Language acquisition recapitulates language evolution?

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 532-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Satterfield
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Logical Problem ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
L1 Acquisition ◽  
Specific Learning

AbstractChristiansen & Chater (C&C) focus solely on general-purpose cognitive processes in their elegant conceptualization of language evolution. However, numerous developmental facts attested in L1 acquisition confound C&C's subsequent claim that the logical problem of language acquisition now plausibly recapitulates that of language evolution. I argue that language acquisition should be viewed instead as a multi-layered construction involving the interplay of general and domain-specific learning mechanisms.

scholarly journals Is LF really a linguistic level?

2002 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 680-680 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Chater
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Logical Form ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Logical Problem ◽  
Modular Reasoning ◽  
Linguistic Level

Carruthers’ argument depends on viewing logical form as a linguistic level. But logical form is typically viewed as underpinning general purpose inference, and hence as having no particular connection to language processing. If logical form is tied directly to language, two problems arise: a logical problem concerning language acquisition and the empirical problem that aphasics appear capable of cross-modular reasoning.

Co-evolution of phylogeny and glossogeny: There is no “logical problem of language evolution”

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 521-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Tecumseh Fitch
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Cultural Models ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Logical Problem ◽  
Trap Gene ◽  
Human Capacity ◽  
Phylogenetic Models

AbstractHistorical language change (“glossogeny”), like evolution itself, is a fact; and its implications for the biological evolution of the human capacity for language acquisition (“phylogeny”) have been ably explored by many contemporary theorists. However, Christiansen & Chater's (C&C's) revolutionary call for a replacement of phylogenetic models with glossogenetic cultural models is based on an inadequate understanding of either. The solution to their “logical problem of language evolution” lies before their eyes, but they mistakenly reject it due to a supposed “circularity trap.” Gene/;culture co-evolution poses a series of difficult theoretical and empirical problems that will be resolved by subtle thinking, adequate models, and careful cross-disciplinary research, not by oversimplified manifestos.

Progress, but not a full solution to the logical problem of language acquisition

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 923-926 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERIKA HOFF
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Rich Source ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Logical Problem ◽  
Language Structure ◽  
Full Solution ◽  
Source Of Information

MacWhinney argues that the logical problem of language acquisition is no longer. It was a problem back in the 1970s when the guiding premises of the field were that language structure is highly abstract, that the child's input is a poor source of information about grammar, and that the child's learning mechanisms are inadequate to bridge the gap between the input the child receives and the grammar the child acquires. Now, however, we have new linguistic theories which show that language structure is not abstract but arises from cognition, and we have evidence that input is a rich source of information, and we have reason to believe that the child has a powerful array of learning procedures at his or her disposal. The gap between input and acquisition thought to exist in the 1970s has been closed, and thus, MacWhinney argues, there is no need to attribute innate linguistic knowledge to the child.

THE EMERGENCE OF LANGUAGE. Brian MacWhinney (Ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1999. Pp. xvii + 500. $99.95 cloth, $45.00 paper.

2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 587-589
Author(s):  
Naomi Bolotin
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Environmental Data

This book contains 16 papers that were presented at the 28th Carnegie Mellon Symposium on Cognition in 1997, entitled “Emergentist Approaches to Language Acquisition.” Emergentism assumes that linguistic properties arise from the interaction of general-purpose cognitive processes with environmental data, rather than from prewired, language-specific constraints.

scholarly journals THE ROBUSTNESS OF CRITICAL PERIOD EFFECTS IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 499-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. DeKeyser
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Critical Period ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
Period Effects ◽  
High Level ◽  
Adult Immigrants

This study was designed to test the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (Bley-Vroman, 1988), which states that, whereas children are known to learn language almost completely through (implicit) domain-specific mechanisms, adults have largely lost the ability to learn a language without reflecting on its structure and have to use alternative mechanisms, drawing especially on their problem-solving capacities, to learn a second language. The hypothesis implies that only adults with a high level of verbal analytical ability will reach near-native competence in their second language, but that this ability will not be a significant predictor of success for childhood second language acquisition. A study with 57 adult Hungarian-speaking immigrants confirmed the hypothesis in the sense that very few adult immigrants scored within the range of child arrivals on a grammaticality judgment test, and that the few who did had high levels of verbal analytical ability; this ability was not a significant predictor for childhood arrivals. This study replicates the findings of Johnson and Newport (1989) and provides an explanation for the apparent exceptions in their study. These findings lead to a reconceptualization of the Critical Period Hypothesis: If the scope of this hypothesis is limited to implicit learning mechanisms, then it appears that there may be no exceptions to the age effects that the hypothesis seeks to explain.

The state of emergentism in second language acquisition

2003 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin R. Gregg
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The State ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Language Competence ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
The Mind

‘Emergentism’ is the name that has recently been given to a general approach to cognition that stresses the interaction between organism and environment and that denies the existence of pre-determined, domain-specific faculties or capacities. Emergentism thus offers itself as an alternative to modular, ‘special nativist’ theories of the mind, such as theories of Universal Grammar (UG). In language acquisition, emergentists claim that simple learning mechanisms, of the kind attested elsewhere in cognition, are sufficient to bring about the emergence of complex language representations. In this article, I consider, and reject, several a priori arguments often raised against ‘special nativism’. I then look at some of the arguments and evidence for an emergentist account of second language acquisition (SLA), and show that emergentists have so far failed to take into account, let alone defeat, standard Poverty of the Stimulus arguments for ‘special nativism’, and have equally failed to show how language competence could ‘emerge’.

Long-distance wh-movement and long-distance wh-movement avoidance in L2 English: Evidence from French and Bulgarian speakers

2014 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolay Slavkov
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
First Language ◽  
Processing Load ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Canadian French ◽  
Equivalent Length ◽  
Show Evidence ◽  
L1 Acquisition

This article investigates spoken productions of complex questions with long-distance wh-movement in the L2 English of speakers whose first language is (Canadian) French or Bulgarian. Long-distance wh-movement is of interest as it can be argued that it poses difficulty in acquisition due to its syntactic complexity and related high processing load. Adopting the derivational complexity hypothesis, which has so far been applied to long-distance (LD) wh-movement in L1 acquisition and child second language acquisition, I argue that adult L2 learners also show evidence that questions with LD wh-movement are often replaced by alternative utterances with lower derivational complexity. I propose that such utterances, which are sometimes of equivalent length and with similar meaning to the targeted LD wh-structures, are avoidance strategies used by the learners as an intermediate acquisition resource. That is, such strategies are used as an escape-hatch from the derivational complexity of LD wh-movement. Overall, the results of this research indicate that the link between the number and complexity of derivational steps in a given structure is a fruitful area with strong potential in the second language acquisition field.

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