PRELIMS #1

WHAT IS LANGUAGE?

Language, a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which human beings, as
members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves. The functions of language include
communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional release.

Typically, people acquire a single language initially — their first language, or native tongue, the language used by those
with whom, or by whom, they are brought up from infancy. Subsequent “second” languages are learned to different degrees of
competence under various conditions. Complete mastery of two languages is designated as bilingualism; in many cases—such
as upbringing by parents using different languages at home or being raised within a multilingual community—children grow up
as bilinguals. In traditionally monolingual cultures, the learning, to any extent, of a second or other language is an activity
superimposed on the prior mastery of one’s first language and is a different process intellectually.

WHAT IS LANGUAGE ACQUISITION?

First language acquisition refers to the way children learn their native language. Second language acquisition refers to
the learning of another language or languages besides the native language.

For children learning their native language, linguistic competence develops in stages, from babbling to one word to two
word, then telegraphic speech. Babbling is now considered the earliest form of language acquisition because infants will
produce sounds based on what language input they receive. One word sentences (holophrastic speech) are generally
monosyllabic in consonant-vowel clusters. During two-word stage, there are no syntactic or morphological markers, no
inflections for plural or past tense, and pronouns are rare, but the intonation contour extends over the whole utterance.
Telegraphic speech lacks function words and only carries the open class content words, so that the sentences sound like a
telegram.

The Innateness Hypothesis of child language acquisition, proposed by Noam Chomsky, states that the human species is
pre-wired to acquire language, and that the kind of language is also determined. Many factors have led to this hypothesis such
as the ease and rapidity of language acquisition despite impoverished input as well as the uniformity of languages. All children
will learn a language, and children will also learn more than one language if they are exposed to it. Children follow the same
general stages when learning a language, although the linguistic input is widely varied.

The Poverty of the Stimulus states that children seem to learn or know the aspects of grammar for which they receive
no information. In addition, children do not produce sentences that could not be sentences in some human language. The
principles of Universal Grammar underlie the specific grammars of all languages and determine the class of languages that can
be acquired unconsciously without instruction. It is the genetically determined faculty of the left hemisphere, and there is little
doubt that the brain is specially equipped for acquisition of human language.

The Critical Age Hypothesis suggests that there is a critical age for language acquisition without the need for special
teaching or learning.

During this critical period, language learning proceeds quickly and easily. After this period, the acquisition of grammar is
difficult, and for some people, never fully achieved. Cases of children reared in social isolation have been used for testing the
critical age hypothesis. None of the children who had little human contact were able to speak any language once reintroduced
into society. Even the children who received linguistic input after being reintroduced to society were unable to fully develop
language skills. These cases of isolated children, and of deaf children, show that humans cannot fully acquire any language to
which they are exposed unless they are within the critical age.

Beyond this age, humans are unable to acquire much of syntax and inflectional morphology. At least for humans, this
critical age does not pertain to all of language, but to specific parts of the grammar.

HUMAN LANGUAGE VS. ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

Other members of the animal kingdom have the ability to communicate, through vocal noises or by other means, but the
most important single feature characterizing human language, against every known mode of animal communication, is its
infinite productivity and creativity. Human beings are unrestricted in what they can communicate; no area of experience is
accepted as necessarily incommunicable, though it may be necessary to adapt one’s language in order to cope with new
discoveries or new modes of thought.

Animal communication systems are by contrast very tightly circumscribed in what may be communicated. Indeed,
displaced reference, the ability to communicate about things outside immediate temporal and spatial contiguity, which is
fundamental to speech, is found elsewhere only in the so-called language of bees. Bees are able, by carrying out various
conventionalized movements (referred to as bee dances) in or near the hive, to indicate to others the locations and strengths of
food sources. But food sources are the only known theme of this communication system.

On the other hand, the animal performance superficially most like human speech, the mimicry of parrots and of some
other birds that have been kept in the company of humans, is wholly derivative and serves no independent communicative
function.

Human language consists of a lexicon and a grammar.

Design features of human language:

· Semantics
· Pragmatic function
· Interchangeability
· Cultural transmission
· Arbitrariness
· Discreteness
· Displacement
· Productivity

How about animals?

