scholarly journals The development of determiners in the context of French–English bilingualism: a study of cross-linguistic influence

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 767-787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Coralie HERVÉ ◽  
Ludovica SERRATRICE

AbstractThis paper reports the preliminary results of a study examining the role of structural overlap, language exposure, and language use on cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in bilingual first language acquisition. We focus on the longitudinal development of determiners in a corpus of two French–English children between the ages of 2;4 and 3;7. The results display bi-directional CLI in the rate of development, i.e., accelerated development in English and a minor delay in French. Unidirectional CLI from English to French was instead observed in the significantly higher rate of ungrammatical determiner omissions in plural and generic contexts than in singular specific contexts in French. These findings suggest that other language-internal mechanisms may be at play. They also lend support to the role of expressive abilities on the magnitude of this phenomenon.

Author(s):  
Maya Hickmann ◽  
Dominique Bassano

This chapter aims to provide a large overview of research focusing on the development of modality and mood during first language acquisition. This overview synthesizes results concerning both early and later phases of development, within and across a large number of languages, and including some more peripheral categories, such as evidentials and tense–aspect markings. Results recurrently show the earlier acquisition of agent-oriented modality as compared to epistemic modality. However, cross-linguistic variation has raised some questions about this acquisition sequence, suggesting that language-specific properties may partially impact timing during acquisition. In addition, findings about later phases show a long developmental process whereby children gradually come to master complex semantic and pragmatic modal distinctions. The discussion highlights the contribution of these conclusions to current theoretical debates, such as the role of input factors and the relation between language and cognition during ontogenesis.


Adeptus ◽  
2013 ◽  
pp. 6-25
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Włodarska

First language acquisition – imitation or innate gift? Analysis based on selected theories of first language acquisition and basic language systemsThis article deals with a surprising phenomenon typical only for human beings – first language acquisition. Its aim is to answer the question as stated in the title. The author, an English teacher working in a nursery school, looks for the answer using references to theories connected with this topic, and in addition, takes into consideration the speech of children she is in charge of. In order to demonstrate the sophisticated nature of human language, the author refers to several definitions of this term. She presents the term ‘mother tongue’ and analyses the ways of acquiring its phonetic, phonological, morphological and syntactic systems by children. She also gives numerous examples of the most common mistakes found in their speech, taken from Polish and English languages. Furthermore, three major theories regarding first language acquisition, presenting the approach of Piaget, Chomsky and Skinner to this phenomenon, are described in the article. The author reaches the conclusion that first language acquisition is a mixture of imitation and innate gift. The role of the physical mechanism enabling a human being to produce speech and that of contact with the language of a child’s parents merits emphasizing also. The result of these factors is the possibility of language acquisition.


2020 ◽  
pp. 026765832092774
Author(s):  
Padraic Monaghan ◽  
Simón Ruiz ◽  
Patrick Rebuschat

First language acquisition is implicit, in that explicit information about the language structure to be learned is not provided to children. Instead, they must acquire both vocabulary and grammar incrementally, by generalizing across multiple situations that eventually enable links between words in utterances and referents in the environment to be established. However, this raises a problem of how vocabulary can be acquired without first knowing the role of the word within the syntax of a sentence. It also raises practical issues about the extent to which different instructional conditions – about grammar in advance of learning or feedback about correct decisions during learning – might influence second language acquisition of implicitly experienced information about the language. In an artificial language learning study, we studied participants learning language from inductive exposure, but under different instructional conditions. Language learners were exposed to complex utterances and complex scenes and had to determine the meaning and the grammar of the language from these co-occurrences with environmental scenes. We found that learning was boosted by explicit feedback, but not by explicit instruction about the grammar of the language, compared to an implicit learning condition. However, the effect of feedback was not general across all aspects of the language. Feedback improved vocabulary, but did not affect syntax learning. We further investigated the local, contextual effects on learning, and found that previous knowledge of vocabulary within an utterance improved learning but that this was driven only by certain grammatical categories in the language. The results have implications for theories of second language learning informed by our understanding of first language acquisition as well as practical implications for learning instruction and optimal, contingent adjustment of learners’ environment during their learning.


2012 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Bowern ◽  
Joyce McDonough ◽  
Katherine Kelliher

Bardi is the northernmost language of the Nyulnyulan family, a non-Pama-Nyungan family of the Western Kimberley region of northwestern Australia. Currently about five people speak the language fluently, but approximately 1,000 people identify as Bardi. The region was settled by Europeans in the 1880s and two missions were founded in Bardi country in the 1890s. Use of the language began declining in the 1930s. Many Bardi people were moved several times between 1940 and 1970, both to other missions dominated by speakers of other Indigenous languages and to local towns such as Derby. This community disruption accelerated the decline of language use in the community and first language acquisition. Bardi is the name of the language variety spoken at One Arm Point. There are two other named mutually intelligible varieties apart from Bardi: Baard and Jawi. The extent of dialect diversity within Bardi is unknown, but does not seem to have been particularly high compared to that between named varieties. The ISO-639 language code is [bcj].


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Edwina De Ruiter

This chapter (in German) describes the milestones of first language acquisition with a focus on German, as well as the role of education in language acquisition, and its relation to literacy acquisition.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dian Rianita ◽  
Hanafi

Preprint - The issue of how children acquire their first language has become noticeable from time to time. There are two dominant mainstreams, which explore the significant background of first language acquisition such as the existence of language acquisition devices and the role of the linguistic input. Both have their arguments to clarify the process of language acquisition. This paper discusses those ideas in which the first language acquisition are explained by the collaboration of two influenced theories since both theories provide the comprehensive analysis regarding the complex process of first language acquisition by a child.


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