First language development: Universal Grammar as the centrepiece of the human language making capacity

2012 ◽  
pp. 13-61
Author(s):  
Jurgen M. Meisel
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
First Language ◽  
Human Language

INVESTIGATIONS IN UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR: A GUIDE TO EXPERIMENTS ON THE ACQUISITION OF SYNTAX.Stephen Crain and Rosalind Thornton. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. Pp. xi + 342. US $55.00 cloth.

2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-136
Author(s):  
Lynn Eubank
Keyword(s):  
Research Methods ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
First Language ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Experimental Techniques ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Linguistic Performance ◽  
Methodological Practice ◽  
L1 Acquisition

Well known for their work in first language (L1) acquisition, Crain and Thornton (henceforth C&T) have produced with their Investigations in Universal Grammar a thorough review of the innovative experimental techniques they developed to investigate the acquisition of syntax. In this sense, the volume would appear to be a kind of research-methods book. The volume is a great deal more, however. Indeed, in the volume's three main sections (16, 8, and 16 chapters, respectively), C&T present examinations not only of the nature of human-language grammars but also of the factors that conspire to result in linguistic performance. What makes the C&T volume superior is that they integrate theoretical framework with methodological practice so seamlessly.

Language Development in Preschool-Age Children Adopted From China

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny A. Roberts ◽  
Karen E. Pollock ◽  
Rena Krakow ◽  
Johanna Price ◽  
Kathleen C. Fulmer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
First Language ◽  
Preschool Age ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Small Subset ◽  
Adopted Children ◽  
Language Tests ◽  
Preschool Age Children ◽  
Internationally Adopted Children ◽  
The Average Range

This study examined the language development of 55 preschool-age children adopted from China who had resided in their permanent homes for approximately 2 years or longer. Slightly over 5% of the children scored below average on 2 or more measures from a battery of standardized speech-language tests normed on monolingual English speakers. However, the vast majority scored within or well above the average range on 2 or more measures. Contrary to other reports on the language development of internationally adopted children, the results suggest that "second first language" acquisition proceeds rapidly in the majority of preschool-age children adopted as infants and toddlers. For the children in the sample who scored below average, results indicated that they were among the children who had been exposed to English for the least amount of time. The results of this study demonstrate both the robustness of the language system in the majority of adopted children from China as well as slower growth in a small subset of lower performers in the 1st years after adoption.

scholarly journals Language Change and Language Acquisition

Nordlyd ◽  
10.7557/12.21 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thorbjörg Hróarsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
First Language ◽  
Language Performance ◽  
Previous Generation ◽  
Two Generations ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Context Specific ◽  
Diachronic Changes

The aim of this paper is to present diachronic changes in terms of the conditions of first language acquisition. Grammars, seen as mental organs, may change between two generations. A change is initiated when (a population of) learners converge on a grammatical system which differs in at least one parameter value from the system internalized by the speakers of the previous generation. Learnability issues then connect to both language acquisition and language change, and understanding language changes depends on understanding how children acquire their native language. Acquisition is a process in which Universal Grammar (UG) interacts with a context-specific set of Primary Linguistic Data (PLD: the linguistic input to the child-learner) and uses these PLD as the source for triggers or cues that map the innate (preexperience) knowledge to a mature grammar. If a certain phenomenon has survived through many generations, it must have been reflected clearly in the PLD. Then, if we note that it has changed, something in the language performance of the previous generation must have changed, and thereby paved the way for a new interpretation. Innovation leading to linguistic variation in the PLD and gradual changes in PLD play a central role in the explanation here: the immediate cause of a grammar change must lie in some alternation in the PLD. We will look at how the language spoken in a certain community (E-language) may gradually become different from the language that originally served as the triggering experience. These changes in the E-language also mean changes in the input available to the child-learners of the next generation and a motivation for a different parameter setting has arisen.

Tool and Symbol

Mind Shift ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 32-45
Author(s):  
John Parrington
Keyword(s):  
Tool Use ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Brain Evolution ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Human Brain Evolution ◽  
Equal Importance ◽  
Language Capacity ◽  
Development Of Language

This chapter examines the emergence of tool use and human language in human brain evolution. Increasing use and design of tools made possible by the bipedalism of our proto-human ancestors was a key step in the development of language. Indeed, communal tool use ‘helped to bring the members of society together by increasing the cases of mutual support and joint activity’. During this process, ‘the reaction of labour and speech on the development of the brain and its attendant senses, of the increasing clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction and of conclusion, gave both labour and speech an ever renewed impulse to further development’. The chapter then considers the studies which assess the fundamental differences in terms of language capacity between humans and apes. While the behaviourist view that human language acquisition is simply an accumulation of conditioned reflexes now looks incorrect, recent studies have also challenged the view of a biological basis for a ‘universal grammar’ shared by all humans. Instead, increasing evidence points to both human biology and the process of growing up in a specific human society as being factors of equal importance in the formation of language.

scholarly journals Children’s Grammar of Null Subjects: Evidence from Comprehension

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 563-590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robyn Orfitelli ◽  
Nina Hyams
Keyword(s):  
Language Development ◽  
First Language ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Children's Grammar

The null subject (NS) stage is one of the best-described hallmarks of first language development. We present a series of experiments assessing children’s interpretation of NS sentences, as a way of testing the two main competing analyses of the phenomenon: grammatical accounts, under which young children’s grammars license NSs in declarative sentences; and performance accounts, which hold that children have an adult grammar, but omit subjects in production for extrasyntactic reasons. Overall, we find evidence of an NS stage in comprehension, just as in production. This suggests that child and adult grammars differ, in line with grammatical accounts.

FUNDAMENTAL AND GRADIENT DIFFERENCES IN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-289 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Herschensohn
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
First Language ◽  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Language Faculty ◽  
Generative Theory ◽  
The Difference

This article reexamines Bley-Vroman’s original (1990) and evolved (this issue) fundamental difference hypothesis that argues that differences in path and endstate of first language acquisition and adult foreign language learning result from differences in the acquisition procedure (i.e., language faculty and cognitive strategies, respectively). The evolved assessment of the theoretical and empirical developments of the past 20 years is taken into account with respect to Universal Grammar and parameters in generative theory and with respect to cognition and acquisition in data processing. This article supports the spirit of Bley-Vroman’s proposals in light of the discussion of three topics: pathway of acquisition, endstate age of acquisition effects, and language processing by monolinguals and bilinguals. I argue that the difference between child and adult language acquisition is, above all, quantitative not qualitative, a gradient continuum rather than a precipitous break.

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