THE CROSS-LINGUISTIC STUDY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. VOL. 5: EXPANDING THE CONTEXTS.Dan Isaac Slobin (Ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1997. Pp. xiii + 339. $89.95 cloth.

2000 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-114
Author(s):  
Susan A. Gelman
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
First Language ◽  
Main Topic ◽  
Linguistic Study ◽  
The Core ◽  
Acquisition Task ◽  
The Cross

This is the fifth volume in a renowned series edited by Dan Slobin, focusing on cross-linguistic studies of children acquiring their first language. The series is seminal for its focus on languages other than English and for addressing the astonishing diversity and complexity of the language acquisition task. Slobin notes that, in contrast to Chomskyan models that consider core grammar to be the main topic of interest, the series was conceived with the notion of showing “how much fruit there is beyond the core” (p. 14). The goal of Volume 5 is to explore themes that were relatively backgrounded in the others. Specifically, these themes include: typological analysis, semantic systems, phonology and prosody, individual differences, and diachronic processes.

scholarly journals Individual Differences in First Language Acquisition

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 319-340
Author(s):  
Evan Kidd ◽  
Seamus Donnelly
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
First Language ◽  
Past Research ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Grammatical Development ◽  
Linguistic System ◽  
Tightly Coupled ◽  
Developmental Dynamics

Humans vary in almost every dimension imaginable, and language is no exception. In this article, we review the past research that has focused on individual differences (IDs) in first language acquisition. We first consider how different theoretical traditions in language acquisition treat IDs, and we argue that a focus on IDs is important given its potential to reveal the developmental dynamics and architectural constraints of the linguistic system. We then review IDs research that has examined variation in children's linguistic input, early speech perception, and vocabulary and grammatical development. In each case, we observe systematic and meaningful variation, such that variation in one domain (e.g., early auditory and speech processing) has meaningful developmental consequences for development in higher-order domains (e.g., vocabulary). The research suggests a high degree of integration across the linguistic system, in which development across multiple linguistic domains is tightly coupled.

Second language acquisition research and the second language acquisition of French

1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Hawkins ◽  
Richard Towell
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
First Language ◽  
Specific Context ◽  
Language L ◽  
Different Ages ◽  
Key Issues

AbstractPrior to the late 1960s second language acquisition was thought to be a relatively uninteresting phenomenon; it involved transferring grammatical properties already activated in the first language (L 1) onto second language (L 2) vocabulary. Successful L 2 learners were those who could capitalise on the similarities between the L 1 and the L 2, and eradicate the differences; and successful language teaching involved training learners to overcome the L 1-L 2 differences. Today, perceptions of second language acquisition are more sophisticated and nuanced. Second language acquisition researchers are interested in questions bearing not only on the influence of the L 1, but also on the degree of systematicity in L 2 development, the role that L 1, but also on the degree of systematicity in L 2 development, the role that conscious knowledge plays, the sources of variability in second language speaker performance, the ultimate levels of success achieved by L 2 learners of different ages, and individual differences between learners. The purpose of this article is to present what the authors believe to be some of the key issues which characterise current second language acquisition research, and to consider those issues within the specific context of the acquisition of French as second language.

Comparing levels of processability across languages

2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manfred Pienemann ◽  
Jörg-U. Keßler ◽  
Yuki Itani-Adams
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Development ◽  
First Language ◽  
Language Ability ◽  
Developmental Perspective ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Japanese English

In this article we utilize a developmental perspective as a metric for the comparison of bilingual language ability. In particular, we utilize Processabilty Theory (Pienemann, 1998a, 2005) which provides a psycholinguistic metric for developmental schedules of any given language. We demonstrate this approach to the cross-linguistic measurement of language development on the basis of Itani-Adams’ (2007) study of bilingual (Japanese—English) first language acquisition.

