First-Language Acquisition in Adolescence: Evidence for a Critical Period for Verbal Language Development

Multilingual first language acquisition refers to the language development of children exposed to two or more languages from birth or shortly thereafter. Much of the research on this topic adopts a comparative approach. Bilinguals are thus compared with their monolingual peers, and trilinguals with both bilinguals and monolinguals; within children, comparisons are made between a child's two (or more) languages, and between different domains within those languages. The goal of such comparisons is to determine the extent to which language development proceeds along similar paths and/or at a similar rate across groups, languages, and domains, in order to elaborate upon the question of whether these different groups acquire language in the same way, and to evaluate how language development in multilingual settings is influenced by environmental factors. The answers to these questions have both theoretical and practical implications.The goal of this article is to discuss the results of some of this recent research on multilingual first language acquisition by reviewing (a) properties of the developing linguistic system in a variety of linguistic domains and (b) some of the characteristics of multilingual first language acquisition that have attracted attention over the past five years, including cross-linguistic influence, dominance, and input quantity/quality. Trilingual first language acquisition is covered in a dedicated section.

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Language Learning

Childhood Studies ◽

10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0039 ◽

2012 ◽

Author(s):

Amy Paugh

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Language Development ◽

Language Learning ◽

Human Development ◽

Cognitive Processes ◽

Cultural Context ◽

First Language ◽

The Body ◽

First Language Acquisition ◽

Wide Range

The study of language learning is central to understanding how children learn to communicate and become competent members of their communities and social worlds. It is basic to the study of what it means to be human. As such, the body of research on this topic spans multiple disciplines including linguistics, psychology, anthropology, sociology, human development, education, applied linguistics, speech-language pathology, and neuroscience. It entails studies of the acquisition of first and second (third, etc.) languages in monolingual and bi/multilingual contexts, and both typical and atypical language development. Theories and methods used to study this phenomenon vary across academic disciplines. Linguistic and psychological approaches to first-language acquisition have focused more heavily on cognitive processes and development, while research from anthropological and sociolinguistic perspectives tends to examine learning language in its social and cultural context. These differing orientations are reflected in the terms used to refer to the process, for example, language acquisition or language development in linguistic and psychological approaches and language socialization in anthropological approaches. Much research on first-language acquisition has been carried out on English-speaking North American and European populations, but recent years have witnessed increasing analysis of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural data. Studies range in focus, examining theoretical claims or the acquisition of particular linguistic features such as phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse. Researchers investigate the influences on language learning and seek to illuminate the relations of language to human development, cognitive processes, and/or culture. Normally developing children worldwide evidence a high degree of similarity in early language learning; thus it has been possible to summarize general developmental sequences. One of the most fundamental points of rigorous debate concerns the degree of influence played by innate genetic predispositions or mechanisms of language (“nature”) versus the role of the social environment and language(s) children are exposed to (“nurture”). Spurred by this and other debates, the field has exploded since the 1960s. The literature is extensive and multidisciplinary, with each area often very specialized. This bibliography covers a wide range of perspectives, including research that falls on all points of the nature-nurture continuum, but focuses primarily on early childhood and confines itself to reviews, primary case studies, and foundational publications on child language learning in each tradition. The article was compiled with research assistance from Divya Ganesan at James Madison University.

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First Language Acquisition, Developmental Errors in Vocabulary: A Case Study of a Four -Year- Old Iranian Child

International Journal of English and Cultural Studies ◽

10.11114/ijecs.v3i1.4648 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 1

Author(s):

Nastaran Sadeghi ◽

Mohammad Hashamdar

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Language Development ◽

Learning Process ◽

First Language ◽

First Language Acquisition ◽

Iranian Child ◽

Interval Recording ◽

Do So

This case study aims to discover the process of first language acquisition of a 4–year-old Iranian child. The focus of the research is on developmental errors the child has created in his language development, i.e. the words which are not correct. To do so, the researcher, during four months, observed and recorded the subject's produced strange words. The recording was done by two ways, Interval recording strategy and event sampling.Developmental errors or strange words are part of the learning process. These words are created due to different reasons. The research shows that during four months and in thirty three records, eleven strange words and expressions were produced. These eleven errors were investigated in this study in details. A table was presented by the researcher in which these errors were thoroughly described.

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Cross-linguistic influence, input and the young bilingual child

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s1366728998000303 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 1 (3) ◽

pp. 181-182 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

ELIZABETH LANZA

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Language Acquisition ◽

Young Child ◽

Language Development ◽

First Language ◽

The Other ◽

First Language Acquisition ◽

Bilingual Child

The field of bilingual first language acquisition has focused on several important and interrelated issues: whether or not the young child acquiring two languages simultaneously differentiates his or her two languages from the onset of acquisition, what role the input plays in the acquisition of two languages, and whether the path of acquisition is similar to that of monolingual peers (see De Houwer, 1990). As a member of the DUFDE team, Natascha Müller has in previous work argued forcefully and convincingly for the bilingual child's separate development of his or her two languages, and hence how language-acquiring bilinguals behave like monolinguals. In her keynote article, Müller invokes the notion of transfer, a well-known term from research into second language acquisition, and proposes to consider transfer from the perspective of the input to which the young bilingual child is exposed. When this input is ambiguous, so that is there is variation in the input regarding one of the languages, the child will resort to transfer from the other language as a so-called relief strategy. In the following, I address the issue of cross-linguistic influence in language development and highlight the implications Müller's proposals may have for the field of bilingual first language acquisition. In conclusion I will relate these issues to the complexity of the notion of input in early bilingualism.

