Miniature Language System Acquisition by Children with Different Learning Proficiencies

1990 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 335-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Johnston ◽  
Mary Blatchley ◽  
Gloria Streit Olness
Keyword(s):  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Final Particle ◽  
Capacity Limits ◽  
Language System ◽  
Perceptual Salience ◽  
Grammatical Analysis ◽  
System Acquisition

Sixteen children, aged 7:8 to 9:10, learned two miniature languages while playing a communication game. Both languages expressed Action (Agent, Patient) meanings and incorporated a Patient suffix. They differed in word order: VSO (Language I) versus SOV (Language II). Children found the SOV language easier; they also made more suffix errors and fewer word order errors in this language. The results suggest that the perceptual salience of an utterance-final particle may hinder grammatical analysis, at least if capacity limits and perseverative learning strategies intervene.

Differences in Attentional Involvement Underlying the Perception of Distinctive and Typical Faces

Perception ◽  
10.1068/p5751 ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 36 (7) ◽  
pp. 1057-1065 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jae-Jin Ryu ◽  
Avi Chaudhuri
Keyword(s):  
Visual Presentation ◽  
Stimulus Dimension ◽  
Change Detection Task ◽  
Identification Task ◽  
Processing Efficiency ◽  
Capacity Limits ◽  
Perceptual Salience ◽  
Attentional Tasks ◽  
Human Faces ◽  
Processing Differences

Differences in human faces can be evaluated along a continuum that ranges from ‘distinctive’ to ‘typical.’ We examined processing differences between distinctive and typical faces by two attentional tasks that induce attentional blink (AB). Given that AB is believed to reflect temporal or capacity limits of attention, stimuli that survive AB are believed to be associated with greater processing efficiency. In a change-detection task, participants were required to detect changes in the two pairs of faces that were presented in rapid succession. Changes involving the distinctive face of a pair were more likely to be detected than those involving a typical face. In a face-identification task, distinctive faces embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream were identified with a greater accuracy than typical faces. Together, our results suggest that distinctive faces are associated with greater processing efficiency and may be explained in terms of perceptual salience, a stimulus dimension known to attract attention.

UG or not UG, that is the question: a reply to Clahsen and Muysken

1987 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean duPlessis ◽  
Doreen Solin ◽  
Lisa Travis ◽  
Lydia White
Keyword(s):  
Adult Learners ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Additional Data ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Natural Languages ◽  
German Word ◽  
Germanic Languages

In a recent paper, Clahsen and Muysken (1986) argue that adult second lan guage (L2) learners no longer have access to Universal Grammar (UG) and acquire the L2 by means of learning strategies and ad hoc rules. They use evidence from adult L2 acquisition of German word order to argue that the rules that adults use are not natural language rules. In this paper, we argue that this is not the case. We explain properties of Germanic word order in terms of three parameters (to do with head position, proper government and adjunc tion). We reanalyse Clahsen and Muysken's data in terms of these parameters and show that the stages that adult learners go through, the errors that they make and the rules that they adopt are perfectly consistent with a UG incor porating such parameters. We suggest that errors are the result of some of the parameters being set inappropriately for German. The settings chosen are nevertheless those of existing natural languages. We also discuss additional data, from our own research on the acquisition of German and Afrikaans, which support our analysis of adult L2 acquisition of Germanic languages.

scholarly journals Errors in the Use of English Grammar

1970 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 54-63
Author(s):  
Anju Giri
Keyword(s):  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Word Order ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Grammar ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Grammatical Errors ◽  
Main Verb ◽  
Question Formation ◽  
Target Languages ◽  
Comprehensive Study

By systematically studying the errors committed by learners one can get a lot of hints about the learning strategies and mechanisms which they are employing in learning their target languages. Such hints have provided insights to the teachers, textbook writers, curriculum designers and many applied linguists and enable them to contribute to their fields. This article seeks to present a comprehensive study of grammatical errors committed by the bachelor level university students of Nepal learning English which followed the established stages of error analysis. It was found that the bachelor level students in Nepal did commit all sorts of grammatical errors in the use of the English language. For them, the error prone grammatical units were Sentence and Clause and the error prone grammatical categories were Conditionals, Mood, V-Form, Tense/Aspect, Main Verb, Subject-Verb Agreement, Question Formation, Auxiliary/Modal,Miscellaneous forms, 'So' Form, Determiner, Verb+Participle, Word Order, and Noun.Key words: Correct forms; Incorrect forms/mistakes; ErrorsJournal of NELTAVol. 15 No. 1-2 December 2010Page: 54-63Uploaded date: 4 May, 2011DOI: 10.3126/nelta.v15i1-2.4610

Case in Heritage Korean

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 252-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kitaek Kim ◽  
William O’Grady ◽  
Bonnie D. Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Poor Performance ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Accusative Case ◽  
Multiple Factors ◽  
Perceptual Salience

Abstract In a series of five experiments with 31 Korean heritage children, we show that knowledge of case and the ability to use it must be evaluated with careful attention to multiple factors that can influence access to morphological information in the course of comprehension and production. The first two experiments, which compared the canonical SOV pattern with the non-canonical OSV pattern, employed picture-selection comprehension tasks to assess knowledge of case. Poor performance on OSV sentences was mitigated by experimental manipulations that either enhanced the perceptual salience of case or provided felicitous conditions for the use of non-canonical word order. The next three experiments, all involving production tasks, revealed that many children who failed to demonstrate knowledge of case in the comprehension tasks actually produced nominative and accusative case correctly, thereby revealing their knowledge of this morphosyntactic system.

