Langauge:a
developmental process:
There
are essentially two approaches to account for the acquisition of language. The
first approach assumes that language is learned like other behaviours. The second
approach assumes that language is innate and that no real learning situation is
there or even necessary. We shall see the details of these approaches below. However,
all the theories accept that language is a developmental process in the sense
that there is progressive emergence or learning is intimately linked with the
progressive emergence or the learning is intimately linked with the progressive
emergence of cognitive and physical stabilization, learning or maturity. Some
may tend to view this progressive emergence or the learning of structures that
takes place in the cognitive, physical and linguistic planes in isolation. Some
may not even appreciate the independent status of linguistic maturation. We take
the position, however, that a coordinated and a thoroughly correlated approach,
giving due importance to all the planes, is necessary. We take the position that
a molecular approach alone brings out the totality and the significance of the
processes involved in making the child a separate physical, social and psychological
entity in his own right. To achieve each of these identities, the child needs
the linguistic mechanism, the superior communicative tool available exclusively
to Homo sapiens.
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Correlation between physical, cognitive and linguistic maturations:
The
correlation between the physical, cognitive and linguistic milestones has not
been missed, but the interpretations do differ. Many developmental charts are
available in standard works. Attention may be drawn to developmental schedules
described in Berry (1969) and Lenneberg (1966). The former gives a description
of the progressive emergence of language in children from the first month to the
third year. He also gives a developmental schedule of non-verbal adaptive behaviour
from the first week to the 16th month. The latter gives the correlation that exists
between the physical, cognitive and linguistic maturational milestones.
The one-month old child, according to Berry (1969), responds to sound and shows
reflex smiling to the factile and kinesthetic stimulation and mother's voice.
The cries consist of some segmentable varieties which change in pitch. A two-month
old child attends to the speaking voice and shows signs that he is aware of his
own sounds. In the production side, the child begins his babbling at this stage.
Some speech sounds make their appearances. The child resorts to vocal play. A
three-month old child is aware of visual and auditory stimuli in environment.
The child vocalizes appropriately his feelings. Yet no true speech sounds have
been acquired. In the fourth-month some non-verbal expressive signals are acquired.
The child stretches out his expressive arm in order to be picked out. He is able
to identify the auditory direction-he responds to noise and voice by turning his
head in appropriate direction. In the production side the child continues his
babbling. The utterances produced may consist of four to five syllables. He is
engaged in the production of repetitive sound chain (ba - ba - ba; cha - cha -
cha, etc). He indulges himself in self initiated sound play. The ability to recognize
the direction from which the voice he hears is produced, is further strengthened
when the child is five-months old. The child acquires responses-an oral communicative
chain is established in that now the child responds to angry tone by Babbling
continues and the child imitates his own noises. In the sixth month the child
distinguishes between friendly and angry talk. Utterances with several syllables
are produced; the child tries to repeat heard sound-sequences. He is able to direct
his utterances towards objects. He is able to make appropriate gestures also.
The child uses intonation patterns. In the seventh month the child pays attention
to the speech of persons around him and his family members. He listens to his
own private vocalizations and enjoys imitating sound sequences. He is able to
vocalize emotional satisfaction or dissatisfaction. When eight months old, the
child begins to be alert to all stimuli in the immediate environment. In the production
side, back vowels begin to sound more like speech sounds. The child vocalizes
syllables, interjections and recognition. He copies the intonational contours.
In the ninth month, the child is able to comprehend the rudimentary symbolic gestures
and intonation patterns. He comprehends negation and his own name. The utterances
have a chain of syllables about 3 or 4. The length varies. Echolalia (constant
imitation of sounds of the environment), is the chief characteristic of this month.
Copying of intonation patterns continues. Facial and arm gestures accompany vocalizations.
In the tenth month the child exhibits action response to verbal requests such
as 'where is the book?' He can shake his head to express 'yes' or 'no'. The child
produces utterances attempting to name repeated instances of objects. The imitation
of intonation patterns continues. Many speech sounds clearly can be distinguished.
Several non-speech sounds continue to occur. In the eleventh month the child differentiates
between family and strangers. There is every likelihood of the appearance of first
words in his speech in this month. The single word utterances begin to emerge.
These are used to indicate the needs. When the child is one-year old, he understands
phrases, simple grammatical patterns and responds in action to commands. One-word
sentences are most common.
Between 12 and 18 months, the child understands most linguistic units but does
not separate sequences into word units. He recognizes names of many familiar objects,
persons, and pets. His repertoire consists of about 50 to 75 words out of which
about 50 per cent are nouns. Many words are made by phonetic reduplication. In
the production side, the child begins to use interjectional speech. The child
extends the meaning. The construction is of pivot-open class type. He uses one
word for many unrelated things. He repeats syllables or word sequences in any
easy manner. There is much overflow with little or no phonetic value (laugh, sigh,
etc). The vocal inflection is fair; the pitch is uncontrolled and it tends to
rise.
Between 24 and 30 months, the child does not understand many specific words but
develops functional equivalents of comprehension. There is action response to
verbal request. He sometimes repeats the request and is able to use prepositions
in and under. He listens to simple stories, especially linking those he has heard
before. Of the total response, nouns continue to be more in number, followed by
verbs, pronouns and adverbs. Unclassified items continue to occur in large number.
From 1.5 word mean length sentence in the earlier stage, we now have a mean length
of 1.8 word in a sentence. Egocentric and socialized speech are found to occur.
The meaning extension continues. The child names and describes objects. The transformations
seem to be used. All vowels and many consonants are clearly used. Adjectives and
adverbs gain steadily at the expense of interjections. There continues to be omission
of syllables when compared to adult speech.
Between 30 and 36 months the comprehension of sentence structure, syllable sequences
and prosody develops speedily. The child comprehends time words and identifies
actions in pictures. He can listen to longer stories. He understands the semantic
difference in subject-object position of noun. His egocentric speech continues.
He can give his full name. He can recite independent improvisation of syntactic
form. Pronunciation of words continues to be unstable.
Lenneberg (1966) identifies the simultaneous development of language and motor
coordination. There is a progressive maturation of motor abilities and this progressive
maturation of motor abilities is correlated with the maturation of linguistic
abilities. The child's initial coos and chuckles at a period of first four months
are his first initiation into vocalization and use of language. At this period
the child is initiated into certain stabilization of motor habits such as self
supporting of head leading to the elimination of tonic neck reflex. At six to
nine months the child is engaged in babbling and reduplication of sounds. At this
stage, on the motor development plane, the child sits alone and has his first
thumb opposition of grasp. At 12 or 18 months, a small number of "words"
follows simple commands and responds to "no". At this crucial linguistic
stage the child can stand momentarily alone. He creeps, walks sideways when holding
on to a railing and takes a few steps when held by hands. The important first
steps for the use of bipedal mechanism are seen in this stage. In the period from
18 to 21 months the child's stock of 20 words increases to 200 words at the 21st
month. The child points to many more objects, comprehends simple questions and
forms two-word phrases. At the motor level the stance is now fully developed.
The gait is stiff, propulsive and precipitated. At 24 to 27 months , the vocabulary
stocks is about 300 to 400 words. The child has two-to three-word phrases. He
uses prepositions and pronouns. The child at this age walks up and down easily
and with one foot forward. The child runs but falls when making a sudden turn.
He can quickly alternate between stance, kneeling or sitting positions. At 30
to 33 months period fastest increase in vocabulary is noticed. Three-to four-word
sentences are common. Word order, phrase structure, and grammatical agreement
begin to be more like those of adult speech. There is now good hand and finger
coordination. The child exhibits improved manipulation of objects. At 36 to 39
months, the child has a vocabulary of 1000 words or more. He has well formed sentences
using complex grammatical rules, but certain rules have not yet been fully mastered.
Grammatical mistakes are much less frequent. He is able to understand about 90
percent of what is told to him. In the motor level, the child has ability to run
smoothly with acceleration and deceleration. He negotiates sharp and fast curves
without difficulty and stands on one foot for a few seconds.
Lenneberg identifies certain correlations of linguistic and motor maturational
milestones with effects of acquired lateralized lesions in the brain, with physical
maturation of the Central Nervous System, with laleralization of function in the
brain hemispheres. About 60 to 70 percent of development course in the physical
maturation of the Central Nervous System is accomplished when the child is about
20 months old. At this stage no lateralization trend is noticed in the brain hemispheres.
Both hemispheres have perfect equipotentiality. At 21 to 36 months hand preference
emerges. The left hemisphere of the brain begins to become dominant toward the
end of the period. But until then there is no cortical specialization with regard
to language. Additional maturation processes in the Central Nervous System go
very slow between 3 and 10 years. Now the cerebral dominance is established and
yet the right hemisphere continues to be used for speech. Between 11 and 14 years
cerebral dominance is firmly established. In about 97 percent of population language
is definitely lateralized to the left.