Animals can convey various message to each other, such as:

· Feelings (anger, fear)
· Warnings
· Desire/willingness to mate
· Location of food sources

However, animals lack aspects/features of human language in their communication system.

PROPERTIES OF HUMAN LANGUAGE

1. Displacement
Displacement is the property of human language that allows language users to talk about things and events not present in the
immediate moment. Animal communication is generally considered to lack this property.
v Animal communication is designed for the immediate place and time (here and now). Humans can use language to refer to the
past, present and future.
e.g. last night, now, next week
v We can even talk about things and places whose existence we cannot be sure of.
e.g. angels, fairies, Superman, Santa Claus, heaven, hell

2. Arbitrariness (in human language)

v Generally, there is no ‘natural’ connection between a linguistic form and its meaning. The relation between linguistic forms
and the objects they refer to is arbitrary.
E.g. Dog in English and ‫ بلك‬in Arabic.
v There are some words in language with sounds that seems to ‘echo’ the sounds of objects or actions (less
arbitrary). Onomatopoeia is the use of words that sound like the thing they are describing (e.g. hiss, boom).
Arbitrariness (animal communication)
v There is a connection between the conveyed message and the signal used to convey it.
v Consists of a fixed and limited set of vocal or gestural forms. Many are only used in specific situations or at particular times.

3. Productivity
v Productivity (creativity/ open-endlessness) is the capability of humans to continually create new expressions and utterances to
describe new objects and situations.
v The number of utterance in any human language is infinite.
Productivity (animal communication)
v The communication systems of other creatures don’t have this flexibility.
v They have a limited set of signals to choose from (fixed reference). Each signal in the system is fixed as relating to a particular
object or occasion.
v They cannot produce any new signals to describe novel experiences.

4. Cultural transmission
v Cultural transmission is the process whereby a language is passed on from one generation to the next.
v Humans inherit physical features from their parents but not language. We acquire a language in a culture with other speakers,
not from parental genes.
v We acquire our first language as children in a culture.
Cultural transmission (animal communication)
v Animals are born with a set of specific signals that are produced instinctively.
5. Duality (double-articulation)
Duality is one of the most economical features of human language. With a limited set of discrete sounds, we are capable of
producing a very large number of sound combinations or words.
In speech production:
v At a physical level, individual discrete sounds (e.g. g, d, & o) mean nothing separately.
v At another level, they take on meaning only when they are combined together in various ways (e.g. god, dog)
Human language is organized at 2 levels or layers simultaneously:
v At one level - distinct sounds
v At another level - distinct meanings
Duality (animal communication)
Animals’ communicative signals are fixed and cannot be broken down into separate parts. The sound “meow” from cats, to them
it is not m + e + o + w.

ANIMAL TRANING FOR HUMAN LANGUAGE

Luella & Winthrop Kellogg

They raised an infant chimpanzee (Gua) with their baby son. Gua was able to understand 100 words but did not produce any.

Catherine & Keith Hayes

They also raised a chimpanzee (Viki) as a human child. Spent 5 years attempting to get her to ‘say’ English words by trying to
shape her mouth as she produces sounds. Eventually, she managed to produce poorly articulated versions of mama, papa, and
cup.

This was a remarkable achievement: it has become clear that non-humans don’t actually have a physically structures vocal tract
which is suitable for articulating the sounds used in speech. Apes and gorillas, like chimpanzees, communicate with a wide range
of vocal calls but they just can’t make human speech sounds.
PRELIMS #2

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT THEORIES

Imitation
The simplest theory of language development is that children learn a language just by imitating adult language.
Babies deliberately imitate facial expressions as well as the sounds, intonations and volume of what they hear, learning the pitch
and contour patterns of their native language well before they understand individual words. Once the child becomes a toddler
who can say a few words, they really ramp up their efforts to imitate. Young children need to imitate the language they are
hearing to help them understand how the components of language all fit together and to work out what it all means.