The availability of universal grammar to adult and child learners - a study of the acquisition of German word order

1986 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harald Clahsen ◽  
Pieter Muysken
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
First Language ◽  
German Word ◽  
In The Beginning

Children learning German as their first language grasp its verb-final character from the very beginning. Adults learning German as a second language tend to assume in the beginning that it has a subject-verb-object order, and modify this hypothesis only gradually. We argue that this difference is due to the fact that children have access to the 'move alpha' matrix when learning the language, allowing them to make more abstract hypotheses, while adults can only rely on general learning strategies.

scholarly journals The Chinese Language Complement as a Grammatical Challenge

2021 ◽  
pp. 88-95
Author(s):  
Ю.А. Костина
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Language System ◽  
System A ◽  
The Russian Language

В статье исследуется проблема понятия «комплемент» в китайском предложении. Автор рассматривает трудности овладения комплементом, что объясняется его отсутствием как грамматической категории в системе русского языка, разнообразием функций, многозначностью, зависимостью от ряда параметров коммуникативной ситуации, необходимостью соблюдать порядок слов и другими факторами. В работе приводится составленная автором диаграмма, наглядно демонстрирующая, какие именно типы комплемента вызывают наибольшие трудности, по мнению самих студентов. Предлагаемая типология упражнений учитывает субъективные трудности студентов, учит целенаправленно преодолевать их, а затем распределять внимание между несколькими трудностями в условиях, имитирующих реальное общение. The paper deals with the problem of complement in the Chinese sentence. The author examines the difficulties of studying the complement, explained by its absence as a grammatical category in the Russian language system, a variety of functions, polysemy, dependence on a number of parameters of the communicative situation, the need to observe word order and other factors. The work provides a diagram compiled by the author, clearly demonstrating which types of complement cause the greatest difficulties, according to the students' opinion. The proposed typology of exercises takes into account the challenges that are subjectively felt by students, teaches to purposefully overcome each difficulty, and to distribute attention among several difficulties in conditions that imitate real communication.

scholarly journals Morphosyntactic features of the indefinite tot in old Romanian

Diacronia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabela Nedelcu
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Final Particle ◽  
Modern Language ◽  
Dative Case ◽  
The People ◽  
The One

This article establishes and discusses a series of morphosyntactic features of the indefinite tot ‘whole, all’ in old Romanian, relating them to modern Romanian: forms that disappeared from the language, a wider variety of singular and plural genitive-dative markers (synthetic, analytic and mixed), the more permissive word order and the possibility to occur in a structure with an undetermined noun. The description of the grammatical characteristics of the quantifier tot highlights a great variation: (i) between the synthetic, analytic and mixed realization of the genitive-dative case (toatei all.F.SG.GEN≡DAT ‘of/to the whole’ + genitive-dative noun, a/la/de toată A/LA/DE all.F.SG.NOM≡ACC ‘of/to the whole’ + nominative-accusative noun, a toată A all.F.SG.NOM≡ACC ‘of/to the whole’ + genitive-dative noun); (ii) between the (pronominal and adjectival) form with the final particle –a and the one without –a (tuturor, tuturora ‘of all / to all’; tuturor oamenilor ‘of/to all the people’, tuturora fraților ‘of/to all the brothers’); (iii) between the postposition and anteposition of tot relative to certain pronouns (ei toți, toți ei ‘all of them’); (iv) between structures with a determined and an undetermined noun (toate zilele, toate zile ‘all the days’). The comparison with the modern language shows that, in some cases, this variation has been eliminated, and in other cases, it is preserved.

Transfer in bilingual first language acquisition

1998 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 151-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
NATASCHA MÜLLER
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Word Order ◽  
First Language ◽  
Quantitative Difference ◽  
Language Learner ◽  
First Language Acquisition ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
Grammatical Analysis ◽  
Bilingual Language Development

Much research on bilingual first language acquisition has stressed the role of the dominant or preferred language when the two languages have some influence on one another. The present paper tries to look at transfer or interference from the perspective of the input the child is exposed to. Transfer will be argued to occur in those domains of the grammar where the language learner is confronted with ambiguous input. The bilingual child may, as a relief strategy, use parts of the analysis of one language in order to cope with ambiguous properties of the other. Ambiguity of input is crucial and will be evaluated through a comparison with monolingual language acquisition: if monolingual children have problems with the language material in question, it may be suggested that the input contains evidence for more than only one grammatical analysis. A quantitative difference between monolingual and bilingual language acquisition will be interpreted as evidence in favor of cross-linguistic influence in bilingual language development. The paper reviews longitudinal studies on the acquisition of word order in German subordinate clauses.

Processing cost and its consequences

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
William O'Grady
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Proximity Effects ◽  
Processing Cost

AbstractI focus on two challenges that processing-based theories of language must confront: the need to explain why language has the particular properties that it does, and the need to explain why processing pressures are manifested in the particular way that they are. I discuss these matters with reference to two illustrative phenomena: proximity effects in word order and a constraint on contraction.

Language processing is not a race against time

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giosuè Baggio ◽  
Carmelo M. Vicario
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Cognitive Functions ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Language System ◽  
Moderating Factors

AbstractWe agree with Christiansen & Chater (C&C) that language processing and acquisition are tightly constrained by the limits of sensory and memory systems. However, the human brain supports a range of cognitive functions that mitigate the effects of information processing bottlenecks. The language system is partly organised around these moderating factors, not just around restrictions on storage and computation.

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