The correlations between the physiological and cognitive milestones in the maturational
history of a child lead several scholars (Lenneberg 1964, 1966 and 1967) to argue
that there might be biological endowments in man that make the human form of communication
uniquely possible for our species and in this sense language is innate. This conclusion
of Lenneberg and others is not shared by several scholars, especially by the students
of stimulus -response (S-R) theory of behaviour. The field as a whole is governed
by certain basic notions which characteristically determine the interpretation
of the evidence available to us.
In
this essay we will first present some of the major facts of language acquisition
which find recognition in widely different approaches to the problem. After this
we present a short sketch of methods employed in studies on language acquisition,
before delineating some of the different approaches in the study of language acquisition.
After this we present some aspects of the acquisition of second language.
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Some characteristics of language acquisition process:
A remarkable fact about the acquisition of language is the speed with which a
child is able to acquire a language. Language is a complex phenomenon and a normal
child masters this exceedingly complex phenomenon with an astonishing speed and
in circumstances usually less tan ideal. The speed of language acquisition is
not conditioned by the socio-economic environment in which a child starts acquiring
language nor is it conditioned by the history, culture or even the complexity
of the language which is being acquired by the child. Furthermore the span of
time required by a child for acquiring a language is found to be more or less
the same. Within a linguistic group normal children arrive at the same grammar
of a language within a broadly identical brief span of time with almost the same
speed.
There is not much of conscious education given to the children on the part of
the parents. The situation obtaining between a child and his parents is far from
a learning or instructional one. Usually parents do not tend to correct the 'defects'
in the formal features of early speech by children. The 'defects' are rather relished
by the parents. We tend to correct mistakes in truth value. We tend to 'reinforce'
the children's speech guided mainly by its content. In addition to this, a child
encounters different samples of language, some or most of which need not be grammatical
or coherent. In spite of these, normal children all around the world from diverse
linguistic families acquire their language in three to four years.
A
precondition for language acquisition seems to be that the meaning of utterances
to which a child is exposed be obvious. The non-linguistic events referred to
by the adult through the utterance should be simple so that the same can be matched
with what is said. The syntax of speech addressed to children is also simple.
The adults seem at times to imitate child speech in their efforts to simplify
the structures of speech to suit the level of skill achievement by children.
When we look into the child speech we find that it has the characteristics of
imitation and even at times rote learning. But it is the productive characteristic
that plays the dominant role throughout. Children fail usually in their attempts
to imitate adult speech in the beginning of syntactic development. They are more
successful in spontaneously producing the sentences. Further a child becomes capable
of putting the structures he has already acquired into use in increasingly novel
ways. Many utterances may be regular from the syntactic sense but semantically
they are novel and have not been uttered either by parents or by the child himself.
The utterances of a child are structured almost form the beginning. The combination
of words and parts of words I child speech are systematic and not random as many
of us would imagine them to be. They tend to be highly regular and soon take on
a hierarchical structure which is however yet to become as elaborate as the adult
speech. In fact, structures of child speech change in the course of development
and need not correspond to adult structure.
Children around the world seem to start with a single word and go from one-word
stage to a two-word stage. It is common knowledge, however, that children understand
more than what they can speak in the beginning. (It is true also of subsequent
stages and perhaps carried throughout adulthood).
The child's single-word utterances are preceded by the development of a remarkable
comprehending capacity. Some scholars believe that the child's single-word utterances
seem to function as one-word sentences before the development of syntax. The child
names the salient features of an object he wants or recognizes. Very soon the
single-word stage gives place to the two-word stage and this enables us to speculate
about the child's underlying grammatical knowledge as to whether there are any
formal regularities in the structure of utterances.
The two-word stage does not seem to be a universal phenomenon and happens to be
a very brief stage wherever it is found. In this stage, one set of words occupies
some fixed position and the other forms some sort of an open class to which new
words are added. That is, distributionally defined word classes begin to emerge
at this stage.
The three-word stage brings in immediate constituents with structured units. Word
classes begin to emerge clearly and a number of them can be clearly defined and
separated on the basis of distribution. Constituent phrases begin to emerge with
an increase in complexity. The limitation to the length of sentences seem to fade
out slowly at this stage. Further the child's grammar increases in complexity,
variety and potential length of sentences and the length ceiling slowly disappears.
It seems that the acquisition of ability to produce compounds and subordinate
clauses most radically changes the maximum length, and as a result indefinitely
long strings of compounds and appropriate branching of sentences on the right
or the left are possible. Although the child's language consists of deviant utterances,
wrong inflection and overgeneralizations of rules (correct forms may be driven
out due to overgeneralizations), the patterns so far acquired by the child expand
without loss. Furthermore, the properties of the structural slots also become
stable. Last, but not the least, the child's language exhibits overtly the conceptual
basis when morphological aspects are further acquired.
As we said above, children understand more than what they speak from the beginning.
The constituent analysis of words at the two- and three-word stages do not really
reveal everything known to the child. The child seems to know more relations than
those exhibited in sentences. If we restrict ourselves to a formal analysis of
child's speech only we would fail to identify the complexity of relations in the
speech. A two-word utterance consisting of one noun followed by the other represents
conjunction, possession, agent-patient, attribution and location, etc. These relations
expressed by the occurrence of one noun followed by the other shows an awareness
of some of the possibilities for combining lexical items with different relationships
between linguistic elements. The child's ability to systematize the linguistic
data is well beyond what he produces in his speech. In acquiring a language all
the efforts of the child do not usually manifest on the surface. Further, what
young children say and do is usually related to what they do and see. The delayed
speech which is characteristic of adult speech is not prominent in the early stages.
Mention should be made also of the egocentric speech which seems to play a crucial
role in shaping the thought processes.
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Methods for collection and analysis of data :
The methods used in the description of adult speech are generally followed in
the investigation of child speech. However, suitable modifications are made as
children cannot be treated as adult informants. A tape recorder is always used
for the recording of children's speech and it is generally hidden somewhere so
that normal flow of speech is not interrupted. A child is allowed to follow his
pursuits. The utterances which the child emits during his pursuits are thus recorded
on tape for analysis. The investigator compiles the data and transcribes it is
phonetic script.
At the phonological level, the investigator has to note two characteristics. The
child speech has more free variation of sounds than we find in adult speech. This
free variation reflects the ongoing process the child is engaged in to discriminate
and stabilize the distribution of sounds. In other words the child is in the process
of acquiring a speech similar to that of the adult and free variations occur as
part of his efforts to match his speech with that of the adult. The investigator
notes the free variation of sounds and compares the words with each other to determine
contrasts of sounds/distribution of sounds in various utterance positions. Related
to this difficulty is the child's limited vocabulary which does not help us to
identify appropriate minimal or analogous pairs. The second characteristic is
that child speech changes rapidly. As a consequence, constant observation is necessary
to identify the development. Most of the vocabulary items are to be caught on
the run, and we need more observations of utterances to determine the range of
free variation.
The knowledge of the adult system comes in handy here. Children's speech may be
taken as a reflection of the partial knowledge of the particular adult speech
to which the child is exposed. Hence, an investigator tries to identify the extent
of adult rules found in child speech. Further, the limited structure and the vocabulary
which are manifest in the child speech can be assigned to various classes generally
only when we make a reference to the adult system. This is due mainly to the fact
that the vocabulary of child speech does not occur in enough contexts. This does
not mean that out investigation of child speech should be based wholly on the
adult speech. The child speech has its own frame work and there are difficult
cases which should be analyzed according to the possible correspondences with
the adult speech. One must work for the internal relations and where internal
relations fail to throw light on the structure one may make reference to the adult
system.
A popular and yet a more reliable method followed in the investigation of child
speech is the analysis of text materials. For this the first step is that one
must establish the domain of the material to be analysed. Language has discrete
units and these discrete units must be identified in child speech. Decision as
to whether a particular stretch is a sentence or not is based usually on common
sense and no explicit criterion is ever presented or holds good in all the cases.
Junctures play an important role in identifying what we usually call a sentence.
The morphological segmentation is carried out on the basis of adult speech. The
patterns of syntactic construction are also considered from the point of view
of adult speech. The deviations if any would be considered as a faltering step
in child's effort to approximate adult speech. Deviations are few and corrected
early and easily. The mechanisms involved in the correction of deviations would
also form part of our study.
The second step in the analysis of text material is the identification of units.
The distributional characteristics of units found in an utterance get corroborated
in other utterances. However, we should not treat utterances in a text material
as unrelated. In order to minimize this possibility, we must formulate and describe
each adjacent stage on the one hand and identify the contexts in which the sentences
are uttered on the other hand. In fact the use of contexts helps us to identify
varying grammatical and/or the semantic relations expressed by a particular utterance.
