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NL-KR Digest Volume 03 No. 49
NL-KR Digest (11/13/87 18:44:32) Volume 3 Number 49
Today's Topics:
Re: Language Learning
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 87 13:58 EST
From: mark edwards <edwards@uwmacc.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Language Learning
In article <1125@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> zwicky@dormouse.cis.ohio-state.edu (Elizabeth D. Zwicky) writes:
:> Scott R. Turner
:
:Give me a break here. You CANNOT test hypotheses about whether or not
:there is a crystallization period after which language cannot be learned
:without dealing with degenerate cases. The case of someone who has been
:deprived of all language contact for n years, starting at birth, whether
:n is 2, 5, or 12, will always be a degenerate case. Certainly, Genie
:is not conclusive evidence, and such cases are (thank God!) rare, and
:so the evidence is not conclusive. However, in all known cases, children
:deprived of language contact cannstill learn languages normally if they
:start before puberty.
Why can't you test hypotheses about whether or not there is a crystal-
lization period ..... ? It seems that if we can not test it then, we
can not test it at all. How would you test it. Use your children?
Somebody elses ?
:The idea of a crystallization period is supported by the data about
:second language learning in normal humans, but the question I was
:answering was about learning of *first* languages.
:
: Elizabeth Zwicky
I don't see why second language learning in adults supports the
"crystallization period". For one, when a child starts learning
to speak they do it naturally, they have plenty of time, words
are repeated until they absorb the correct pronunciation. The
key words here are plenty of time, they are corrected many times,
and it takes them many "years" to progress to fluency.
The adult learns a second language in a hurry. There is no time for
assimilation. An adult gets frustated if he/she is corrected too
often, an adult probably is not as absorbed in the activity. The
key words here are lack of time, and fluency is picked up in a very
short time. By fluency here I mean only that the intended message
is capable of being realized.
An adult is busy, he/she has many more important things to worry
about. Like were the next paycheck is coming from. The goals of
the child are to learn the language inorder to get by. By the time
they reach a certain age they have generalized
the sound structure of the language. When a child is learning a
second language the generalization process is still going on. Thus
the child has no problem generalizing the new language. The adult
on the other hand has not used these skills in quite a while. And
like anything else that hasn't been used the skills decay. Since
the learning of the sound system was an unconcious activity it
is lost or buried quite deep.
A child is also quite content saying "See dogie run.", "See dogie
run." Where as the adult may repeat this exercise a couple of times
and want to learn more difficult words and grammar combinations.
The child has more reinforment. For instance:
Child: See dogie run?
Mother: Yes the dog is running. Look how fast he goes.
An adult cannot usually have the same conversation. The other
adult will soon get stone bored.
Is second language learning in adults inhibited because of the
"c" period?
I think more facts must be weighed, more applicable data must
be gathered. Clearly the child and adult are in vastly different
environments when the process is being learned.
mark
--
edwards@vms.macc.wisc.edu
{allegra, ihnp4, seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!edwards
UW-Madison, 1210 West Dayton St., Madison WI 53706
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 87 10:40 EST
From: Elizabeth D. Zwicky <zwicky@ptero.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: Re: Language Learning
In article <1966@uwmacc.UUCP> edwards@unix.macc.wisc.edu (mark edwards) writes:
>In article <1125@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> zwicky@dormouse.cis.ohio-state.edu (Elizabeth D. Zwicky) writes:
>:Give me a break here. You CANNOT test hypotheses about whether or not
>:there is a crystallization period after which language cannot be learned
>:without dealing with degenerate cases.
> Why can't you test hypotheses about whether or not there is a crystal-
> lization period ..... ? It seems that if we can not test it then, we
> can not test it at all. How would you test it. Use your children?
> Somebody elses ?
My very point is that the question was about first language learning. In
order to test for a crystallization period for first languages, it is
necessary to deprive a child of language to see whether s/he can still
learn it later. This will inevitably produce a "degenerate case" as
human society is centralized on language. It is also a cruel and
inhuman thing to do to a child, and so known cases are usually even
more degenerate, since they involve children with parents who do
cruel and inhuman things to them - and rarely stop at depriving them
of language. I am not suggesting that we should create any such
children, but merely pointing out that we cannot reject the data out
of hand because of the complicating factors.
You must admit that it seems likely that first language learning
is different from second, even in children.
>:The idea of a crystallization period is supported by the data about
>:second language learning in normal humans.
