In Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue, infants of linguistic households are required to acquire various alien languages to become native speakers of Earth for the new languages studied. Our society, for the most part, understands that adults acquire foreign languages differently from the acquisition of a second language by a child. Furthermore, most people generally have the understanding that children learn languages quickly and easily compared to adults. Adults, however, are able to acquire foreign languages in fair or controlled conditions. There may be resulting differences between language acquisitions of new languages, but the rate at which adults acquire second languages should not be a factor. In Native Tongue, linguist children …show more content…
There’s a long-standing argument that most people resort to when discussing whether or not children are better suited to acquire a language over adults. The “critical period hypothesis” argues, “that children are superior to adults in learning second languages because their brains are more flexible.” (McLaughlin 2) This argument is true to some extent, however, experimental research has found that adolescents and adults are able to acquire languages better based on their controlled environment. Children, on the other hand, are better able to grasp a better understanding of the pronunciation of languages compared to adults. (McLaughlin …show more content…
One of the methods the government decides to act on involves, “monkeying around with the brains of infants, feeding them peyote.” (Elgin 144) The practice of using hallucinogens to determine whether or not they assist with enhancing the way someone is able to acquire a language has its pros and cons. Researches of psychedelic substances on adults while practicing language acquisition have found that drugs “assist an individual to observe the difference between the word and the object it represents.” (Krippner 7) However, even though drugs are able to heighten our associations of words and sensory levels, they also diminish our logical thought process. More so, hallucinogens have to ability to cause, “a reduction or even an absence of speech,” (Krippner 4) and high anxiety and agitation. A study on the effects of infants that were exposed to LSD during their mother’s pregnancy by Singer et al. details that after twelve months the infant, “had negative effects on infant cognitive and motor outcomes.” (Singer et al. 410) The reduction of motor skills and cognitive efficiency I don’t believe is what the government experimentalists were taking into account when they thought of their hypothesis. If other side effects included “delays in eye hand coordination,” (“First and Only Study”) I’m not sure how the government thought infants and children would be able to comprehend
In Nagy's (2013) study all eight participants had been raised bilingually since they were born. She interviewed the subject's parents and found, according to the parents, that the subjects said their first words in both languages between the age of twelve and forty-two months. Nagy's (2013) data also showed that, compared to monolinguals and most bilinguals, only two out of the eight participants needed the average twelve months most monolinguals need to reach basic sentence level ability. Nagy’s (2013) analysis indicates that there was no severe delay in the subject's language development, but three out of eight cases started producing comprehensible words approx. the same time as the majority of monolinguals. At the same time another four subjects accomplished, no more than six months later, the same level which is still within the time frame announced by
She mentioned that children between the ages three and seven could acquire any language better than an adult. For a long time, I was convinced that the reason why I could not acquire English well enough was due to age barrier. However, this is just a theory, and it is called Critical Period Hypothesis. Based on the key concept Critical Period hypothesis, the only advantage between a child and an adult is the motivation to acquiring language. An adult would feel more pressure to quickly acquire a language versus a child who would feel less pressured to do so. The difference is the method of instruction by two different teachers teaching at two different approaches. Language can be acquired by using the basic principle of BICS - first listening and then imitating the language. Learning the accent of another language can be more difficult for adults to acquire because their mind is nearly reaching a maturity state, which the brain might become complacent or used to the accent of the first language. Therefore, it may be hard to acquire another accent as adult. The real advantage between the age differences is the ability for a child to pick up the accent of a language better than an adult, because a child spends most of their time listening to their nurturer. It may be more difficult for an adult to spend all their time listening to their teacher without investing
After Lenneberg's (1967) advanced analyses and interpretation of critical period in regards to first language acquisition, many researchers began to relate and study age issue in second language acquisition. In this area of study, Johnson and Newport (1989) is among the most prominent and leading studies which tries to seek evidence to test the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) in second language (L2) acquisition. This study aims to find identifying answers to the question of age-related effects on the proficiency for languages learned prior the puberty.