Imitation may be used as a technique for identifying the capability. The investigators
may give a word from adult speech and ask the child to imitate it to find out
the phonemic distinctions a child is capable of making. For instance, to find
out whether a child reared in Tamil environment is at the given time capable of
distinguishing between an alveolar nasal and a retroflex nasal as exemplified
in adult speech, we may give two words having the two nasals in a contrasting
position, etc. If the child can imitate these words correctly making a distinction
between alveolar and retroflex nasals, we may conclude that at least in the given
positions the child is capable of discriminating the two sounds. The same technique
may be extended to identify the extent of adult phonological structure acquired
by the child. When we present to the child a new word with the required adult
phonological structure, we may find that the child has not acquired certain combinations
of sounds or that certain sounds are not used in certain positions. This technique
may be used even to find out the stage in which the child is placed in the acquisition
of affixes and other morphological processes. We may even teach the child a new
word or a structure and observe the shape which he gives to the new word or structure.
Eliciting techniques also can be used in the investigation of child speech. We
may present to the child real or pictorial materials showing objects, qualities
or events. We may associate with each item a spoken text eliciting the required
information. If non-lexical items are given to the picture or the material which
is presented along with the spoken text, the influence of rote learning may be
minimized and the inflections or derivations may be elicited. Several tests such
as Berry and Talbott's Exploratory Test of Grammar (1966) which employ nonsense
words in the context of real words to test morphological and syntactic knowledge
are available. Such tests may be used for the identification of the stage of language
development. Care should be taken to design the test in such a way as to elicit
particular derivations or inflections. Testing techniques may also be used to
identify the level of acquisition of language. These tests may be designed in
such a way that obeying an instruction is linked with the production of a particular
construction. Recognition of a picture depicting quality or event etc., correctly
may also indicate comprehension. In al these cases we should take care that the
responses can occur only through the grasp of the grammatical structure. The eliciting
and testing techniques become effective only when a sufficient command of syntax
to understand the spoken instruction is attained by the children.
Braine (1971a) suggests identifying what he calls replacement sequence in children's
speech. We find in children's speech many sets of utterances which are related
to each other in meaning as well as structure. In these utterances we find an
attempt on the part of the child to build up a more complex form slowly. The longer
utterances are found to occur earlier than the longer ones in a chronological
sense. The replacement sequences may be taken as a sort of free variation. These
sequences provide information also on subordination relations. Braine suggests
that a careful analysis of replacement sequences in child speech may 'distinguish
components present in the shortest utterances and presumably essential for the
child from apparently less essential components added in the longer utterances.'
We may even identify the emergence of transformation through an analysis of replacement
sequences.
An important point the investigator of child speech should bear in mind is that
he is able to get only limited data. In spite of this limited nature of his data,
the investigator must aim at a description of the data that accounts for the competence
of the child. The description must characterize the present state and indicate
the ongoing processes that would ultimately connect the present state with the
adult speech. If we restrict ourselves to a static description of the state and
fail to account for the emerging competence, our study would be pointless in its
scope and aim.
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Interpretation
of the characteristics : Models
The
characteristics o child speech given in sections 1.2 and 1.3 are explained in
several ways by scholars depending upon their theoretical basis. These approaches
may be roughly put into two broad categories, namely, generative transformational
theory and S-R theory as represented more effectively by Arthur Staats. We should,
however, rush to caution our readers that within and apart from these two rather
polarized approaches, we have several others represented by scholars like Palermo,
Schlesinger and Braine. We present below the generative grammarian's approach
to language acquisition is made possible by the criticisms of the same with alternative
proposals from Staats,braine and others.
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The Chomskyan Model:
The
generative grammarians find that the actual speech to which a child is exposed
does not show off the deep structures of sentences. Nobody gives programmatic
steps for deriving one sentence from the other, which could act as model. The
deep in the sentences actually spoken. In fact they are inaccessible to any one
who does not already know the language or is not equipped with a device to analyze
the data one encounters. Every child faces this seemingly insurmountable difficulty
and yet overcomes the same. This forces the generative grammarian to eliminate
the stimulus-response theories as inadequate to explain language acquisition.
For, we are neither in a position to specify the stimulus nor are we in a position
to anticipate the response.
deep and abstract from a formal point of view. Many of the concepts and principles
of this theory are related to experience through chains of unconscious and quasi-inferential
steps. The child is predisposed to acquire the language and if he were not predisposed
the child would have immense difficulty in acquiring his language against all
sorts of odds. These disadvantages the child faces in acquiring his native language
include the degenerate quality and narrowly limited extent of the available data.
Further the character of the complex grammar that is acquired, the resultant uniformity
in the grammar used by children of a community independent of intelligence, motivation,
emotional state and wide ranges of socioeconomic variation all indicate that the
acquisition achieved in a remarkably short duration is made possible because the
child is predisposed as to the general character of the language phenomenon. Acquisition
of natural language by a child is inevitable and cannot be stopped. A child cannot
help constructing his grammar to account for the data presented to him just as
he cannot help perceiving differences between solid and non-solid objects or between
line and angle. The general features of the language structure should be considered
as reflecting the general character of one's capacity to acquire knowledge. Language
acquisition is intimately connected with the acquisition of early knowledge.
Chomsky finds that the existing learning theories do not adequately characterize
the language acquisition. Some claim that language is taught by conditioning or
by drill. Structural linguists claim that language is learned/built up by elementary
data processing procedures. They all agree that linguistic structures acquired
by children are independent of innate mental faculties. If any innate property
is accepted, it is only the procedures and mechanisms for the acquisition of knowledge
and not of language that constitute the innate property of the mind. The learning
theories based on empiricist approach ascribe only certain elementary peripheral
processing mechanisms for the structure of any acquisition device they may posit.
These properties include an innate quality space with an innate distance defined
on it (Quine 1960: 80), a set of primitive unconditioned reflexes (Hull 1943),
aurally distinguishable components of the full auditory impressions (Bloch 1950).
The device is assumed also to have elementary inductive principles of association
and weak principles of generalization. It is assumed to use taxonomic principles
of segmentation and classification of linguistic elements. It is also assumed
that a preliminary analysis of experience is provided by the peripheral processing
mechanisms. The concepts and knowledge are assumed to be acquired by the application
of the available inductive principles.
In contrast to the above approach the generative grammarian takes the position
that learning is largely a matter of drawing out what is innate in his mind. 'The
general form of a system of knowledge is fixed in advance as a disposition of
the mind and the function of experience is to cause this general schematic structure
to be realized and more fully differentiated' (Chomsky 1965: 51-52).
In the above background, the generative grammarian emphasizes that 'a child who
is capable of language learning must have-
i)
a technique for representing input signals,
ii) a way of representing structural
information about these signals,
iii) some initial delimitation of a class
of possible hypothesis about language structure,
iv) a method for determining
what each such hypothesis implies with respect to each sentence and
v) a method
for selecting one of the (personally, infinitely many) hypothesis that are allowed
by (iii) and compatible with the given primary linguistic data' (Chomsky 1965
: 30).
The emphasis on 'innate ideas' does not minimize the importance of exposure to
language in real-life situations. We need exposure to this data and experience
'in order to' the language acquisition device into operation', although such an
exposure may not affect the manner of its functioning in the least. Such data
enable the child to determine as to which of the possible languages (that is,
the languages provided with grammars in accordance with a prior constraint (iii)
he is being exposed.
In a nutshell, language acquisition, from the point of view of the generative
grammar, is considered as a process of implicit theory construction. But in this
theory construction, there is no conscious and explicit intellectual operation.
The child proposes linguistic hypothesis suggesting rules for sentences he is
hearing. He makes predictions from these hypothesis about the possible linguistic
structures in the language to which he is exposed. He verifies these hypotheses
against the new sentences he encounters. In this process he continues to modify
his hypothesis that are contrary to the evidence. The hypothesis that are not
eliminated are evaluated using a simplicity principle. The simplest of the hypothesis
is thus selected as the best concerning the rules underlying the sentences he
has heard and will hear. The child is engaged in the process of hypothesis construction,
verification and evaluation which 'repeats itself until the child matures past
the point where the language acquisition device operates' (Katz 1966 : 275).
The generative grammarians take the universal categories and relations as linguistics
abstractions. These are available to the child as innate ideas. The instant availability
of universal aspects enables a child to discover the relations that exist between
the sentences actually spoken. 'Various formal and substantive universals are
intrinsic properties of the language acquisition system, these providing a scheme
that is applied to data and that determines in a highly restricted way the general
form and in part even the substantive features of the grammar that may emerge
upon presentation of appropriate data'. The child 'approaches the data with the
presumption that they are drawn from a language of antecedently well defined type,
his problem being to determine which of the (humanly) possible languages is that
of the community in which he is placed' (Chomsky 1965 : 27). From the point of
view of generative grammarian language acquisition is not possible if children
were not endowed with specification of the possibility of features of all languages.