> I don't see why second language learning in adults supports the
> "crystallization period". For one, when a child starts learning
> to speak they do it naturally, they have plenty of time, words
> are repeated until they absorb the correct pronunciation. The
> key words here are plenty of time, they are corrected many times,
> and it takes them many "years" to progress to fluency.
It takes them not many but several years. In any case, you are putting
words in my mouth - I never said I was talking about adults, just
"normal humans" by which I meant people of any age who had not been
abused, were not aphasic, were of normal intelligence ... Children
do learn second languages; the interesting question is whether or not
there is a specific point at which children stop being good at learning
second languages, and the data shows that there is, and it is puberty.
In the environments in which these data have been collected, there
is no drastic change in environment at puberty, which would tend to
suggest that the diffference is not due to factors like lack of time
and patience, but has some deeper cause.
> mark
Elizabeth
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 87 15:49 EST
From: M.BRILLIANT <marty1@houdi.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Language Learning
In article <1966@uwmacc.UUCP>, edwards@uwmacc.UUCP (mark edwards) writes:
> In article <1125@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> zwicky@dormouse.cis.ohio-state.edu (Elizabeth D. Zwicky) writes:
.....
> :The idea of a crystallization period is supported by the data about
> :second language learning in normal humans, but the question I was
> :answering was about learning of *first* languages.
> :
> : Elizabeth Zwicky
>
> I don't see why second language learning in adults supports the
> "crystallization period". For one, when a child starts learning
> to speak they do it naturally, they have plenty of time...
> The adult learns a second language in a hurry....
There are immigrant adults who have been here twenty years or more and
don't speak English yet.
> A child is also quite content saying "See dogie run.", "See dogie
> run." Where as the adult may repeat this exercise a couple of times
> and want to learn more difficult words and grammar combinations.
> The child has more reinforment. For instance:
>
> Child: See dogie run?
> Mother: Yes the dog is running. Look how fast he goes.
>
> An adult cannot usually have the same conversation. The other
> adult will soon get stone bored.
Oh, is that what happens? I thought children were supposed to be the
ones with short attention spans.
> Is second language learning in adults inhibited because of the
> "c" period?
Apparently, yes.
> I think more facts must be weighed, more applicable data must
> be gathered. Clearly the child and adult are in vastly different
> environments when the process is being learned.
I'm told there is a lot of field experience with ESL (English as a
Second Language) that says that children dumped into a foreign language
environment learn the new language faster and better than adults.
M. B. Brilliant Marty
AT&T-BL HO 3D-520 (201)-949-1858
Holmdel, NJ 07733 ihnp4!houdi!marty1
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 87 07:46 EST
From: M.BRILLIANT <marty1@houdi.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Language Learning
In article <1409@houdi.UUCP>, I wrote:
> In article <1966@uwmacc.UUCP>, edwards@uwmacc.UUCP (mark edwards) writes:
.....
> > Is second language learning in adults inhibited because of the
> > "c" period?
>
> Apparently, yes.
I have to rebut my own statement, because what was known a few
years ago is now known not to be true.
> I'm told there is a lot of field experience with ESL (English as a
> Second Language) that says that children dumped into a foreign language
> environment learn the new language faster and better than adults.
I'm told recent studies show that children learn pronunciation
faster, but their vocabulary in the second language tends to
remain inferior to their vocabulary in the native language.
Adults, on the other hand, retain a foreign accent in the second
language, so they sound like incompetent speakers (maybe they do
that defensively), but learn the vocabulary and grammar.
Professionals in language learning speak now of a "sensitive"
period, rather than a "critical" period, and specifically with
reference to phonology.
By the way, single examples (such as the training of Helen
Keller) do not prove general principles in the biological
sciences. Living things are not machines, and what is true of
one is not necessarily true of others of the same species.
Statistical studies often disprove what was previously "known"
either from anecdote, or from earlier studies that in hindsight
prove to have been inadequately controlled.
M. B. Brilliant Marty
AT&T-BL HO 3D-520 (201)-949-1858
Holmdel, NJ 07733 ihnp4!houdi!marty1
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 87 09:05 EST
From: mark edwards <edwards@uwmacc.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Language Learning
In article <1409@houdi.UUCP> marty1@houdi.UUCP (M.BRILLIANT) writes:
:> I don't see why second language learning in adults supports the
:> "crystallization period". For one, when a child starts learning
:> to speak they do it naturally, they have plenty of time...
:> The adult learns a second language in a hurry....
:
:There are immigrant adults who have been here twenty years or more and
:don't speak English yet.