Most people who grow up with a foreign language spoken in there house grow up with an advantage in society. This advantage can only occur once the individual learning that foreign language also learns the dominant language spoken in that country. Once both of these languages are learned and mastered, the individual has now placed them se...
Eric Lenneberg was the first to propose there existed a critical period to learn a first or native language that was between that began around two and ended with the onset of puberty around thirteen years old. Lenneberg theorized that language acquisition was not possible before age two because of a lack of maturation, while post-puberty acquisition is inhibited by a loss of cerebral placicity occuring when the cerebral dominance of the language function is complete, happening around the time of puberty (Kraschen). “Children deprived of language during this critical period show atypical patterns of brain lateralization” (intro to language) Lenneberg argued that lateralization of the brain during this critical period is key to language acquisition. “The human brain is primed to develop language in specific areas of the left hemisphere but the normal process of brain specialization depends on ear...
In the first years of life children transcend from infancy, in which they cannot speak nor comprehend language, to age four in which they begin to be able to express themselves in their own language (Hoff, 2006). Overall, the language acquisition process has the same endpoint for all capable children. The only difference in the language acquisition process between children is the different languages they learn, which is completely dependent upon the language the child hears. If the child were to only hear Klingon, the child would in theory learn Klingon, but the child would later reject this language because of the lack of acceptance of the fictional language in society (Clark, 1987). The first process of acquiring language is known as phonological development. In natural lan...
Nearly every member of the human race learns a language or more to the degree of proficiency only in the first few years of life. How children achieve this astonishing skill in such little time sparks controversial debates among linguists, psychologists, and scientists throughout centuries. Some believe that language is an innate ability possessed by all human beings due to the remarkable function of the brain while others maintain that language is learned from childhood experience. However, many are beginning to realize that nature and nurture go hand-in-hand when explaining how children develop their language(s). Despite the claims that language is either pre-learned or environmentally learned alone, the combination of both genes
Language shift, or language attrition, was a feature to a Darwinian evolution in which less complex and adaptable languages, like Creole, died and the more advanced and fittest languages, like English, survived (Carlisle, 2010). Modern linguistics challenges that it is not accurate to focus on the attrition of a language based on its structure, without looking at the social factors involved. There is very little to no development of Louisiana Creole and the reason for this is because of the restricted access to the language, through education and/or everyday interactions (Carlisle, 2010). As of today, there is no evidence of children growing up that speak Louisiana Creole French as their first language. It’s unlikely to find a fluent speaker below the age of 60. The 60-year-old-and-over generation learned the language when they were young, but after having to renounce the language in school, they only taught their children English. They came to appreciate the cultural impact of their abandonment of Louisiana Creole French in the 1960s. They then began to speak the language to their grandchildren (Audisio and Burke, 1988). For those few speakers below the age of 60, “they would be called ‘near-passive bilinguals.’ They may know many words and expressions but cannot construct or manipulate full sentences” (Brown, 1993). Current speakers speak English as well as or even better than
... proposes LAD as the innate mental mechanism that makes language acquisition possible. Chomsky's linguistic competence is the underlying knowledge that enables individuals to speak and understand their language. A native speaker has access to knowledge about the structure of his language which guides him in his language use. Second, Chomsky distinguished linguistic knowledge from language performance which is the use of language in a particular social context. Third, a child must acquire linguistic competence in order to be able to use language successfully. Forth, also he suggested universals of language which is languages share certain features. Fifth, also he suggested a critical period for language acquisition which is by the age of five children acquire almost the structure of their language. Elliot, J. A. (1981). Child Language . Cambridge University Press.
Language acquisition is perhaps one of the most debated issues of human development. Various theories and approaches have emerged over the years to study and analyse this developmental process. One factor contributing to the differing theories is the debate between nature v’s nurture. A question commonly asked is: Do humans a...