Entrenchment effects in code-mixing: individual differences in German-English bilingual children

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Antje Endesfelder Quick ◽  
Ad Backus ◽  
Elena Lieven
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
First Language ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Code Mixing ◽  
English Bilingual ◽  
Theory Of Language

Abstract Following a usage-based approach to language acquisition, lexically specific patterns are considered to be important building blocks for language productivity and feature heavily both in child-directed speech and in the early speech of children (Arnon, Inbal & Morten H. Christiansen. 2017. The role of multiword building blocks in explaining L1-L2 differences. Topics in Cognitive Science 9(3). 621–636; Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge: Harvard University Press). In order to account for patterns, the traceback method has been widely applied in research on first language acquisition to test the hypothesis that children’s utterances can be accounted for on the basis of a limited inventory of chunks and partially schematic units (Lieven, Elena, Dorothé Salomo & Michael Tomasello. 2009. Two-year-old children’s production of multiword utterances: A usage-based analysis. Cognitive Linguistics 20(3). 481–508). In the current study, we applied the method to code-mixed utterances (n = 1,506) of three German-English bilingual children between 2 and 4 years of age to investigate individual differences in each child’s own inventory of patterns in relation to their input settings. It was shown that units such as I see X as in I see a Kelle ‘I see a trowel’ could be traced back to the child’s own previous productions. More importantly, we see that each child’s inventory of constructions draws heavily on multiword chunks that are strongly dependent on the children’s language input situations.

scholarly journals Early Lexical Development of 50 Words and Individual Differences in the First Language Acquisition: A Case of two Minangkabaunese children

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yen Polisda
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
First Language ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Lexical Development

Penelitian ini dilatarbelakangi oleh perbedaan hasil penelitian tentang jenis kata yang diucapkan anak dan perbedaan individu yang mempengaruhuinya pada fase perkembangan 50 kata. Bertolak dari latarbelakang tersebut, penelitian ini bertujuan memaparkan pemerolehan bahasa pertama anak pada fase perkembangan 50 kata dan faktor yang mempengaruhi pemerolehan bahasa tersebut. Penelitian ini dilakukan terhadap anak Minangkabau yang dalam kesehariannya menggunakan bahasa Minangkabau. Subjek penelitian ini ada dua orang, yaitu satu orang anak perempuan berumur 16 bulan dan satu orang anak laki-laki yang berumur 18 bulan. Data dikumpulkan dengan cara interaksi verbal langsung, perekaman, dan pencatatan. Berdasarkan analisis data ditemukan bahwa pada fase perkembangan awal 50 kata, kata benda paling banyak diucapkan oleh kedua anak tersebut. Anak kelahiran pertama menghasilkan sedikit kata dibandingkan anak kelahiran berikutnya. Selain itu, jika orang tuanya lebih banyak menggunakan kata dan kalimat majemuk, pemerolehan bahasa anak juga akan lebih banyak. Namun, penelitian ini tidak menemukan apakah anak yang sering diajak bersosialisasi oleh ibunya lebih produktif dalam menghasilkan kata jika dibandingkan dengan anak yang jarang diajak bersosialisasi. Kata kunci: Perkembangan/pemerolehan awal 50 kata; perbedaan individu; pemerolehan bahasa

scholarly journals The production-comprehension link in prosodic development and individual differences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aoju Chen ◽  
Huub van den Bergh
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Language Acquisition ◽  
First Language ◽  
Developmental Changes ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Sentence Position ◽  
Age Range

Central to the debate on the production-comprehension link in prosodic development is the acquisition of focus-to-prosody mapping. To elucidate the nature of the production-comprehension link and shed first light on individual differences in the prosodic domain, the present study investigated developmental changes in production and comprehension of the focus-to-prosody mapping in Dutch-speaking children (age range: 4;8 ~ 7;5, N = 71) longitudinally. It was found that children’s comprehension is predictive of their production only if their comprehension is already adult-like but their production isn’t. Notably, individual differences in the production-comprehension link change with both sentence-position and age, challenging the assertion in the literature that individual differences are stable across development and domains in first language acquisition.

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