Imitation helps in:

Ø Comprehension. Imitation helps toddlers firm up their knowledge. Most of the meaning in a language is held within the way
the sounds and symbols are combined. Children learn the language structure and the individual words through imitation.
Ø Vocabulary Growth. Imitation is vital for the child’s growing mental dictionary. Children usually imitate something that’s a
tiny bit too hard for them, which helps them learn. Children with older siblings tend to imitate less because big brother or sister
jumps in to do the talking for them. There’s that birth order difference again!

Learning theory
B.F. Skinner argued that language was acquired by the same mechanisms of conditioning and reinforcement that were
thought at the time to govern all other aspects of animal and human behavior. However, there is much evidence against this
position:
1. Adults generally correct only the truth and meaning of children’s utterances, not the syntax.
2. Some words (such as “no!”) are clearly understood before they are ever produced.
3. The pattern of acquisition of irregular past verb tenses and irregular plural nouns cannot be predicted by learning theory.
4. Noam Chomsky argued that theoretical considerations of the power and structure of language means that it cannot be
acquired simply by conditioning.
The role of child-directed speech
The language children hear was thought to be inadequate in two ways.
1. They hear a degenerate input.
2. There does not seem to be enough information in the language that children hear for them to be able to learn the
grammar.

At least the first part of this claim is now controversial because of research on the special way in which adults, particularly
mothers, talk to children. This special way of talking to children was originally called motherese, but is now called child-directed
speech (CDS), because its use is clearly not limited to mothers. It is commonly known as “baby talk”.
Ø Linguistic feedback hypothesis: mothers tailor the amount of simplification provided depending on how much the child
appears to need.
Ø Conversational hypothesis: what is important is the mothers’ expectation of what the child needs to know & can understand.

The language acquisition device

Noam Chomsky argued that language acquisition must be guided by innate constraints, and that language is a special faculty
not dependent on other cognitive or perceptual processes. Assistance is provided by the innate structure called the language
acquisition device (LAD). In Chomsky’s later work the LAD is replaced by the idea of universal grammar. the task of acquiring the
particular details of their language. For Chomsky, this is the process of parameter setting. A parameter is a universal aspect of
language that can take on one of a small number of positions, rather like a switch.

Evaluation of the language acquisition device

The continuity hypothesis says that all the principles and parameters are available from birth, but they cannot all be used
immediately because of other factors. The second explanation is that the children do not have immediate access to all their
innate knowledge.

Linguistic universals
Noam Chomsky distinguished between substantive and formal universals. Children still have to go through the process of
acquiring the grammar of the language they are exposed to (i.e. socialization). Children are quick learners of their mother
tongue, which is what led Chomsky to suppose that they must be born with what he calls formal and substantive universals.
Ø Substantive universals include the categories of syntax, semantics, and phonology that are common to all
languages. Substantive universals are grammatical categories like noun or verb and grammatical functions such as subject or
object – you might know these as the basic building blocks of grammar.
Ø Formal universal concerns the general form of syntactic rules that manipulate these categories. Formal universals are then
the rules that we use to form meaningful syllables, phrases, sentences. For example, phrase structure rules determine how
phrases and sentences can be build up from words. Derivational rules guide the reorganization of syntactic structures such as
the transformation from a statement into a question.
Determining Factors in Language Development

There is considerable agreement that the course of language development reflects the interplay of factors in at least five
domains: social, perceptual, cognitive processing, conceptual and linguistic. Theorists differ in the emphasis and degree of
determination posited for a given domain, but most would agree that each is relevant. There is a large body of research
supporting the view that language learning is influenced by many aspects of human experience and capability.

Social
Toddlers infer a speaker’s communicative intent and use that information to guide their language learning. For example, as early
as 24 months, they are able to infer solely from an adult’s excited tone of voice and from the physical setting that a new word
must refer to an object that has been placed on the table while the adult was away.
The verbal environment influences language learning. From ages one to three, children from highly verbal professional families
heard nearly three times as many words per week as children from low verbal welfare families. Longitudinal data show that
aspects of this early parental language predict language scores at age nine.

Perceptual
Auditory perceptual skills at six or 12 months of age can predict vocabulary size and syntactic complexity at 23 months of age. In
English, the forms that are challenging for impaired learners are forms with reduced perceptual salience, e.g. those that are
unstressed or lie united within a consonant cluster.