The discovery of transformational relations is a corner stone in the acquisition
of language. The transformations of a particular language are in general idiosyncratic.
But the types of relations between deep and surface structures are not considered
to be idiosyncratic. The acquisition of transformations accelerates the speed
with which a language is acquired. It is found, however, that the very early speech
of a child is free of explicit transformations. Even at the two-word stage the
occurrence of transformations is not explicit. This does not mean that the one-word
and two-word stages are to be taken as a direct manifestation of the universal
categories of deep structure of sentences endowed in children. For, even an apparently
simple two-word utterance can express deeper relations. Thus, basic grammatical
relations cannot be, however, learned from a corpus of sentences. They cannot
be associated with particular words or categories. The existence of a hierarchy
of grammatical categories and the resultant functions and rigidity in order can
be identified only when we have more than one word occurring in an utterance.
The single word utterance is recognized as a quick transitory stage. In the stage
in which more than one word occurs in an utterance, the components fall in an
order which quickly comes to be preserved. It is found that this order reflects
underlying grammatical relations even in earliest patterned speech. This emergence
of order lends itself to further refinements establishing a hierarchy of grammatical
categories.
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The
S-R Model of Arthur Staats :
A vigorous forceful criticism of generative grammarian's approach to language
acquisition is presented by Arthur Staats (1968, 1971 a, b). Staats considers
that an individual's language is composed of repertoires of skills that he must
learn. These repertoires are learned according to different principles. The repertoire
of speech responses is learned on the basis of instrumental conditioning. Classical
conditioning is the principle by which large numbers of words come to elicit emotional
responses. The theory of language must indicate the various repertoires which
constitute a language, the learning principles which help the acquisition of particular
repertoires and the manner by which language functions in the individual adjustment
with the world at large.
Staats claims that the determinants of language behaviour can be found either
in learning circumstances or in biological events and not in the behaviour itself.
In general, explanation of behaviour cannot be drawn only from the observations
of behaviour. Information about the behaviour itself (here language) does not
provide evidence of internal structures or processes. The linguistic descriptions
and observations are very useful in specifying the behaviour which should be accounted
for in any theory concerning language learning or in explanatory psychological
theory. But a systematic description or the units of description by themselves
do not provide the determinants of language behaviour. The crux of the problem
is to fix the independent variables (causative conditions) that bring forth the
behavioural development. A theory proposing a biological determinant for language
such as the one propounded by Chomsky, Lenneberg and others will be tenable only
when the biological events supposedly connected with language acquisition are
isolated, and the laws by which they produce the complex behaviours established.
Hence 'until observations are made of manipulable biological events that actually
produce language development a biological theory based upon linguistic observations
must remain the weakest of hypothesis'.
Staats finds that linguists' observation of language is limited in scope. Many
linguistic approaches including that of Chomsky are restricted to only one aspect
of language, namely, the description of grammar within and between languages and
the way the rules are involved in predicting grammatical utterances. The repertoires
that constitute the language are not dealt with in these approaches. Thus a theory
of language acquisition based on the linguists' description is bound to be narrow
in scope and would fail to appreciate the many sided splendour.
Staats claims that the first step in research on language learning is to suggest
tentatively the S-R mechanisms that appear to be involved. The S-R analyses suggest
empirical hypothesis by which one may test and extend analysis. If this were not
the case, we cannot contribute anything as grammatical relations cannot be described
until the child makes multiple word utterances. Because of this inherent limitation,
linguists are compelled to ignore the language development and function prior
to two-word utterance. The two- and multiple-word stages can be easily accounted
under instrumental conditioning principles.
Staats posits another conditioning called instrumental higher order conditioning
to account for the manner in which a discriminative stimulus transfers its control
to other potential discriminative stimuli with which it is paired in a process.
This instrumental higher order conditioning is responsible for assigning proper
grammatical relations/categories to the novel items encountered by the child.
This higher order conditioning helps the generic classification of categories
also. The above processes prove convincingly that the child's system consists
of the S-R mechanisms like that of the adults.
The child is involved in a very complex training task in his acquisition of language.
He may acquire the irregular forms as they are and use them correctly. This correct
use of irregular forms in English slips into incorrect use once the child is in
the process of stabilizing the acquisition of pattern of regular inflection in
the language. At a later stage the child returns to the correct use of irregular
forms. Further we find that when two sequences of verbal responses occur together
on a number of occasions, they become a unitary response. This depends on the
conditioning experience the child undergoes and is marked by hesitations and errors,
etc. Thus individual words are acquired in many cases as separate syllables. Repeated
training makes them into wholesome words, into individual units.
The
parents and the people in the environment to which a child is exposed do their
best in enabling the child in his complex training task. As a proof of this, Staats
claims that the adult speaks differently to a child than to an adult. The adult
changes his speech and makes it appropriate to the child's skill development.
He uses mainly one word or simple utterances while speaking to infants. When a
child looks at a doll, the child's parent says (repeats) doll, doll and this enables
the child to associate the word doll with the object doll. This process of naming
an object or events as the child experiences the object or event continues even
at stages later than the one-word stage. This training enables the child to acquire
a repertoire of specified and basic words before he goes over to the acquisition
of other types of words. A progression from single word utterances to standard
sentence production is achieved through the training. This progression is characterized
by the emergence of telegraphic speech type of utterances in the intermediate
stages. It is found also that the adults while speaking to children indulge themselves
in telegraphic speech which helps the child in his progression to the production
of standard sentences.
The emission of a sentence is controlled by a number of stimulus events which
include word associations and the words an individual has already emitted as part
of an utterance. But this does not complete the picture. While a sentence is in
the process of production, some partly or totally new stimuli can influence the
speaker and this explains the change an individual makes many a time in mid-sentence.
Likewise, embedding of sentences, taken as a crucial characteristic of creativity
by the generative grammarians, can be explained by S-R mechanism. A new external
stimulus occurs while the production of a sentence is half way through. This evokes
a previously learned phrase which then occurs within the sentence. The fact that
embedding of phrases occurs only in points that would be considered grammatical
is also due to conditioning mechanisms. Further the fact that such embedded phrases
happen to be grammatical is dependent upon the individual's training.
Refuting the claim that language is innate and universal aspects of human languages
are due to common innate ideas, Staats (1971a: 141-42) claims that these aspects
are due to the fact that 'language is learned in response to the features and
principles of the world in which man lives. One would expect considerable similarity
in the features and principles of different languages in areas in which the language
must be isomorphic with the features and principles of the world…. Languages
should have commonalities in their terms because the different languages have
evolved to be isomorphic with the same world of events…. These events follow
the same physical, chemical, biological and psychological (learning) laws everywhere'.
Thus there is noting innate about the universals of language.
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Braine's
model of language acquisition:
Another forceful criticism of Chomskyan model comes from Braine (1971a, b), who
finds the Chomskyan model to be an active process of formulating and testing hypothesis
about the language being learned. That is, the Chomskyan model consists of a process
for testing and evaluating hypothetical grammars against the input data. The problem
of the child is to find out the correct (and by far the simplest) grammar of the
language to which he is exposed, on the basis of information already available
to him. Thus, a child cannot achieve his goal unless he has access to information
about both what is and what is not a correct sentence. The input data the child
hears are not marked clearly for their correctness or otherwise to enable the
child to distinguish the correct sentences from the incorrect ones. As such the
child, if we agree to the Chomskyan model, will not be in a position to test and
evaluate hypothetical grammars on the basis of input data and as a consequence
would fail to acquire language. Braine finds that this is not the case and that
the child learns language even without information as to whether a particular
utterance to which he is being exposed is grammatical or not. There is none to
guide and correct the infants in the real sense.
The above situation forces Braine to suggest an alternative model of language
acquisition. This model has two principal components: a scanner which receives
the input sentences and a memory component which accumulates the features of sentences
notices by the scanner. The memory component consists of an ordered series of
intermediate memory stores. The last of these stores is the permanent memory store
which contains the rules or pattern properties learned finally. When the data
are presented, the scanner scans each input sentence, observes the pattern properties
of the sentences and registers these in an intermediate store. When further data
are presented to the scanner, properties observed in the input data would be compared
with the properties already listed in the intermediate stores. The properties
which are encountered for the first time and hence not recorded already in the
intermediate stores would be recorded in the first intermediate store. When a
property noted by the scanner is the same and is listed already in an intermediate
store, this property will move to the next intermediate store in the sequence.
The recurring properties in the data thus move from one intermediate store to
the other depending upon the recurrences and finally reach the permanent store.
