Parameter Setting in Language Acquisition

Parameter Setting in Language Acquisition PDF Author: Dalila Ayoun
Publisher: Burns & Oates
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Dalila Ayoun provides a broad overview of parameter-setting theory in first and second language acquisition and refines the theory by revisiting and challenging the traditional assumptions that underlie it, based on cross-linguistic language data that cover a range of syntactic and phonological phenomena.

Parameter Setting in Language Acquisition

Parameter Setting in Language Acquisition PDF Author: Dalila Ayoun
Publisher: Burns & Oates
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
Dalila Ayoun provides a broad overview of parameter-setting theory in first and second language acquisition and refines the theory by revisiting and challenging the traditional assumptions that underlie it, based on cross-linguistic language data that cover a range of syntactic and phonological phenomena.

Language Acquisition and the Theory of Parameters

Language Acquisition and the Theory of Parameters PDF Author: Nina Hyams
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400946384
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
This book is perhaps the most stunning available demonstration of the explanatory power of the parametric approach to linguistic theory. It is akin, not to a deductive proof, but to the discovery of a footprint in a far-off place which leaves an archeologist elated. The book is full of intricate reasoning, but the stunning aspect is that the reasoning moves between not only complex syntax and diverse languages, but it makes predictions about what two-year-old children will assume about the jumble of linguistic input that confronts them. Those predictions, Hyams shows, are supported by a discriminating analysis of acquisition data in English and Italian. Let us examine the linguistic context for a moment before we discuss her theory. The ultimate issue in linguistic theory is the explanation of how a child can acquire any human language. To capture this fact we must posit an innate mechanism which meets two opposite constraints: it must be broad enough to account for the diversity of human language, and narrow enough so that the child does not make irrelevant hypotheses about his own language, particularly ones from which there is no recovery. That is, a child must not posit a grammar which permits all of the sentences of a language as well as other sentences which are not in the language. In a word, the child must not create a language in which one cannot make adult discriminations between grammatical and ungrammatical.

Universal Grammar in Child Second Language Acquisition

Universal Grammar in Child Second Language Acquisition PDF Author: Usha Lakshmanan
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027224757
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
This book examines child second language acquisition within the Principles and Parameters theory of Universal Grammar (UG). Specifically, the book focuses on null-subjects in the developing grammars of children acquiring English as a second language. The book provides evidence from the longitudinal speech data of four child second language (L2) learners in order to test the predictions of a recent theory of null-subjects, namely, the Morphological Uniformity Principle (MUP). Lakshmanan argues that the child L2 acquisition data offer little or no evidence in support of the MUP s predictions regarding a developmental relation between verb inflections and null-subjects. The evidence from these child L2 data indicates that regardless of the status of null subjects in their first language, child L2 learners of English hypothesize correctly from the very beginning that English requires subjects of tensed clauses to be obligatorily overt. The failure on the part of these learners to obey this knowledge in certain structural contexts is the result of perceptual factors that are unrelated to parameter setting. The book demonstrates the value of child second language acquisition data in evaluating specific proposals within linguistic theory for a Universal principle.

Crosscurrents in Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theories

Crosscurrents in Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theories PDF Author: Thom Huebner
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027224633
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 444

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Book Description
The term “crosscurrent” is defined as “a current flowing counter to another.” This volume represents crosscurrents in second language acquisition and linguistic theory in several respects. First, although the main currents running between linguistics and second language acquisition have traditionally flowed from theory to application, equally important contributions can be made in the other direction as well. Second, although there is a strong tendency in the field of linguistics to see “theorists” working within formal models of syntax, SLA research can contribute to linguistic theory more broadly defined to include various functional as well as formal models of syntax, theories of phonology, variationist theories of sociolinguists, etc. These assumptions formed the basis for a conference held at Stanford University during the Linguistic Institute there in the summer of 1987. The conference was organized to update the relation between second language acquisition and linguistic theory. This book contains a selection of (mostly revised and updated) papers of this conference and two newly written papers.

Exploring Linguistic Science

Exploring Linguistic Science PDF Author: Allison Burkette
Publisher:
ISBN: 1108424805
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Introduces students to the scientific study of language, using the basic principles of complexity theory.

Language Processing and Language Acquisition

Language Processing and Language Acquisition PDF Author: Lyn Frazier
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0792306597
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
Studies of language acqUiSItion have largely ignored processing prin ciples and mechanisms. Not surprisingly, questions concerning the analysis of an informative linguistic input - the potential evidence for grammatical parameter setting - have also been ignored. Especially in linguistic approaches to language acquisition, the role of language processing has not been prominent. With few exceptions (e. g. Goodluck and Tavakolian, 1982; Pinker, 1984) discussions of language perform ance tend to arise only when experimental debris, the artifact of some experiment, needs to be cleared away. Consequently, language pro cessing has been viewed as a collection of rather uninteresting perform ance factors obscuring the true object of interest, namely, grammar acquisition. On those occasions when parsing "strategies" have been incorporated into accounts of language development, they have often been discussed as vague preferences, not open to rigorous analysis. In principle, however, theories of language comprehension can and should be subjected to the same criteria of explicitness and explanatoriness as other theories, e. g. , theories of grammar. Thus their peripheral role in accounts of language development may reflect accidental factors, rather than any inherent fuzziness or irrelevance to the language acquisition problem. It seems probable that an explicit model of the way(s) processing routines are applied in acquisition would help solve some central problems of grammar acquisition, since these routines regulate the application of grammatical knowledge to novel inputs.

Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar

Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar PDF Author: Lydia White
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521796477
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Table of contents

How to Set Parameters

How to Set Parameters PDF Author: David Lightfoot
Publisher: Mit Press
ISBN: 9780262121538
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Over the past decade generative grammarians have viewed language acquisition as a process of fixing option points or parameters defined in Universal Grammar. Here David Lightfoot addresses the crucial question of what it takes to set a parameter, of what kind of experience is needed to trigger the emergence of a natural kind of grammar.Lightfoot asserts that parameter setting is not sensitive to embedded material, that it is triggered only by robust elements that are structurally simple. He observes that morphological properties play a significant role in setting parameters which. have widespread syntactic effects. Using evidence from data on diachronic changes and from current work in syntactic theory, Lightfoot makes precise claims about the triggering experience that can explain a number of historical puzzles. He argues that the changes could have taken place in the way they did only if language acquisition proceeds on the basis of simple, unembedded experiences.Along the way Lightfoot examines consequences of the loss of the rich Old English case system and of the breakdown of the verb classes and takes up particularly illuminating cases of obsolescent structures.David Lightfoot is Professor and Chairman of the Linguistics Department at the University of Maryland.

First and Second Language Acquisition

First and Second Language Acquisition PDF Author: Jürgen M. Meisel
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139496379
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Infants and very young children develop almost miraculously the ability of speech, without apparent effort, without even being taught - as opposed to the teenager or the adult struggling without, it seems, ever being able to reach the same level of proficiency as five year olds in their first language. This useful textbook serves as a guide to different types of language acquisition: monolingual and bilingual first language development and child and adult second language acquisition. Unlike other books, it systematically compares first and second language acquisition, drawing on data from several languages. Research questions and findings from various subfields are helpfully summarized to show students how they are related and how they often complement each other. The essential guide to studying first and second language acquisition, it will be used on courses in linguistics, modern languages and developmental psychology.

Introducing Second Language Acquisition

Introducing Second Language Acquisition PDF Author: Muriel Saville-Troike
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107010896
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
A clear and practical introduction to second language acquisition, written for students encountering the topic for the first time.