BBI 5210 Second Language Acquisition

LECTURE 2
F a c t o r s i n f l u e n c i ng l a n g u a g e a c q u i s i t i o n (Part 1: AGE)

Some important observations

Children learning their first language accomplish it by

age 4-6 years

L2 learner start learning the L2 at a variety of age; two

hotly debated issues related to age and SLA

Is there a critical period for language learning? Critical Period Hypothesis YES; but there is evidence against this hypothesis Is there a ceiling effect for second language learning? Ultimate attainment / End State for L2 Is it possible for L2 learners to attain a level of competence in the L2 that is isomorphic to the competence that all humans possess in their own mother tongue / L1

Critical Period Hypothesis/ Sensitive Period

There is a specific period of time early in life when

the brain exhibits a special propensity to attend to certain experiences in the environment (e.g. language) and learn from them.
The brain is pre-programmed to be shaped by

experience, but only if it occurs within a biologically specified time period.

Evidence of critical/sensitive periods in animal learning

There appears to be a distinction between critical and

sensitive periods in animal learning too

Critical period: irreversible damage

e.g. ocular development in the brains of kittens: kittens deprived of experience of viewing between 30-80 days of life will lose vision

Sensitive period: reversible if sufficient stimuli is later provided

e.g. barn owls use auditory cues to create mental maps of their space. If hearing/vision is impaired during the sensitive period, auditory spatial information will not be processed normally later in life; affecting their survival as they will not beable to catch mice in the dark

Evidence for the Critical Period Hypothesis for language learning

Genie (watch youtube secret of the wild child)

A child discovered in 1970 at the age of 13 having been brought up in conditions of inhuman neglect and extreme isolation, was unable to learn language.
Other feral children (children who lived out of human

contact from a young age)

Postponed L1 acquisition: deaf babies exhibit incomplete

acquisition of their late-learned first language

Evidence for a sensitive period

Svirsky and Holt (2005) Deaf babies who receive the coclear implant after age 2 show slower progress and overall lower performance in vocabulary and grammar compared to those who receive them before age 2.
Suggest: 2 years of age may be the sensitive period

Extension of Critical Period Hypothesis to L2A

Observations: 1. L2 learners who start earlier during childhood are more successful (in terms of ultimate attainment) Early explanations from neurolinguistics: 1. Penfield and Roberts, 1959: loss of plasticity in the human brain by the age of nine 2. Lenneberg, 1967: completion of the process of lateralization with the onset of puberty BUT these explanations are now being challenged; but many still accept them as plausible.

Neuroscience terminologies
Plasticity : the ability of the brain to change
With loss of plasticity, the brain structure is fixed / unchangable see neuroscience resources for kids http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/plast.html

Lateralization: Left brain and right brain functions

Most mental functions are distributed across the hemispheres but there are specific processes that are specialized to one hemisphere. For example, both sides of the brain perform functions related to language. But in most people, grammar and vocabulary are localized to the left side of the brain, while understanding the emotional content of language is a function of the right hemisphere.

Language is a biological system

Lenneberg (1967:371-4) argues that a system is biological if it satisfies these 5 criteria:

its cognitive function is species specific the specific properties of its cognitive function are replicated in every member of the species The cognitive processes and capacities associated with this system are differentiated spontaneously with maturation Certain aspects of behavior and cognitive function for this system emerge only during infancy Certain social phenomena come about by spontaneous adaptation of the behavior of the growing individual to the behavior of other individuals around him

Evidence against the critical period hypothesis ?

Exceptionally successful late L2 learners (Ioup et al., 1994)

e.g. Julie (L2 learner of Arabic) started at age 21 lived in Egypt for 26 years naturalistic learner
Tests conducted: Production task: 7 /13 judged her speech as definitely native Perception task: able to discriminate Egyptian from nonEgyptian accents Translation task: made very few mistakes Grammaticality judgement task: diverged on 5/37 sentences from native speakers Do the above evidence support or argue against the critical period hypothesis / sensitive period? What do you think? What kinds of evidence would be more definitive?

1. 2. 3. 4.

Are children or adults better L2 learners?

Snow and Hhle (1978) : in a 25-minute instruction

session, adults and adolescents were better than in children Krashen, Long and Scarcella (1979): older is better initially, but younger is better in the long run Oyama (1976) and Patkowski (1980): longitudinal studies that show the rate advantage for adults dissipates after a little while and children eventually catch up However, in a foreign language context, this may not be the case, because exposure to L2 is limited to whats available in the classroom.

The importance of Context

Age may exert universal influences on the learning of a

second language, but context moderates these universal effects.

Hours of exposure to linguistic input:

L1 acquisition: 14000 hours ( 5 years x 365 days x 8 hours) L2 acquisition: 7000 hours ( 4 hours x 365 days x 5 years) Foreigen language context L2 learning: 540 hours ( 3 hours x 4 weeks x 9 months x 5 years)

The question of ultimate attainment

Two lines of research both focusing on L2 morphosyntax
Correlational Studies: L2 morphosyntactic knowledge

along the age of onset continuum Q: Are age and morphosyntactic attainment related?

Grammatical Judgement Task

Q: Can some exceptionally successful L2 acquirers be indistinguishable from the native speakers in their morphosyntactic knowledge? Can native-like competence be achieved?

Correlational Studies
Johnson and Newport (1989): Youngest group performed within the range of native speakers Older group (8-16) showed scored linearly declining with age Adults group : no relation between age and grammatical judgement Birdsong and Molis (2001) replicated Johnson and Newport And found a negative correlation for the whole sample group Early arrivals had perfect scores 13 late arrivals obtained 92% and 3 > 95%

On ultimate attainment
Coppieters (1987): subjects all learned L2 after puberty Grammatical intuitions were 3 SD away from native

controls. Rationalization in interviews were also different. There were subtle syntactic-semantic and morphosemantic differences were found

Birdsong (1992): partial replication of Coppieters (1987) Subjects also learned L2 after puberty 15 participants performed in the same range as native speakers

The debate goes on!!

Cognitive neuroscience

What causes age effects?

Biological or other explanations