Once the property reaches the permanent store its registration on the intermediate
store will be erased. The scanner has direct access to the information in the
permanent store. Once the permanent store contains some information received through
the intermediate stores, the scanner's analytic frame will be activized to make
a preliminary analysis of incoming strings on the basis of its partial knowledge
of the input corpus. The scanner incorporates a recognition routine as its first
scanning step. The information already learned and available to the scanner from
the permanent store about the structure of short strings will be used to group
the elements of longer strings. This would result in recording the longer strings
the child is exposed to as being composed of shorter strings. If any change in
the strings is presented (due to transformations, etc.) the pattern properties
of such strings would be recorded as deviations from already learned properties.
This model is expected to (but no provision is made for this in the frame) build
up a small vocabulary at first and then to begin to register the structure of
short strings containing the elements already familiar to it. Then the model would
begin to analyze the longer strings into shorter ones. Thus in the acquisition
of grammar the single lexical items and short phrases form the basis. The model
assumes that a wide range of properties of sentences may be built directly into
the scanning mechanism itself. These properties would include temporal relations
and semantic properties associated with the child's perceptual and concept learning
mechanisms. The scanner is expected to mark pattern properties as phonological,
semantic, etc., thus ensuring the grouping of rules according to levels. The scanner
will provide also for cross-references between rules. Further, the scanner will
learn the order of rules and order of occurrences of pattern properties directly
from the input strings, compare them with the properties already learned and register
them as alterations of already learned structures in cases where transformations
play a role in the sentences encountered. Thus the characteristics demanded of
the language acquisition device by Chomskyan model can be accounted for without
making the model a testing and evaluating mechanism as suggested by Chomsky.
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Schlesinger's model of language acquisition:
Schlesinger (1971) proposes yet another model which may be termed as performance
model. When a speaker is programmed in a manner described by the Chomskyan model,
he will produce grammatical utterances of the language. But this does not provide
an adequate description of what the speaker really does so far as it restricts
itself only to the specification of processes involved in the production of grammatical
sentences. I reality, a speaker produces not only a grammatical utterance but
also an utterance appropriate to the occasion, his condition, etc. The speaker
has certain intentions and he realizes these intentions in his speech. Thus Schlesinger's
model incorporates a grammar mechanism which provides for these intentions as
well. The following are the steps which the grammar takes up (Schlesinger 1971
: 65):
i)
'The "Grammar Mechanism" produces a candidate for an utterance (i.e.,
a construct, which the speaker is not necessarily conscious of, and which represents
the last step before the utterance is realized in speech).
ii) This candidate
for an utterance is compared with the speaker's intentions.
iii) If the match
is not good enough, the information for this comparison is used to arrive at a
satisfactory utterance by a series of successive approximations.
It is assumed that speaker's intentions guide the grammar mechanism from the start.
However, our experience shows clearly that not all our intentions find expression
in our speech. Some may be drastically modified and some may not be found at all
in the speech. Hence we shall concern ourselves only with those intentions of
speakers which are converted into the output sentence.
Schlesinger uses the term Input Marker (I marker) for the formalized representation
of speaker's intentions as shown in the output. These markers are not, however,
taken as the replica of speaker's intentions. What the speaker intends to convey
are the relations are included in the Input Marker. These Input Markers represent
universal semantic relations. The realizations rules (presumably based on the
input data to which the child is exposed) convert the Input Markers into utterances.
Unlike the Chomskyan model which posits retrieving an appropriate Phrase Marker
before the realization of actual utterances, the present model demands that the
child learns the correspondence between Input Markers and the utterances of persons
in his environment. The child learns to associate the Input Marker representing
the situation with the utterance he hears.
The child is assumed to have an innate cognitive capacity and this innate cognitive
capacity is 'just the way the child views the world and will be the same whether
he learns to speak, or fails to learn to speak due to some organic or environmental
handicap'. There is nothing specifically linguistic about the capacity. Further
the Input Markers are only concepts falling within the capacity which are not
specified for the grammatical category. It is the realization rules (which are
linguistic universals), which determine the category in which the concept appears
in the utterance.
There are two kinds of realization rules, namely, position rules and category
rules. The position rule accords a position to each concept founding the Input
Marker in the utterance. The category rules determine the grammatical category
appropriate in an utterance on the basis of examples from the adult speech. The
child learns from the adult speech as to how words are placed relative to each
other resulting in modifying relations. The category rule is generally based on
word classes obtaining in adult speech. Schlesinger is of the opinion that the
word classes are learned as stimulus response equivalents. As the category rules
are learned as stimulus response equivalents. As the category rules are language
specific and thus are dependent upon adult speech, they must be assumed to have
been acquired after position rules. Schlesinger claims that meanings come first
in the form of Input Markers and later the child learns how these are realized
in linguistic form.
Now, in conclusion, we would point out that although the models suggested above
differ from each other in several ways, the problem they try to account for remains
the same. The investigator has to characterize and specify first of all the input
to children. He should find ways to control the input. He should also discover
the structures and processes that help the child to withstand each stage of change,
and progress towards the form and function of adult speech which is the common
code for all. The investigator should find out how the structures and processes
are assumed to be different features of the input. In all these, the investigator
can manipulate only the input and not the structures and processes undergone by
the child while acquiring a language. The latter are essentially inferential by
nature and as a consequence is a matter for dispute until a convincing basis is
found for them in biology. However, advances in the study of acquisition of language
need not wait for break-through in biological research. The scholars who study
child speech must take into account the contexts in which the acquisition takes
place. The child development studies have done this earlier in characterizing
cognitive development of children. We must take into account not only the utterances
of the child but also the utterances and other communication modes the adults
employ in their communication with the child, the activity in which the child
is engaged at the moment he gave vent to his ideas through the utterance and other
communication modes are expressed by the child. We must also note that though
the basic structures of a language may have been acquired by a child around the
fourth year of his age, the child, or for that matter, every human being, is involved
in a process of acquisition all through his life and that it will be a useful
endeavour to include this information also in our study of acquisition of language.
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Aspects of second language acquisition :
First
language versus second language acquisition:
Except in some special cases, the majority learn the languages other than their
first acquired language in instructional situations. Some, because of the special
circumstances they are in, pickup a second language in the same way they learned
their first language. It is but natural that even in these situations the processes
of learning the first language and the capacity that goes into the learning are
made use of by the second language learners. In fact some scholars do not distinguish
between the first and the second language acquisition in terms of the theoretical
assumptions of the processes involved, except for the special circumstances in
which the second language learning takes place. The theories of first language
acquisition are extended to cover the second language learning. Hence we have
a variety of theories accounting for the acquisition of second languages based
on their corresponding theory of the first language acquisition. These theories
in their turn are part of the learning theories proposed for all the spheres of
learning. The strategies adopted in the teaching of the second languages and the
plan and quality of materials to which the second language learners are exposed
also depend upon the assumption as to how one acquires a second language. Here
we propose to present only the salient features of the learning theories taken
together. We will present, thus, two kinds of assumptions and strategies for language
learning and teaching - one from the cluster of theories which emphasize habit
formation and the other which emphasizes the rule-governed behaviour and creativity.
How wonderful and how complex is the acquisition of language! And how easily does
the child acquire his first language. He is exposed to thousands of different
sounds with variation in quality, pitch, length and loudness. But he restricts
himself to the acquisition of the few, the significant sounds with their patterns
of occurrence, and to the acquisition of the language system, the processes of
word and sentence formation. He does imitate and yet he is capable of producing
something uttered never before. In a second language learning situation the learner
does not go through the several stages of first language acquisition such as babbling,
single, double and multiple word utterances. What we have is a conscious effort
or attempt in learning another language. The learner of a second language knows
already another language and, thus, he is in a position to communicate with appropriate
content in majority of the cases. His problem is to express this content through
the use of the norm of the structures of the second language in an appropriate
manner. An adult second language learner acquires a conscious knowledge of the
rules of the second language and more often than not compares the rules of the
second language with those of his native language. Further a child acquires his
first language while attempting to use it. An adult learns his second language
in a situation that may not fully match the situation of use. The teacher breaks
the whole into bits and exposes his students to the materials usually controlled
on the basis of the assumptions of the theory he follows in the class. In spite
of such conscious efforts on the part of the teacher and the student which involve
trial and error, rote memory, imitation, association and analogy, there is a large
element of unconscious processing of the data by the student. Furthermore, an
adult may have the knowledge of the rules; yet he commits mistakes, thereby illustrating
that knowledge of rules and their use are different.
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Language propensity in children and adults :
It is common knowledge that a child is more at ease in learning a second language
than the adolescent or the adult. It is also common knowledge that the adolescent
and the adult have more superior intellectual powers than a child. The adult is
conscious and aware of the potential of the rules he may learn in the class, but
his performance is, to say the least, fault in the beginning. Does it mean that
children have more language propensity which is lost slowly when they attain maturity?