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First language acquisition and teaching

AILA Review ◽

10.1075/aila.24.06cru ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 24 ◽

pp. 78-87 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Madalena Cruz-Ferreira

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Language Development ◽

Phonological Awareness ◽

Natural Environment ◽

Child Language ◽

First Language ◽

Literacy Skills ◽

Pedagogical Practices ◽

First Language Acquisition ◽

Folk Beliefs

“First language acquisition” commonly means the acquisition of a single language in childhood, regardless of the number of languages in a child’s natural environment. Language acquisition is variously viewed as predetermined, wondrous, a source of concern, and as developing through formal processes. “First language teaching” concerns schooling in the language that is intended to become the child’s first (or “main”) one. Mainstream teaching practices similarly take languages as formal objects, focusing on literacy skills, so-called phonological awareness, and other teaching about the language. This article gives a first overview of folk beliefs associated with language acquisition and teaching, highlighting whether and how they can guide applied linguists’ concerns about child language development and early pedagogical practices.

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Adult second language acquisition

Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism ◽

10.1075/lab.3.1.03sla ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 3 (1) ◽

pp. 48-72 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Roumyana Slabakova

Keyword(s):

Second Language ◽

Second Language Acquisition ◽

Language Acquisition ◽

Critical Period ◽

First Language ◽

First Century ◽

Future Research ◽

First Language Acquisition ◽

Linguistic Input ◽

Adult Second Language Acquisition

This review article selects and elaborates on the important issues of adult second language acquisition research in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The fundamental question of whether adult second language acquisition and child first language acquisition are similar or different is addressed throughout the article. The issues of a critical period for acquisition, the importance of the linguistic input, and processing are discussed. Generative as well as usage-based perspectives are considered. Future research concerns and promising areas of investigation are proposed.

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Comparing levels of processability across languages

International Journal of Bilingualism ◽

10.1177/1367006910380037 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 15 (2) ◽

pp. 128-146 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Manfred Pienemann ◽

Jörg-U. Keßler ◽

Yuki Itani-Adams

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Language Development ◽

First Language ◽

Language Ability ◽

Developmental Perspective ◽

First Language Acquisition ◽

The Cross ◽

Japanese English

In this article we utilize a developmental perspective as a metric for the comparison of bilingual language ability. In particular, we utilize Processabilty Theory (Pienemann, 1998a, 2005) which provides a psycholinguistic metric for developmental schedules of any given language. We demonstrate this approach to the cross-linguistic measurement of language development on the basis of Itani-Adams’ (2007) study of bilingual (Japanese—English) first language acquisition.

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role of socialisation in the development of phonological, syntactical and lexical aspects of language

International Journal for Innovation Education and Research ◽

10.31686/ijier.vol5.iss4.665 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 5 (4) ◽

pp. 84-92

Author(s):

Ghozayel Mohsen Elotteebi

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Critical Period ◽

First Language ◽

Relevant Literature ◽

First Language Acquisition ◽

Relative Importance ◽

Lexical Development ◽

Phonological Deficits ◽

Innate Ability

Rapid linguistic development is believed to occur in early childhood because of the malleability of this period (Hutterlocher, et al., 1991; Maccoby, 1992). The aim of this paper is to evaluate the role of socialisation as a contributor to first-language acquisition in terms of the phonological, lexical and syntactical aspects of language. The relative importance of nativist-and usage-based approaches to language is examined. Following from that, the role of the amount, type and period of exposure to speech in the process of learning English as a first-language. This paper explores a number of studies of typical and atypical children in the relevant literature. It concludes that language acquisition is driven both by innate ability and by environmental factors, i.e. society, or social elements are significant as activators of the human being’s innate ability to acquire language. According to this paper, the deprivation of socialisation is critical to many aspects of language development, most importantly syntactic, and least importantly phonological. Deficits in phonological aspects are only seen in the case of atypical children, and the cases of autistic children, while lexical development can be seen in both cases; typical and atypical. The results of the studies investigated in this paper suggest that syntax is aspect of language most affected by inadequate exposure to language. It also concluded that these three aspects of language acquisition are also likely to be influenced by a critical period, which is a proposal of nativism.

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AN ANALYSIS OF FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION IN CHILDREN

Wiralodra English Journal ◽

10.31943/wej.v1i1.12 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 7-13

Author(s):

Masykur

Keyword(s):

Language Acquisition ◽

Language Development ◽

Case Studies ◽

First Language ◽

Language Ability ◽

Linguistic Knowledge ◽

First Language Acquisition ◽

Video Recordings ◽

Systematic Pattern ◽

Depth Interviews

The current study investigates the accessibility of a systematic pattern to children learning their first language, and also it is a try to show the effect of the quantity of input on first language acquisition. To these aims, two case studies were carried out on six children learning as their first language. The participants of the first study were three children acquiring their first language in Indramayu being followed for 12 months (24-36 months) to see if they all passed the same pattern in language development. The participants of the second study were three Children (who were exposed to less input) acquiring their first language in Indramayu being followed for 12 months (24-36 months) to see if the language development was affected considering the amount of input they were exposed to. In-depth interviews, observations, audio and video recordings, notes and reports were used to collect the data for this study. The data collected for each Children was analyzed separately, and the stages of development were reported for each children accordingly. The findings support the claim that the process of language acquisition depends on an innate language ability which holds that at least some linguistic knowledge exists in humans at birth, and also the input that learners receive plays a very important role in the language acquisition since the input activates this innate structure.

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