So. That doesn't prove anything but the immigrant adult had no
incentive to learn English. He/she had no goal to learn English.
My theory says nothing about those people.
:Oh, is that what happens? I thought children were supposed to be the
:ones with short attention spans.
But their attention spans are quite different. For children
simple conversation are OK. Adults will get stone bored if a trivial
conversation, that children might enjoy, continues for any length of
time.
:> Is second language learning in adults inhibited because of the
:> "c" period?
:Apparently, yes.
Why apparently yes? Support your claims!
:> I think more facts must be weighed, more applicable data must
:> be gathered. Clearly the child and adult are in vastly different
:> environments when the process is being learned.
:
:I'm told there is a lot of field experience with ESL (English as a
:Second Language) that says that children dumped into a foreign language
:environment learn the new language faster and better than adults.
Great, this supports my claims. And adds nothing to your claims.
Marty you didn't read a word of what I said. There may well be a "c"
period. But I was bringing up contrary evidence and facts that are
not apparently considered when the "c" period was coined.
mark
--
edwards@vms.macc.wisc.edu
{allegra, ihnp4, seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!edwards
UW-Madison, 1210 West Dayton St., Madison WI 53706
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 87 10:14 EST
From: M.BRILLIANT <marty1@houdi.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Language Learning
In article <1399@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>, zwicky@ptero.cis.ohio-state.edu (Elizabeth D. Zwicky) writes:
> ... Children
> do learn second languages; the interesting question is whether or not
> there is a specific point at which children stop being good at learning
> second languages, and the data shows that there is, and it is puberty.
> In the environments in which these data have been collected, there
> is no drastic change in environment at puberty, which would tend to
> suggest that the diffference is not due to factors like lack of time
> and patience, but has some deeper cause.
What was once believed to be quick language learning in children is now
believed to be only quick pronunciation learning. Children who seem to
know a language well, because they speak it fluently without an accent
in social situations, are not necessarily ready to use it to learn
things they don't already know.
Even pronunciation learning may have nothing to do with crystallization.
The onset of identity crisis might make an adolescent less eager than a
child to adopt a new language. And an adolescent might be more likely
to recognize that superficial fluency is not enough, and adopt a
halting pronunciation to signal that the language has not been mastered.
M. B. Brilliant Marty
AT&T-BL HO 3D-520 (201)-949-1858
Holmdel, NJ 07733 ihnp4!houdi!marty1
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 87 18:06 EST
From: merrill@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
Subject: Re: Language Learning
M. B. Brilliant writes:
> In article <1399@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>, zwicky@ptero.cis.ohio-state.edu (Elizabeth D. Zwicky) writes:
>
> > ... Children
> > do learn second languages; the interesting question is whether or not
> ...
>
> What was once believed to be quick language learning in children is now
> believed to be only quick pronunciation learning. Children who seem to
> know a language well, because they speak it fluently without an accent
> in social situations, are not necessarily ready to use it to learn
> things they don't already know.
>
> Even pronunciation learning may have nothing to do with crystallization.
> The onset of identity crisis might make an adolescent less eager than a
> child to adopt a new language. And an adolescent might be more likely
> to recognize that superficial fluency is not enough, and adopt a
> halting pronunciation to signal that the language has not been mastered.
Although the syntactic evidence is evidently less solid than I had
realized, the phonetic data about production and recognition of second
languages is fairly clear. A child can gain mastery of both the
production and perception of difficult phonemes, but an adult can not
(it seems) become proficient in recognition even if he is trained to
produce a distinction correctly.
The best data along these lines come from Japanese adults trying to
learn English as a second language. Japanese, like related Asian
languages, does not contain the [r]/[l] pair; thus, speakers of
Japanese do not learn to discriminate between these two phonemes very
well. Even if adults are taught artificially to make the distinction in
speech, no matter how patiently---thus getting around the "see doggie
run" kind of argument---they *do not* acquire any statistically
significant skill in recognizing these two phones. It seems to me
that this fact indicates that there is a real crystalization effect.
I seem to remember another experiment, which I will relate with the
proviso that I may have to retract my claims about it. It seems to me
that I remember an experiment in which adult speakers of Japanese were
trained to discriminate same/different along the [r]/[l] continuum for
short intervals. The experimenters hoped to find that the subjects
would then be able to generalize these discriminations to learn [r]
from [l]. My memory is that the subjects could learn to make the
narrow discrimination of side-by-side tokens, but could not
generalize. If so, this would also indicate that there was a real
crystallization effect, and might lead one to hypothesize that it lay
in the ability to generalize.