Cognitive processes
Frequency affects rate of learning. Children who hear an unusually high proportion of examples of a language form learn that
form faster than children who receive ordinary input. Trade-offs among the different domains of language can occur when the
total targeted sentence requires more mental resources than the child has available. For example, children make more errors on
small grammatical forms such as verb endings and prepositions in sentences with complex syntax than in sentences with simple
syntax.

Conceptual
Relational terms are linked to mental age. Words that express notions of time, causality, location, size and order are correlated
with mental age much more than words that simply refer to objects and events. Moreover, children learning different languages
learn to talk about spatial locations such as in or next to in much the same order, regardless of the grammatical devices of their
particular language. Language skills are affected by word knowledge. Children who have difficulty recalling a word also know less
about the objects to which the word refers.

Linguistic
Verb endings are cues to verb meaning. If a verb ends in –ing, three-year-olds will decide that it refers to an activity, such as
swim, rather than to a completed change of state, such as push off. Current vocabulary influences new learning. Toddlers usually
decide that a new word refers to the object for which they do not already have a label.

Driving Forces in Language Development

1. Motivation: Is the child being forced to learn, or do they want to learn the language?
When a child understands the importance of understanding a language and can see how it directly applies to their life, they
learn faster. We’ve found that a contextual, theme-based curriculum can help get students more excited to dive into language
learning. When they are interested in learning a language and they see meaningful connections to their lives, they begin to take
risks to produce language, which helps them to acquire it faster.

2. Support at Home: Is another language spoken at the child’s home? What’s their exposure level to different languages?
Exposure is an important factor in language comprehension and acquisition. If a child’s family only speaks one language, are they
able to provide help when the student needs it? It also matters how much value parents place in learning an additional
language. Parents who prioritize language learning are more likely to push their child to keep trying even when it feels difficult.

3. Prior Linguistic Knowledge: Is the language they’re learning their first foreign language?
Once a child has studied and acquired a language, their skill at learning another will increase. Language learners have the ability
to translate skills from one language to another because they’re able to recognize the rules and patterns of language, even if the
vocabulary is different.

4. Learning Environment: How does the child feel in the classroom?

Another key factor is how comfortable students feel in their language learning environment. Does their classroom feel cold and
tense, or positive and relaxing? What’s the school’s culture and beliefs about language learning? We’ve found that a student’s
learning environment has an impact on their motivation—a low anxiety language learning environment increases the chance for
acquisition.
5. Teaching Strategies: How is the language taught?
The strategies a language teacher uses have a big impact on language learning. How does the teacher help students understand
the concepts of a language? How does the teacher take different learning styles into account, as well as different levels of
comprehension? For example, watching a film in the target language and writing and performing skits in the target language
reach multiple learning styles. Offering an immersion experience helps students connect the language learning to their everyday
lives, but rote vocabulary memorization and grammar drills create 'meaning-less' language lessons.

6. Comprehensible Input: How attainable does the language feel to the student?
Stephen Krashen is known for developing the input hypothesis of language acquisition. In this context, the titular “input” is the
language curriculum. He wrote that teaching at just any level of difficulty isn’t sufficient: the input received by a student must be
comprehensible. In other words, the curriculum must reach a child at their current level and challenge them with activities and
just 1 level beyond their current stage. If the material feels out of reach, the student can feel “shut down” and have trouble
engaging with the lesson. To make sure that students feel motivated to learn, it’s important to ensure that they feel like they
have the ability to progress to the next level of learning.

7. Student Personality: Is the student introverted or extroverted?

More introverted students have been shown to take longer to acquire a language because they’re more hesitant to make
mistakes. Extroverted students, on the other hand, are more likely to go out on a limb and try out their newly learned
vocabulary. To ensure that both personality types succeed, it’s important to create an environment where students understand
that mistakes are part of the learning process and it’s more important to speak than to be perfect.

8. Age: How old is a student when they start learning a foreign language?
While students of all ages can learn a foreign language, there is consensus that certain aspects are affected by the age of the
learner. It becomes harder for students to have native pronunciation from the teen years. Some students also find that it’s more
difficult to fully acquire a foreign language as they get older, but this isn’t true of everyone.