Wilder Penfield and Lamar Roberts first introduced the idea that there is a “critical period” for learning language in 1959. This critical period is a biologically determined period referring to a period of time when learning/acquiring a language is relatively easy and typically meets with a high degree of success. German linguist Eric Lenneberg further highlights Roberts and Penfield’s findings and postulated the Critical Period Hypothesis in 1967. According to the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), certain biological events related to language development can only happen in the critical period. During this time, the brain possesses a degree of flexibility (ability and ease of learning a language) and becomes lateralized (assignment of language functions becomes concrete – either in the left or right hemisphere) (Marinova-Todd, S; Marshall, D & Snow, C. 2000 9-10). This critical period lasts from childhood through the onset of puberty (usually at around 12 years of age). Once this period is over, it is more difficult to learn a language because language functions in the brain have become concrete. This hypothesis can be seen with the case of Genie, a woman who was isolated from human interaction and language up to the age of 13. By the time she was rescued, she was well after the critical period for language acquisition, and as such, she did not have a full command of the English language. Had she been rescued before the age of 13, she may have had more linguistic capability. However, this accounts for firs...
For the purposes of this paper, I have defined adulthood as including any person who is at or above the age of eighteen, because there is so little research on language learning in early adulthood versus middle or late adulthood. It is not possible to find studies about particular divisions of adulthood that have been verified by subsequent research trials, so I have included research about all ages of adulthood. Throughout this paper, I will discuss the major aspects of the body of research literature that separates adult second language learning from that of natural bilingual persons, including full immersion into the language, biological and neurological factors, the structure of both the native and second languages, age of acqui...
You will not be able to observe a difference between a child who receives full linguistic input early in childhood and the adolescent who only received input after puberty. This will occur because there is no critical period for language acquisition, therefore they do not have a specific period or age in which they would have to learn language. To be more specific, there will not be any constrains on when language must be learned. In addition, the child is born with the innate knowledge and capacity to learn language. However, no evidence supports such scenario, the reasoning behind this is based solely on
The study of language development, one of the most fascinating human achievements, has a long and rich history, extending over thousands of years (Chomsky, 2000). As the nature-versus-nurture argument is inevitable to arise whenever human behaviors are discussed, it is not surprising that language experts have debated the relative influences of genetics and the environment on language development (Hulit & Howard, 2002). Among the various proposals concerning the mechanisms involved in acquiring a language, two opposing theoretical positions, the behaviorist and the nativist, are the most prominent and influential ones (Ayoun, 2003; Garton & Pratt, 1998; Owens, 2001). Due to the indefinite explanation of the exact process, the continuous interest of the inquiring people, and the sheer significance of the precise result, the controversy remains ongoing and popular. In view of the more obvious limitations of the behaviorist interpretation and the prevailing contributions of the nativist interpretation, the latter one is more rational to accept.
Language has pioneered many interracial relationships and historical milestones. Language is a necessity for basic communication and cultural diversity. Being multilingual is a skill proven influential to a successful future. Due to rapid globalization, countries all over the world are stressing the importance of learning a second, or even third, language. With the exception of time and lack of resources, adults have very few widely applicable disadvantages to learning multiple languages. However, language learning as a child presents more complications. Some of those include not having enough funding at the elementary school level to introduce a program for secondary language, academic overload for the youth, stress for both the parent and student parties, and the mixing of languages. Not all of these complications are true in any or all situations, however, and the absence of them provides multitudes of opportunity for future career and academic success. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of the parents or the education legislation to decide whether they encourage the learning of a secondary language at the young age necessary for retention. “The general consensus is that it takes between five to seven years for an individual to achieve advanced fluency,” therefore the younger a child begins to learn, the more likely they are to benefit to the maximum potential (Robertson). Keeping the language learning in high school or beginning the process earlier is a greatly controversial discussion that is important to address because of the topic’s already lengthy suspension.