There are several explanations given in this record. We shall consider some of
these a moment later. We will only bear in mind that the instructional situation
with its attendant adult techniques and capacities are not really necessary to
learn a language because we see children learning second languages more efficiently
and effectively without such techniques. The adults' ability to store abstract
concepts for the classification and understanding of newer phenomenon should indeed
help him to learn through the medium of words. Yet some aspects of language learning
capacity seem to change with age.
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Neurophysiological constraints in second language acquisition
:
There have been speculations about what is possible and what is impossible for
humans to learn with respect to the learning of second language. It is a known
fact that humans can and do learn languages other than their own first language.
Acquisition of the first language is usually taken for granted whereas the learning
of a second language is generally considered non-automatic, if not, artificial
in some sense, perhaps for the reason that such acquisition takes place usually
in the instructional situations as mentioned earlier. The perceptible difference
in the quality of acquisition of second languages by children on the one hand
and the adults on the other, so clearly revealed in the difficulty usually an
adult faces in the acquisition of a good pronunciation has led to many speculations
including neurophysiological ones. Some consider that such adult difficulties
in the acquisition of a second languages should be ascribed to neurophysiological
constraints which set in with puberty.
Lenneberg (1967) finds that at the age of puberty, the power of automatic acquisition
from mere exposure to a language seems to disappear, even though a person can
still learn to communicate in a foreign language. It is common experience in India
and all over the world that many illiterate adults learn new languages, when they
have to, through a mere exposure. This indicates that even the adults face essentially
the same task that children to. They have to discover the structure of the language
on the basis of spoken text materials to which they are exposed. It is true that
pronunciation difficulties may increase after puberty. These difficulties can
be largely overcome through phonetic exercises. Such difficulties may indicate
the loss of phonological facility and not necessarily the loss of facility to
acquire the other areas of language. As Braine (1971a) suggests, any decline in
language learning ability with age may be a slow one associated with the decline
of other facilities of middle and old age.
Penfield (Penfield 1958, and, Penfield and Roberts 1959) finds that a child's
brain appears to be more elastic than a grown up's. If injury or disease destroys
the speech areas of a child, control of the speech mechanism can be successfully
transferred to the other hemisphere of the brain. If injury or disease destroys
the speech areas of an adult, such transfers may not successfully take place.
Penfield finds further that brain continues to retain, albeit feebly, whatever
has been the focus of its attention once. On the basis of these observations,
he concludes that children should be taught second languages early to enable them
to acquire a good accent. The children will retain this acquisition, hidden away
in the brain, for use at a later stage. As Christophersen (1973 : 49) points out
'unless brain damage occurs the lack of plasticity does not markedly affect the
functioning of the speech centres of an older person'. Increase in difficulty
with age in learning a second language may have to be explained with reference
to other factors also (see below). Further a lot remains to be found out about
the 'long term effects of early second language learning. How much of early acquired
language competence is forgotten with disuse, and how easily can it be reacquired?'
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Psychological
and social factors in second language acquisition:
We as humans have a capacity to acquire human languages. This capacity enables
us to abstract and internalize the rules underlying the materials to which we
are exposed as children. Exposure is very important to activate the innate capacity
which enables us to acquire language. If a child is not exposed to human language
within the critical period (puberty age), the ability to acquire language is lost.
Second language learning begins usually after the instinctive capacity for language
acquisition has matured to some extent. It may be true to some extent that the
increasing difficulty of learning with age may be related to the loss of the elasticity
of the brain mechanism. Yet at the same time one must take into account the psychological
and social factors which may facilitate or hamper the acquisition of a second
language.
First language acquisition is part of the socialization process the child is undergoing
and is an important tool for the acquisition and stabilization of concepts. The
child acquires his first language so as to become a member of the community he
is born in. He is influenced by the behaviour of his elders, but slowly and steadily
a personality of his own may develop with concomitant characteristics. Second
language learning requires some adjustments with the culture imparted through
the language. His habits, intelligence, aptitude, attitudes, motivation and other
psychological and linguistic factors may facilitate his learning or may inhibit
him from learning the second language. Personality factors and motivation play
a very important role in the acquisition of second language.
In general the ability to learn a second language varies from person to person.
Some of the reasons for these differences may be ascribed to age, motives, native
skills, intelligence, personality, auditory memory span, readiness to learn, emotion
and drive. The arguments in favour of teaching the second language as early as
possible include the assumed greater facility the children have in imitation,
the flexibility of speech centres as discussed above, less interference from previous
experience and a lack of self-consciousness.
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Motivation :
Motivation plays a very crucial role in all learning behaviour. Lambert (1963
and Lambert et al., 1968) identify two kinds of motivation, namely instrumental
motivation and integrative motivation. A learner with the integrative motivation
learns a second language in order to become a full-fledged/potential member of
the community whose language is learnt as a second language. A learner with an
instrumental motivation learns a second language in order to achieve certain functional
ends. It is found that a learner with an integrative motivation learns his second
language more successfully than the one who has an instrumental motivation. The
integrative motivation is linked with personality. The learner must be prepared
to evolve an identity for himself with persons who speak the target language.
He must be prepared to accept the aspects of the behaviour of the target community.
When an individual has a prejudice against the language he is learning and the
people who speak it, has a tendency to self-sufficiency, his acquisition of a
second language may be hampered.
The integrative language learning leads to the acquisition of a new set of verbal
habits which are linked with the culture of the target community. As a result
the learner becomes a member of two cultures. This, in turn, may result in anomie,
the feeling of social uncertainty he experiences when his first group membership
begins to loosen in the process of the formation of his second group membership.
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Rate of acquisition and retention of second languages :
The first language is not learned by everybody with the same rate of acquisition.
There are individual differences in the degree of success with regard to the acquisition
of different components of language. It is possible that such differences get
reflected in the acquisition of second language, at least in the beginning stages
of acquisition. (In so far as retention is concerned it is the domain of use which
would play a crucial role). Likewise intelligence may also influence language
learning in so far as it is concerned with the grasping of patterns, guessing
meanings from the context etc. Good auditory memory span enables a learner to
acquire good recognition. Instruction is not effective if the individual is not
ready to receive it. Emotional attachment to a particular language can help learning
it. The drive with which an individual is determined to learn a language is another
important factor in the acquisition of a second language.
The age of the learner, his intentions, experience, the material, the context
and the methods used for learning the language, the quantum of practice and repetition
put into the learning and the amount of time that elapsed after the learning,
all influence, facilitate or hamper the retention of the language. Memory, in
general, increases during the first two decades of life and a slow decline is
noticed from the forties onwards. Learning must be thorough in order to retain
what is learned for a longer period; repetition is the most important factor for
this. Further active repetition rather than passive repetition (speaking rather
than listening, writing rather than reading) contributes to retention; when a
person has more experience with the second language it becomes relatively easier
for him to retain and remember what is learned. When what the learner has learned
has relevance to his needs and the demands of the situation confronted by the
learned, he will be able to remember the materials more readily. The familiar
word sequences and word connections help a learner to retain and remember what
is learned. An understanding of the system and the way it works enables the learner
as to what he should expect in a context. This awareness contributes to the retention
of language.
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Second
language teaching :
Language is a wholesome phenomenon the use of which involves many factors at a
time - the relationship between content and the expression, the coordination between
listening and speaking, cohesion and order among the structures that constitute
the language, conversational speed and memory span, habitual use, automatic selection,
recall and monitoring capacity - all go into the making language. There are three
major areas through which research on language learning including second language
learning has been carried out. These are conditioning, verbal learning and motor
learning and skills, and trial and error. Earlier we suggested that conditioning
might explain the arbitrary connection between a word and its meaning. Verbal
learning is concerned with serial learning (the memorization of one syllable or
word with another in a pair). Motor learning and skills, and trial and error learning
are of general nature which are not concerned with specific units and patterns
of linguistic structure.
There are a few general laws (some of which have been indicated earlier) which
have been found useful in the teaching of second languages. These include the
laws of contiguity, exercise, intensity and assimilation and effect. The law of
contiguity stresses the importance of the contiguity of the occurrence of the
structures for mutual reinforcement and easy recall. The law of exercise stresses
the importance of practice in the retention of a structure. The law of intensity
emphasizes the importance of the intensity with which a structure is practiced
for its retention. The law of assimilation explains how a new structure may elicit
the response which has been connected with similar stimulating conditions in the
past. The law of effect stresses the need for a satisfying condition for the retention
of a structure.