9. Comfort in their Country of Residence: How happy are students in the country where they are studying a language?
A final factor in language learning is the child’s comfort in the current country of residence. Most children move to a new
country because of a parent's job, not by choice. As a result, their motivation to learn a new language can depend on whether
they’re happy to be in a new place, or if they’ve come kicking and screaming. Luckily, even if a child is unhappy at first, their
attitude can shift if they feel welcomed by their teachers and supported by their parents.
PRELIMS #3
LINGUISTIC MILESTONES

Key Terms:

· Babbling – The experimentation of sounds by an infant, tending to include recognizable words.

· Inflections – The modification of words grammatically to form different tenses or number.
· Intonation – The rise and fall of voice when speaking. Enables differentiation between phrases.
· Phonemes – Small segments of sound.
WHAT IS ACQUIRED?

In order to speak a language as adults do, children need to have acquired five areas of linguistic competence: Phonology, Lexis,
Semantics, Grammar and Pragmatics.

PHONOLOGY

Phonological development is the acquisition of sounds in order to pronounce words. Child Language Acquisition begins at
birth. The inner ear has the only bones in the whole body which are fully formed at birth, thus enabling the child to start
recognizing their mother’s voice in the first day of living and also allowing the child to differentiate one language from another at
such an early stage. The vocal tract is not fully developed at birth which, when compared to the formation of the inner ear, helps
to biologically explain why it is that perception of sounds comes before the ability to produce sounds. Through ‘vocal playing’
children learn to control their vocal tract to produce sounds accurately.
v Basic Biological Noises (approximately 0-8 weeks) – Vocalizations: coughing, crying, a low cooing, laughing etc.
v Cooing and Laughing (approximately 8-20 weeks) – Short vowel-like sounds produced when the baby is in a settled state:
more melodic than biological noises. At three and a half months, a baby’s voice box is in place and gradual control of vocal
muscles is gained.
v Vocal Play (approximately 20-30 weeks) – ‘Cooing’ sounds develop into sounds which are much more definite and controlled.
v Babbling (approximately 25-50 weeks) – All babies babble! It is an innate feature of human beings: even deaf babies babble.
There are two stages of babbling:
· Reduplicated babbling, for example [mamama], emerges from around 6 months
· Variegated babbling, for example [adu] and [maba], is when there is movement away from fixed patterns and sounds
become more complex and closer to speech. Consonants and vowels can change from one syllable to the next.
v Melodic Utterance (approximately 36-72 weeks) -Intonation, rhythm and melody develop, resulting in babies sounding more
and more as though they are speaking the language. The occasional few words may have started to appear. Parents start to
assume different sounds resemble different linguistic structures, such as questioning, exclaiming and greeting etc. Babies of
different nationalities sound increasingly different from each other.

LEXIS
Lexical development is the acquisition of words. Katherine Nelson classified children’s first 50 words as:
v Naming things or people: ball, daddy, juice, milk.
v Actions or events: down, more, up.
v Describing or modifying things: dirty, nice, pretty.
v Personal or social words: hi, bye-bye.
SEMANTICS
Semantic development is the acquisition of the meaning of words. Children tend to use words more broadly than adults and
over-extensions and under-extensions are found to be produced.
v Over Extensions – A child uses a word in a broad sense. For example, the word ‘dog’ may be used to refer to all four-legged
animals with a tail. Over-extensions reflect a child’s learning and their growing knowledge of the world; noticing similarities and
differences between objects.
v Under Extensions -A child uses a word more narrowly than an adult would. For example, using the word ‘shoe’ only when
referring to their own shoes.
These features of semantic development are crucial in gaining meaning and understanding of words. Eventually, children will
overcome these features.

