Learning Language: Adults vs Children

If you do not believe in the critical period theory, why adult learners have difficulties in learning a second language while young children can easily do it?

Because adult learners have different characteristics from children. Adults learn in more concious condition than the children. Because they learn in a conscious condition in which they already have self-esteem, they sometimes worried when learning. They have less confidence to try. This attitude cause a problem in learning a second language because actually if someone wants to learn better about a second language she/he should try to use the language so that he/she can master it very well.

The Controversy of Learning and Acquisition

Learning is a conscious knowledge of a second language, knowing the rules, being aware of them, and being able to talk about them (nurture). Meanwhile, acquisition is an activity or a process of picking up a language (phonology, morphology, syntactic and semantic rules) from the environment unconsciously (nature).

The controversy of learning and acquisition is raised by two experts, that is Skinner and Chomsky. They have different argument about how human ‘know’ about ‘language’. The question is whether language is a product of nature (acquisition) or due to conscious learning or nurture. According to Skinner, language is solely a kind of behaviour, a set of habits accumulated over the years. All that is necessary is to provide the necessary stimuli that will prompt the speaker. Chomsky attacked that argument and proposed an idea of language as a blueprint built-in to the human mind and the child as a hypothesis maker who ‘has internalized a system of rules that relate sound and meaning in a particular way’ (Aitchison, 1989: 92).

The Innatenes Hypothesis

Chomsky has stated that the idea of innatenes hypothesis is that humans are biologically equipped with a knowledge of certain universal elements of language structure that is brought into play in the course of language acquisition. It is assumed that during the infants, children can learn language easily and rapidly because of the help of Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which makes hypotheses about language and almost always produces the right linguistic output, even in the absence of explicit input from their environment. However, some people still have little doubt about Chomsky’s argument that human brain is specially equipped for acquisition of human language grammar. In his defenses, Chomsky continuously explains that the innateness hypothesis accounts for a number of facts of language (such as the fact of its productivity; and the amazing fact that children acquire language quickly and effortlessly).

Productivity means the ability of children to form complex rules and construct grammars of the languages used around them in a relatively short time.

Children acquire language quickly and effortlessly means the ease and rapidity of acquisition despite impoverished input and uniformity across children and languages.

What is garden-path sentences?

The sentence that the reader reads is temporarily ambiguous because it may contain a group of words which appears to be compatible with more than one structural analysis.
The reader’s interpretation to the garden-path sentences varies depending on lexical items or syntax. Here are some examples:

• Put the cake on the plate in the kitchen.
  (The sentence is syntactically ambiguous because it can lead to ambiguity in the sense that the cake is already on the plate or the cake is to be put in the kitchen in which the plate is available.)
  
• The government plans to raise taxes were defeated.
  (The sentence is syntactically ambiguous because it can lead to ambiguity in the sense that plans can be interpreted as a verb or as a noun.)
  
• The thief goes to the bank.
  (The sentence is lexically ambiguous because it can lead to ambiguity in the sense that the bank can mean the financial institution or the edge of the river.)
  
• The old doctors and nurses marched through the streets expressing their solidarities for three of their colleagues who were found guilty of malpractice.
  (The sentence is lexically ambiguous because it can lead to ambiguity in the sense that the one who is old is the doctors or the doctors and the nurses.)
  

Speech Acts

Speech acts can be analysed on three levels:

A locutionary act, the performance of an utterance: the actual utterance and its ostensible meaning, comprising phonetic, phatic and rhetic acts corresponding to the verbal, syntactic and semantic aspects of any meaningful utterance;
an illocutionary act: the pragmatic 'illocutionary force' of the utterance, thus its intended significance as a socially valid verbal action (see below);
a perlocutionary act: its actual effect, such as persuading, convincing, scaring, enlightening, inspiring, or otherwise getting someone to do or realize something, whether intended or not (Austin 19)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_act

For more information, you can also check: Speech Act Theory

What is Approximant?

Approximants

The approximants have been variously referred to as "frictionless continuant", "semivowel", "oral resonant", "glide"and "liquid". In this series of lectures, approximants will refer to the sounds /w/, /r/, /j/, /l/, with /w/ and /j/ a subclass called semivowels, and /l/ and /r/ a subclass called liquids.