There are certain sociological factors and influences which facilitate or hamper
the learning and retention of second language. These include the contacts (those
with whom we live, those near whom we live, those with whom we work, those with
whom we learn, those of the same national background, those with whom we pray,
those with whom we play, such non-personal and passive contacts as radio, television
and the cinema and such contacts with the written language as provided by our
reading matter). Another important factor in the mastery or maintenance of a second
language is what the language happens to be used for. Part of the success in learning
the first language is due to the fact that it is used for almost everything. Whether
a person makes use of all the language skills or only one of them will also have
some effect on his mastery of a second language. The skill with which a person
starts might decide his eventual mastery of the language. If he begins with reading
and becomes skilled in it, he may have a different pronunciation from that which
he would have had if he had started with the spoken language. The amount of time
spent in learning a second language is one of the most important factors in mastering
and maintaining it.
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Language
interference :
A language acquired earlier may influence the learning of another language. This
is supported by the generally accepted psychological dictum that the learning
of one thing may influence the later learning of something else. Such an influence
can be both beneficial and disadvantageous in the learning of additional languages.
Beneficial because the grasp of patterns in the language being learned may be
achieved with ease. A disadvantage because the similarity between the first and
the second language may be superficial and hence can lead to wrong generalizations
and hamper mastering the necessary discriminations in the second language. Such
advantages and disadvantages can be related to all the components of language
- grammar, lexicon and phonology, and the general laws governing the classifications
and categorization of the external world through language.
The similarities that exist between the first language and the second language
are generally assumed to facilitate the acquisition of the second language. The
differences that exist between the first language and the second language are
generally assumed to interfere with the acquisition of the latter. However, deceptive
similarities can be a bothersome source of interference which one may have difficulty
in eliminating, in spite of the repeated practice advocated by linguists and psychologists
for the reduction or elimination of interference. One may associate a second language
item with some item he finds similar in his first language and acquire the same
easily. But he may later on realize that the second language item he has mastered
is rather deceptively similar to the first language item in the terms of distribution
the uses to which the item is put in the second language, etc.
Many tend to ascribe the errors in the second language committed by the learners
to the interference of the first language. However, not all the errors can be
ascribed to the interference of first language. As suggested above interference
can be due to similarity as well as difference between the first language and
the second language. Furthermore, one can never predict the exact nature and quantum
of errors likely to be committed by the learners merely on the basis of similarity
and difference and likely interference. Many errors may be due to incomplete learning,
or due to the extension by analogy of patterns one has already learned in that
language. It may also be due to simple confusion. In general, one may be able
to make a post-mortem of the errors and identify the causes, but it is doubtful
whether one can predict errors with certainty, as first language is not the only
source of influence. Following Corder (1967) we may distinguish between systematic
and unsystematic errors. The errors of performance such as the slips of the tongue
or of the pen may be considered as unsystematic as more often than not these errors
are related to such factors as fatigue, memory limitation and strong emotion.
The systematic errors represent generally a transitional stage in the learning.
In the learning of a second language, the learner's errors should be considered
as evidence of a system. The learner's language is unstable; each stage of his
learning is a language by itself. Each stage may have its own errors. The totality
of such transitional stages may be considered as an inter-language. The learner
is making a progressive approximation to the target language through successive
inter-language stages Hence the language teacher and the material producer will
do well if they make a careful analysis of the interlanguage because it will help
them to teach and present the materials in a more effective manner, to improve
their teaching techniques, to decide as to which part of the syllabus is not yet
learned and as to whether they should move to the next part and so on.
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Mastery
of second language :
We say that a person has learned a language when he is able to use its structure
with attention focussed more on content than on the structure. He should be able
to recall the structures and use them at normal speed, should have a normal memory
span for the language structures and should be in a position to identify and rectify
ordinary errors based on the practice he has had. This demand on the learner of
a second language puts the entire business of second language puts the entire
business of second language learning as rather distinct from other learning tasks
in which one considers that learning has taken place if the process is reversed,
recalled or recognized. Such an acquisition components for different persons.
Learning theories and linguistics can provide indirect support for the acquisition
of second language in many ways, such as, the description of the articulatory
organs involved in the production of an utterance and their movements, phonetic
transcription, by providing synonyms and near synonyms, comparisons of the structures
of the second language with those of the first language, by controlling the content
and the structures in a gradual and graded manner and so on.
We shall now identify some general assumptions of linguistics with regard to second
language learning and the strategies adopted to the teaching of second language
based on these assumptions.
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Structural
linguists and second language acquisition :
Structural linguists in general assume that the discovery procedures they employ
in the identification and description of a language are convertible for the exposure
should be prepared and made available accordingly. Further they assume that the
levels they posit for language as a general phenomenon and the specific structures
they establish for a specific language should govern the teaching of the second
language and exposure materials be prepared and introduced accordingly. They suggest
that one should teach listening and speaking first before teaching reading and
writing. The learner must be enabled to perceive all the contrasts between phonemes
of the second language. He should be enabled to pronounce the phonemes of the
second language in such a way that the native speaker of that language can perceive
the learner's use of the sound system as rather similar to his own use. The methods
involve repeated practice of the patterns involved, introduction of the items
in minimal and analogous pairs in contrast, introduction of items as a single
group if the same process is involved in the derivation of the items, creating
the awareness of grammatical properties of words through substitution exercises,
use of drills and exercises for each and every structure of the language and so
on.
Imitation and memorization are stressed upon. Hence the teacher is asked to provide
good models to the students to enable them to achieve good imitations. The learners
are asked to memorize the basic sentence structures. As normal use of language
in face communication is conversation, the materials for the learning of a second
language usually take the form of conversations. However, the objectives of the
course determine the kind of exposure materials, duration of exposure etc. As
language is considered a system of habits, emphasis is upon the shaping and formation
of habits through pattern practice. The vocabulary load is kept to the minimum
while students are in the process of learning the sound and grammatical patterns
of the second language. New vocabulary is presented in a familiar grammatical
matrix. In essence, the practice is to emphasize the focus on an item from the
point of view of the well known dicta : from the known to the unknown and from
the simple to he complex.
The patterns are taught gradually in cumulative and cyclical, graded steps. Cumulative
because an attempt is made to utilize all the patterns introduced earlier for
the present task. Cyclical because an attempt is made to enable the student to
go back to the old structures for further practice, reinforcement and stabilization.
The teacher is asked to bear in mind that habits are acquired slowly and such
an acquisition must be organized in a systematic fashion.
Linguists suggest that the second language learning may begin with sentences,
other components introduced as part of the sentence structures. This is done because
the subsentence elements do not have independent stats.
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Communicative
competence :
There is a conflict between the teaching strategy based on the assumptions of
descriptive linguistics and the real language phenomenon. The assumptions lead
to the dissection, arrangement and ordering of the structures of a language into
different types of patterns and parts of patterns. Language, however, is a total
phenomenon and the use of language in a particular context in a natural way involves
different kinds of structures. That is, in order to enable a student to acquire
ability to communicate in an appropriate manner for a particular situation one
should teach different kinds of structures. However, the graded steps suggested
by the assumptions of structural linguists and even learning theorists will not
equip a learner for the purpose. The learner has to slowly build up his competence
on his own by putting the pieces together in novel and creative ways. Thus there
is a conflict between the structural approach and linguistic needs of a situation.
Fortunately this has not gone unnoticed and recent trends in linguistics and language
teaching clearly recognize the need to look at the learning and teaching of language
from the functional point of view of the uses to which the linguistic structures
are put. Hymes (1971, 1961) suggests that to cope with the realities of children
(for that matter all the users of language) as communicating beings 'requires
a theory within which socio-cultural factors have an explicit and constitute role.
He further observes that 'fluent members of community often regard their languages,
or functional varieties, as not identical in communicative adequacy… Such
intuitions reflect experience and self-evaluation as to what one can in fact do
with a given variety'. This sort of differential competence is what one should
aim at in learning and teaching a language to use structures appropriately to
meet the requirements of a communicative situation. In order to impart such a
communicative competence, we must have a comprehensive idea of the heterogeneousness
of the speech community, differential competence, the constitutive role of socio-cultural
features, socio-economic differences, multilingual mastery, relativity of competence
in different languages, expressive values, socially determined perception, contextual
styles and shared norms for the evaluation of variables (Hymes 1971). In order
to develop this communicative competence in the learners a few steps have been
suggested. An often suggested solution is by keeping to a minimum the patterns
introduced, say, in a dialogue, before they appear in graded steps. The notional
syllabus suggested by Wilkins (1972) is another step towards the solution of this
conflict.