GRAMMAR/SYNTAX
Three main stages of grammatical development:
v Holophrastic Stage (12-18 months) -The Holophrastic stage consists of children learning and producing single word utterances
that function as phrases or sentences. For example:
· ‘Gone’ could mean ‘it’s all gone’
· ‘Teddy’ could mean ‘that’s my teddy’
· ‘More’ could mean ‘I want more’
Sometimes children’s productions are longer and are considered as being one unit or a whole phrase (this is called
a Holophrase). For example:
· ‘Allgone’ and ‘Gosleep’
Intonation plays a key role during this stage. Children learn the ability to distinguish between interrogative, declarative and
imperative phrases, and despite their limited grammatical structuring, are able to aid their communication more effectively. For
example:
· ‘Dada?’ said with a rising intonation, would imply a question
· ‘Dada’ said with a falling intonation, would imply declarative statement
· ‘Dada!’ said in exclamation, would imply imperative statement
v Two-word Stage (18-24 months) – The Two-word stage comprises a child using two words to form a sentence. ‘Baby chair’,
‘Mummy eat’ and ‘Cat bad’ are all examples of utterances at this stage and as it may be obvious, require interpretation. Context
of an utterance can aid the ambiguity behind such statements. For example:
· ‘Baby chair’ could mean…
· Possession: ‘this is baby’s chair’
· Request/command: ‘put baby in chair’
· Statement: ‘baby is in the chair’
v Telegraphic Stage (2-3 years) – The Telegraphic stage, is when children have acquired and start to use multiple-word
utterances. At this stage, some of the children’s utterances are grammatically correct…
· ‘Amy likes tea’ – (Subject + Verb + Object)
· ‘teddy looks tired’ – (Subject + Verb + Adjective)
· ‘Mummy sleeps upstairs’ – (Subject + Verb + Adverbial)
Whilst others have grammatical elements missing…
· ‘This shoe all wet’ – (the verb carrying meaning is missing: is)
Children are more likely to retain content words (nouns, verbs and adjectives that refer to real things) and function words (that
have grammatical function: pronouns, prepositions and auxiliary verbs) are often omitted.

Overgeneralizations are also found at this stage. This is when children make virtuous errors in their allocation of inflections. For
example:
· The inflection -s to mark plurality is seen to be added to irregular verbs: sheep – sheeps
· The inflection -ed to mark past tense is seen to be added to irregular verbs: go – goed

Such examples would suggest that children try to figure out grammar by themselves, using grammatical rules productively to
establish forms, not by hearing form from the people around them in their environment. Children would not hear such examples
as ‘goed’ from the adults around them.

PRAGMATICS

Pragmatic development highlights children’s motivation to acquire language in the first place, as it serves different purposes and
functions. Pragmatics aren’t acquired immediately, nor does it take a short period of time for a child to acquire them. This
process is on-going until the age of approximately 10 years.
Michael Halliday classified functions of language as being:

· Instrumental – to express needs

· Regulatory – to control behaviors of others
· Interactional – to relate to others
· Heuristic – to gain knowledge of the environment
· Personal – to express yourself
· Imaginative – to use language imaginatively
· Informative – to convey facts and information
PRELIMS #4

BILINGUALISM AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Bilingualism is the ability to speak two languages.

How is it acquired?
Ø It may be acquired early by children in regions where most adults speak two languages (e.g. French and dialectal German in
Alsace).
Ø Children may also become bilingual by learning languages in two different social settings; for example, British children in
British India learned an Indian language from their nurses and family servants.
Ø A second language can also be acquired in school. Bilingualism can also refer to the use of two languages in teaching,
especially to foster learning in students trying to learn a new language.

Advocates of bilingual education in the U.S. argue that it speeds learning in all subjects for children who speak a foreign
language at home and prevents them from being marginalized in English-language schools. Detractors counter that it hinders
such children from mastering the language of the larger society and limits their opportunities for employment and higher
education.

Two main distinguishing features in terms of bilingualism

1. The age of acquisition that distinguishes early bilingualism from late bilingualism
2. The sequence of acquisition that defines either simultaneous bilingualism, or sequential bilingualism

EARLY BILINGUALISM

On condition that the acquisition of the further language takes place before puberty, it is spoken of early bilingualism, and it
does not matter whether it is simultaneous or sequential bilingualism.