The approximants are those consonants which are most similar to vowels in their articulation and hence their acoustic structure. Approximant articulation involves one articulator approaching another but without the tract becoming narrowed to such an extent that turbulent airflow occurs.

Like vowels, approximants are •highly resonant •produced with a relatively open vocal tract •characterised by identifiable formant structures •continuant sounds since there is no occlusion or momentary stoppage of the airstream •non turbulent due to lack of constriction •oral sounds

In Australian English /w/, /r/, and /j/ will only occur if followed by a vowel and when they occur in consonant clusters, will always be adjacent to the vowel or syllable nucleus.
e.g. "spring", "splash", "cute", "instrument"
Occasionally the approximant /l/ will serve as a nucleus if it becomes syllabic
e.g. "table", "bottle"

Source: http://clas.mq.edu.au/acoustics/consonants/approxweb.html

Additional Information from Wikipedia

Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class of sounds includes lateral approximants like [l](as in less), non-lateral approximants like [ɹ] (as in rest), and semivowels like [j] and [w] (as in yes and west, respectively.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximant_consonant

NB: English has two liquid phonemes, one lateral, /l/ and one rhotic, /ɹ/, exemplified in the words led and red.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_consonant

Linguistics Exam Practice

1. Why is language an integral part of being human?
Language is an integral part of being human. It is because the function of language in the human’s life is very important. Language and abstract thought that a human being possesses are the characteristics that can distinguish human being from animal. Human being can use language for expressing abstract thought while animal cannot do that. Another function is that the inability to use language inadequately can affect someone’s status in society, and may even alter their personality. Therefore, it can be said that language is an integral part of being human.

2. Write Edward Sapire’s definition of language.
Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.

3. How is language different from a language?
Language is a universal characteristic of the human race. Meanwhile, a language is a medium of communication specific to a society; it forms part of the culture of that society.
OR
Language is human facility for communication inherited genetically. A language is an individual example of language, such as Indonesian, English, etc. A medium of communication specific to society. A language is acquired from the society in which we spend our first years.

4. What is knowledge of language?
Knowing which sounds occur and how they are patterned.

5. What does one’s knowledge of a language means?
Knowledge of language that someone has can help her/him to express his/her thoughts and feelings clearly through that specific language. The knowledge of language such as the knowledge of sounds, words, rules of combining words into a sentence and context can help someone to speak fluently. Likewise, in the written form, the knowledge of language can help someone write correctly to express ideas.

6. What language characteristics are not observed in onomatopoeia?
Language characteristics are not observed in onomatopoeia because there is no arbitrariness in onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeic words are words whose sounds are similar to the natural sounds of the object or activity. In onomatopoeia, there is an intrinsic link between the object and the words / symbols.

7. How is language competence different from language performance?
Language competence: Having the knowledge necessary for producing language
Language performance: Having the ability of using the knowledge of language in actual speech production and comprehension

8. What are three faces of language? Explain each one of them. 
(1) Expression; It refers to words, phrases, sentences, and pronunciation, including intonation and stress.
(2) Meaning; It refers to the senses and referents of these elements of expression.
(3) Context; It refers to the intended message of an expression uttered in a particular context.

8. What are three faces of language? Explain each one of them. 
(1) Expression; It refers to words, phrases, sentences, and pronunciation, including intonation and stress.
(2) Meaning; It refers to the senses and referents of these elements of expression.
(3) Context; It refers to the intended message of an expression uttered in a particular context.

9. When is language used as phatic communion?
It is when language is used to oil the wheel of conversation, for example when people say “how are you?” This utterance is used just to be sociable. In Poole’s words, phatic communion is the use of speech with the aim of establishing or maintaining social relations.

10. In terms of its acquisition, how is language different from animal “language”?
The difference between human language and animal language is that human language is culturally transmitted. We acquire our native tongue by cultural transmission and it is by means of our native tongue that we receive cultural transmission that we learn and adapt. Meanwhile, animals do not have that ability. Animals’ language is transmitted biologically so they are unable to acquire other languages.