Whereas structural linguists' assumptions for the teaching and learning of second
language emphasize the importance of the form as terminal behaviour and view the
whole business of teaching, exposure materials etc., from a formal point. Wilkins
and his colleagues emphasize that second language acquisition should be geared
to the acquisition of communicative competence in the second language. They suggest
that we apply the procedures of selection and grading not to grammatical units
in the manner of structural syllabuses of the familiar sort but to communicative
units of one kind or another (Widdowson 1973) : 'The first thing we have to recognize
is that the names we give to these acts -- promise, greeting, apology, praise,
criticism, complaint and so on - are labels we use to identify forms of social
behaviour. The teaching of communicative functions necessarily involves the teaching
of cultural values. In a classroom the difficulty is that the learners have somehow
to separate out from the situation as a whole just those features which serve
as the necessary conditions whereby the act is effectively performed. This is
a general difficulty with the situations devised to create a context for language
in the classroom; language items are associated with the situation as a whole
and not with those factors in the situation which are relevant in the realization
of the communicative value of these items. Classroom situations may be effective
for teaching the semantic signification of sentences and their constituents but
they generally fail to teach the pragmatic value of utterances.
'Somehow or other, the learner has to be made aware of what conditions have to
be met for the utterance of a sentence to have a particular communicative effect.
Simply presenting the sentence in a situation will not do since the learner has
still to know which features of the situation are relevant and which are not.
Furthermore, no matter how the teacher exemplifies the act he must represent the
person performing it as having a certain role which makes him an appropriate performer
of the act.
'The adoption of a notional or communicative syllabus requires the teacher to
be familiar with rules of use as well as of grammar. But how does he acquire this
familiarity?…..What is urgently needed is a taxonomic description of communicative
acts characterized in terms of the conditions that must be met for them to be
effectively performed, and grouped into sets according to which conditions they
have in common.'
One needs to have a 'kind of pedagogic rhetoric which will serve as a guide to
rules of use in the same way as a pedagogic grammar serves as a guide to grammatical
rules, an exteriorization of knowledge which the teacher can use as a link between
his own learning of the language and his teaching of it to others.'
'Teaching of languages in schools will continue to focus on the language system,
and given that such teaching leads learners to acquire some knowledge of sentences,
the problem is how to develop in the learner an awareness of how sentences can
be used in acts of communication. What we need to do is to alter his concept of
a language from one which represents the language as a set of patterns to be manipulated
for their own sake to one which represents it as a means of conveying information,
ideas, attitudes and so on and whose functions are comparable to those of the
learner's own language. We can do this by devising exercises which draw upon two
kinds of knowledge : The first kind of knowledge is what the learner knows of
the formal properties of English, incomplete and imperfect though this may be.
The second kind of knowledge is that which he has acquired in other areas of his
education : knowledge, for example, of geography, history, general science, etc
In his learning of these subjects he has quite naturally experienced language
as a means of communication : indeed learning how information is conveyed in these
different subjects is just as much a part of the subjects as learning what information
is conveyed'. Material producers all over the world are concerned with how best
the content of other subjects can be utilized for the learning, reinforcement
and retention of second language. As we are concerned mainly with the theoretical
aspects and not with applications, we are not presenting the details here.
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Transformational
Grammarians and second language acquisition :
Transformational grammarians suggest that a child acquires his first language
because he has innate capacity for learning an infinitely intricate and complex
system. There is none, who, in any sense, teaches the language to the child. In
the learning of second language also one learns the language not by overt teaching
but by a continual internalization process. Nobody is in a position to describe
the whole of any language. As no language has been fully described, overt teaching
of the whole of language is not possible. Yet a second language learner is able
to acquire rules which do not form part of the overt teaching is able to acquire
rules which do not form part of the overt teaching materials. Acquisition of rules
of second language which have not been explicitly used in overt teaching is possible
because of his general innate capacity to learn languages. This capacity is explained
by the existence of linguistic universals, which perhaps have their basis in biology.
Neither the overt teaching nor the teacher plays the crucial role in the acquisition
of second language. The learner is the most important factor and must be considered
as the real basis. The main task of the teacher should be the creation of situation
for the optimal use of learner's innate language learning capacity. Motivation
takes precedence over grammatical gradation; grammatical gradation is not however
completely dispensed with. The main emphasis is not on habit formation, not on
controlling and shaping correct responses. Main emphasis is on the stimulation
of students' innate language learning capacity for the generation of novel sentences.
Sentences are novel and not just the copies of sentences used in the exposure
materials or those committed to memory. Conscious control of rules helps creativity.
The exposure materials must consist of kernel sentences, followed by rules for
transformational operations. The transformational operations will be arranged
in an order of increasing complexity. The second language course is planned in
a way that treats each stage of the course as a generative grammar. Each stage
is a refinement over the preceding stage in terms of its capacity etc. Each stage
becomes increasingly similar to the real grammar of the second language. The distinction
between the surface and deep structures must be brought to the notice of the learner.
Identical surface structures produced by different deep structures should be kept
separate; exercises should be designed to arrive at the deep structures.
Though there is considerable enthusiasm among language teachers about the effectiveness
of transformational approach, the usefulness and validity of the transformational
approach for second language teaching, for that matter, the entire linguistic
approach continues to be a bone of contention. Theoreticians such as Chomsky do
not see any immediate use of theories for constructing a teaching programme, although
the direction seems to be rather clear :
My own feeling is that from our knowledge of the organization of language and
of the principles that determine language structure one cannot immediately construct
a teaching programme. All we can suggest is that a teaching programme be designed
in such a way as to give free play to those creative principles that humans bring
to the process of language learning, and I presume, to the learning of anything
else. I think we should probably try to create a rich linguistic environment for
the intuitive heuristics that the normal human automatically possesses. (Noam
Chomsky and Stuart Hampshire discuss the study of language in Listener 1968: 687-91).
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More on language teaching methods :
Language teachers adopt various methods in the teaching of second languages. These
methods include the audio-lingual method, direct method, and grammar-translation
method. Grammar-translation method has fallen into disrepute. There is a blend
of audio-lingual and direct methods generally used these days. There is also an
increasing reliance on language laboratory. Language teaching has grown into a
vast research-based area, receiving attention from psychologists, educationists,
sociologists, linguists and others. We do not present here the details of this
important field. A few selected books are referred to in the notes to which the
enterprising and interested students may refer for additional information.
More often than not many of us assume that proficiency in the second language
will not be and cannot be achieved in equal measure to that in one's own language.
We assume that a second language or foreign language cannot be learned with the
same ease and fluency as one's first language. We assume further that the second
learnt language is in an essentially different relationship with the learner compared
to that of the first learnt language. It is generally felt that the learning of
a language other than one's own mother tongue is a mental 'burden' and that in
general learning of more languages means more mental 'burden'. We seem to have
a feeling of proprietorship over our first languages. These and other such issues
should be investigated fully. We do not, however, present any analysis of the
factors underlying these issues here.
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N O T E S
The last two decades have seen renewed interest in the acquisition of language
by children. This renewed interest is due no less to the challenging positions
taken by the generative grammarians, beginning with the writings of Chomsky. We
have now abundant literature on the subject. The important texts have some introduction
to the methods employed in the study of the acquisition of language; particularly,
students will benefit from the excellent survey of Braine (1971a). There are quite
a few publications which present the characteristics of child speech. Some of
the important works in this regard are bellugi and Brown (1964), C. Chomsky (1969),
Bloom (1970, 1973), Smith and Miller (1966), Menyuk (1971), Brown (1973), Ferguson
and Slobin (1973), McNeill (1970), and Slobin (1971a and b). Slobin (1971a) presents
several of the models proposed for the acquisition of language. Staats and Staats
(1963) and Staats (1968) present Staat's position on language acquisition based
on a refined exposition and construction of S-R theory.
Penfield and Roberts (1959) and Lenneberg (1967) present interesting information
on the role of lateralization and neurohysiological factors in the acquisition
of second language. Halliday, Mcintosh and Strevans (1964) and Mackey(1965) are
three important and really worthwhile studies on aspects of second language learning
and teaching Pattanayak(1969) presents aspects of applied linguistics. Christophers
on (1973) presents a succinct survey of knowledge on second language learning
Lamberts writings (Lambert 1963, Lambert, et al 1966, and Lambert, et al 1968)
and Jakobovits (1970) show the directions in which psycho-linguistics research
on second language may be profitably undertaken. Fries (1945) presents the structuralist
approach to the teaching and learning of foreign languages. Thomas (1965) presents
some of the early assumptions of the transformational generative grammarians about
second language learning and teaching. Politzer (1972) and Widdowson (1973) present
some aspects of the notional syllabus. Hymes (1961) gives functions of speech
that may be incorporated in any teaching design.
Osgood and Sebeok (1965), Saporta (1961) and Jakobovits and Miron (1967) may be
read with profit to have a comprehensive view of psycholinguistic problems. Miller
(1970) presents an interesting survey of the psychology of communication and Miller
and McNeill (1968) give an excellent review of state of art of the field of psycholinguistics.
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