The logical problem of language learning
المؤلف:
Muriel Saville-Troike
المصدر:
Introducing Second Language Acquisition
الجزء والصفحة:
C2P21
2025-11-15
41
The logical problem of language learning
How is it possible for children to achieve the final state of L1 development with general ease and complete success, given the complexity of the linguistic system which they acquire and their immature cognitive capacity at the age they do so? This question forms the logical problem of language learning. The “problem” as it has been formulated by linguists relates most importantly to syntactic phenomena. As noted in the preceding section, most linguists and psychologists assume this achievement must be attributed to innate and spontaneous language-learning constructs and/or processes. The notion that innate linguistic knowledge must underlie language acquisition was prominently espoused by Noam Chomsky (1957, 1965), who subsequently formulated a theory of Universal Grammar which has been very influential in SLA theory and research (to be discussed in Chapter 3). This view has been supported by arguments such as the following:
Children’s knowledge of language goes beyond what could be learned from the input they receive
This is essentially the poverty-of-the-stimulus argument. According to this argument, children often hear incomplete or ungrammatical utterances along with grammatical input, and yet they are somehow able to filter the language they hear so that the ungrammatical input is not incorporated into their L1 system. Further, children are commonly recipients of simplified input from adults, which does not include data for all of the complexities which are within their linguistic competence. In addition, children hear only a finite subset of possible grammatical sentences, and yet they are able to abstract general principles and constraints which allow them to interpret and produce an infinite number of sentences which they have never heard before. Even more remarkable, children’s linguistic competence includes knowledge of which sentences are not possible, although input does not provide them with this information: i.e. input “underdetermines” the grammar that develops. Almost all L1 linguistic input to children is positive evidence, or actual utterances by other speakers which the children are able to at least partially comprehend. Unlike many L2 learners, children almost never receive any explicit instruction in L1 during the early years when acquisition takes place, and they seldom receive any negative evidence, or correction (and often fail to recognize it when they do).
Constraints and principles cannot be learned
Children’s access to general constraints and principles which govern language could account for the relatively short time it takes for the L1 gram mar to emerge, and for the fact that it does so systematically and without any “wild” divergences. This could be so because innate principles lead children to organize the input they receive only in certain ways and not others. In addition to the lack of negative evidence mentioned above, constraints and principles cannot be learned in part because children acquire a first language at an age when such abstractions are beyond their comprehension; constraints and principles are thus outside the realm of learning proc esses which are related to general intelligence. Jackendoff (1997) approaches this capacity in children as a “paradox of language acquisition”:
If general-purpose intelligence were sufficient to extract the principles of mental grammar, linguists (or psychologists or computer scientists), at least some of whom have more than adequate general intelligence, would have discovered the principles long ago. The fact that we are all still searching and arguing, while every normal child manages to extract the principles unaided, suggests that the normal child is using something other than general-purpose intelligence. (p. 5)
Universal patterns of development cannot be explained by language-specific input
Linguistic input always consists of the sounds, words, phrases, sentences, and other surface-level units of a specific human language. However, in spite of the surface differences in input (to the point that people who are speaking different languages can’t understand one another), there are similar patterns in child acquisition of any language in the world. The extent of this similarity suggests that language universals are not only constructs derived from sophisticated theories and analyses by linguists, but also innate representations in every young child’s mind.
The logical problem of language learning
For a long time, people thought that children learned language by imitating those around them. More recent points of view claim that children have an innate language ability. There are three major arguments supporting this notion.
First of all, children often say things that adults do not. This is especially true of children’s tendency to use regular patterns to form plurals or past tenses on words that would have irregular formation. Children frequently say things like goed, mans, mouses , and sheeps , even though it is highly unlikely that any adult around them ever produced such forms in front of them.
We also know that children do not learn language simply by imitation because they do not imitate adult language well when asked to do so. For example (adapted from Crystal 1997b :236):
Finally, patterns of children’s language development are not directly determined by the input they receive. The age at which children begin to produce particular language elements does not correspond to their frequency in input. Thus, we must assume that something besides input triggers the developmental order in children’s language.
If we extend the logical problem from L1 acquisition to SLA, we need to explain how it is possible for individuals to achieve multilingual competence when that also involves knowledge which transcends what could be learned from the input they receive. In other words, L2 learners also develop an underlying system of knowledge about that language which they are not taught, and which they could not infer directly from anything they hear (see White 1996). As we have already seen, however, in several important respects L1 and L2 acquisition are fundamentally different; the arguments put forth for the existence of an innate, language specific faculty in young children do not all apply to L2 learners since they are not uniformly successful, they are typically more cognitively advanced than young children, they may receive and profit from instruction and negative evidence, and they are influenced by many factors which seem irrelevant to acquisition of L1.
It is widely accepted that there is an innate capacity involved in L1 acquisition by young children (although many do not agree with Chomsky’s particular formulation of its nature), but there is less certainty about the continued availability of that capacity for acquiring an L2. Still, we do need to explain how multilingual competence transcends input, and why there are such widely differential outcomes of SLA – ranging from L2 performance which may be perceived as native to far more limited L2 proficiency. This will be an important question to keep in mind as we review theories and findings on SLA from different perspectives, since it has provided a topic of inquiry for much of the history of this field.
Most of what we now know about L1 versus L2 learning is based on study of L1 learning by young children and L2 learning by older children or adults. It is therefore sometimes difficult to isolate differential factors and results that can be attributed to age versus multiple language learning. Many of us believe that children who begin to receive multiple language input between birth and about three years of age can acquire more than one language simultaneously by essentially the same processes and with the same results (see my own claim to this effect in Chapter 1). While this belief is probably true, it ignores the fact that many such children do not reach the same final state in each language. Understanding differential levels of multilingual achievement in young children will require more attention to facilitating conditions for language development, including social and cognitive as well as innate and maturational factors. (See Ellis 2008 :628–31 for a discussion of more comprehensive models of SLA which incorporate UG and De Houwer 2009 for findings on the effect of different socializing environments.)
الاكثر قراءة في Linguistics fields
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