Incidentally, language is not the only area in which a crystallization
effect has been hypothesized. I've heard of claims for such a
phenomenon in musical performance (specifically cello,) and other
motor behavior. In the cognitive realm, the general similarity of
many of the stages of concept acquisition might also reflect stages of
a crystallization hierarchy, although I don't know enough
developmental cognitive psych. to be able to argue that one either
way. Does anybody out there know more of the details of the
situations in either of these fields?
--- John Merrill
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 87 02:08 EST
From: David Stampe <stampe@uhccux.UUCP>
Subject: Re: Language Learning (anecdotes)
John Merrill writes:
>Incidentally, language is not the only area in which a crystallization
>effect has been hypothesized. I've heard of claims for such a
>phenomenon in musical performance (specifically cello,) and other
>motor behavior.
The violin pedagogue Suzuki tells a story about Ben Franklin, who,
during one of his trips to Paris, was congratulated on his violin
playing. Franklin replied that anyone could play as well, if they
began early and applied themselves diligently. He was asked when
he began to play. Why, at fifty-five, he replied.
Jakob Bronowski, in his PBS series "The Ascent of Man", remarked that
he learned English in college in England, and later had forgotten how
to speak his mother tongue, Polish. However, he noted, echoing the
accepted opinion of this matter, if it had not been for Polish, he
could not now have spoken English. This opinion seemed to be born
out by the heavy Polish accent with which Bronowski spoke English.
Some linguists are envied for their ability to learn new languages
apparently as fluently as children. I think of Ken Hale, Paul Garvin,
Alexis Manaster-Ramer, Stan Starosta, and a few others. They are also
exceptional in that, whereas the fluency of the average adult language
learner fades quickly when he/she is no longer in contact with the
language, their fluency seems not to fade. Starosta and I as adults
almost twenty years ago both learned a difficult language of India
called Sora. About four years ago I spent six months speaking the
language exclusively. Within a year after that, my fluency had mostly
faded. But Starosta, who hasn't used the language for twenty years,
is fluent as ever.
I don't think that anyone doubts that they are exceptional, except
maybe the individuals themselves, who often seem surprised that it
isn't so easy for everyone. Obviously they don't learn exactly as
children do, i.e. no one speaks "mother talk" to them. Perhaps it
would be worth studying how such virtuosos learn languages, and keep
them alive, or whether their fluency is actually as comparable to that
of native speakers as it seems.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 87 12:06 EST
From: David West <dwt@zippy.eecs.umich.edu>
Subject: Re: Language Learning
In article <12400009@iuvax> merrill@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu writes:
>I remember an experiment in which adult speakers of Japanese were
>trained to discriminate same/different along the [r]/[l] continuum for
>short intervals. ...
>...My memory is that the subjects could learn to make the
>narrow discrimination of side-by-side tokens, but could not
>generalize. If so, this would also indicate that there was a real
>crystallization effect, and might lead one to hypothesize that it lay
>in the ability to generalize.
I remember clearly trying (for a few days only) to learn some Dutch vowels
from a native speaker; I did ok when working from short-term memory, but
found that the unconscious internal process that transfers short-term to
long-term memory tried to assimilate the Dutch vowels to English ones, i.e.
to make use of existing categories. First-language learners don't have to
contend with this kind of cognitive interference.
>Incidentally, language is not the only area in which a crystallization
>effect has been hypothesized.
Hubel and Wiesel established quite unambiguously for the cat visual system
that there is a period at which certain kinds of visual+motor experience are
essential for the development of adult visual+motor competence, and that
absence of such experience at the appropriate period cannot be compensated
by its presence later.
>I've heard of claims for such a
>phenomenon in musical performance (specifically cello,) and other
>motor behavior....
What all of these skills have in common is that they are extremely
demanding of time. There *is* a change in the environment at puberty: it
consists of a (largely socially-imposed) severe escalation of time demands
from other things ("education" ,"work", "social life" etc.). Typically,
by the time one gets round to acquiring a second language, one "can't
afford" to spend as much time on its subtleties as on spent on those of
one's first language.
Similarly with music. I learned a single instrument as a child, and have
taught myself several more as an adult. I am painfully aware that I can't
give these other instruments the time they "need", but I am not conscious
of any other difference.
-David West umich!dwt
------------------------------
End of NL-KR Digest
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