntactic coordination, although there were no changes in 16 the relative contribution of teacher and students to this. In the light of the 17 intervention under investigation this is an important result. This means that 18 teachers and students learn to use more complex language and coordinate their 19 language complexity better in order to co-construct science discourse. The 20 application of CRQA provides new insights and contributes to better 21 understanding of the dynamics of syntactic coordination. 22 23 Key Words: cross-recurrence quantification analysis (CRQA), syntactic 24 coordination, adaptation processes, kindergarten teacher-student interaction, 25 intervention 26 INTRODUCTION 27 The bidirectional properties of language learning have been 28 demonstrated in several studies (e.g., Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Sameroff 29 & MacKenzie, 2003; Van Dijk et al., 2013; Van Geert, Steenbeek, & van Dijk, 30 2011). -
The Dynamic Interplay Between Educational Practice, Policy and Research
INVITED ARTICLE The Good, the Bad and the Ugly? The Dynamic Interplay Between Educational Practice, Policy and Research PAUL VAN GEERT and HENDERIEN STEENBEEK University of Groningen (Netherlands) The notion of complexity — as in “education is a complex system” — has two different meanings. On the one hand, there is the epistemic connotation, with “Complex” meaning “difficult to understand, hard to control”. On the other hand, complex has a technical meaning, referring to systems composed of many interacting components, the interactions of which lead to self organization and emergence. For agents, participating in a complex system such as education, it is important that they can reduce the epistemic complexity of the system, in order to allow them to understand the system, to accomplish their goals and to evaluate the results of their activities. We argue that understanding, accomplishing and evaluation requires the creation of simplex systems, which are praxis‐based forms of representing complexity. Agents participating in the complex system may have different kinds of simplex systems governing their understanding and praxis. In this article, we focus on three communities of agents in education — educators, researchers and policymakers — and discuss characteristic features of their simplex systems. In particular, we focus on the simplex system of educational researchers, and we discuss interactions — including conflicts or incompatibilities — between their simplex systems and those of educators and policymakers. By making some of the underlying features of the educational researchers’ simplex systems more explicit – including the underlying notion of causality and the use of variability as a source of knowledge — we hope to contribute to clarifying some of the hidden conflicts between simplex systems of the communities participating in the complex system of education. -
University of Groningen Changing Patterns of Scaffolding and Autonomy During Individual Music Lessons Kupers, Elisa; Van Dijk, M
University of Groningen Changing Patterns of Scaffolding and Autonomy During Individual Music Lessons Kupers, Elisa; van Dijk, Marijn; van Geert, Paul Published in: Journal of the Learning Sciences DOI: 10.1080/10508406.2016.1259624 IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2017 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Kupers, E., van Dijk, M., & van Geert, P. (2017). Changing Patterns of Scaffolding and Autonomy During Individual Music Lessons: A Mixed Methods Approach. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 26(1), 131-166. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2016.1259624 Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 27-09-2021 Journal of the Learning Sciences ISSN: 1050-8406