Due to the fact that simultaneous bilingualism occurs in early childhood, before the linguistic foundations of the language are in
place. It is also referred to as “bilingual L1 acquisition” because the two languages develop together as first languages that
seminar paper will concentrate on sequential bilingualism for it will specialize in second language acquisition. Usually, second
language acquisition in early bilingualism happens under natural circumstances, meaning that a child acquires a language for it is
necessary to communicate in one of his natural settings. However, lessons in foreign language learning start nowadays quite
early, and therefore early bilingualism can be also a consequence of 'artificial' language input.

LATE BILINGUALISM

In comparison to early bilingualism, it is referred to late bilingualism, in order to describe second language acquisition that takes
place after puberty, and “may be result either of L2 acquisition in natural environment”, or through a willful and self-
motivated learning progress by an adult who manages to achieve a bilingual status. So, there is the existence of “elective and
circumstantial bilinguals.”

A person can become bilingual through formal and informal means, in which it is “informally through street, nursery school and
community, or formally through school, adult classes and language courses.” Those two means in late bilingualism develop as a
consequence of different purpose by the speaker. A speaker acquires a second language informally for “expression,
communication and social contact,” whereas a speaker learns a second language formally for a variety of reasons. These reasons
can be, on the one hand, societal reasons as for example, the preservation of a minority language, the language learning for a
religious reason, or for economic reasons that develop through globalization and the need for interaction.

On the other hand, individual reasons may be career opportunities, the cultural or linguistic interest, or other personal reasons,
for example, the motivation to learn a new language through a relationship to a person with another native language. Although,
circumstantial bilingualism is more common in early bilingualism, it does not exclude the individual choice to learn a second
language through formal means.

BILINGUAL DEVELOPMENT

Bilingual acquisition can take place in one of two ways:

Simultaneous Acquisition occurs when a child is raised bilingually from birth, or when the second language is introduced
before the age of three. It is also called compound bilingualism (amalgamated).
Children learning two languages simultaneously go through the same developmental stages as children learning one language.
While bilingual children may start talking slightly later than monolingual children, they still begin talking within the normal
range. From the very beginning of language learning, simultaneous bilinguals seem to acquire two separate languages. Early on,
they are able to differentiate their two languages and have been shown to switch languages according to their conversation
partner (e.g. speak French to a French-speaking parent, then switch to English with an English-speaking parent).
SIMULTANEOUS ACQUISITION OF TWO LANGUAGES
Age Stage Milestone Red flag for language
development problem
Birth to 2 monthsUndifferentiated (contains elements Cooing
from both languages)
2-6 months Undifferentiated Babbling No bilabial sounds
6-15 months Undifferentiated First words (age of appearance might be Less than one new word per
somewhat later than with monolingual week
speakers but is still within normal range)
1-2 years Undifferentiated Language blend (parts of words in both Less than 20 words (2
languages are blended in the same word) languages combined) by 20
months
2-3 years Undifferentiated Language mixing (words of different A countable number of
languages are used in the same phase or words by 30 months. No
adapted to the grammar of the other word combinations.
language)
4 years and older Differentiated Uses each language as a separate system

Sequential Acquisition occurs when a second language is introduced after the first language is well-established, generally after
the age of three. It is called coordinate bilingualism when the two languages are equally used or important; or subordinate
bilingualism when one language (usually the mother or native tongue) dominates the daily life. Children may experience
sequential acquisition if they immigrate to a country where a different language is spoken. Sequential learning may also occur if
the child exclusively speaks his heritage language at home until he begins school, where instruction is offered in a different
language.

SEQUENTIAL ACQUISITION OF TWO LANGUAGES

Stage Milestone Red flag for language development problem
First language Normal acquisition sequence Milestones abnormal
Second language
· Interactional period Use of nonverbal communication and fixed Echolalia
phrases
· Inference period Grammatical rules of the second language are Syntactic errors in the first language
applied to the second language
· Silent period Selective mutism (can be longer in anxious Prolonged or true mutism
children)
· Code Switching Switches between languages in the same Word retrieval difficulties
conversation

A child who acquires a second language through Sequential Acquisition experiences the following:
Ø Initially, he may use his home language for a brief period.
Ø He may go through a silent or nonverbal period when he is first exposed to a second language. This can last from a few
weeks to several months, and is most likely a time when the child builds his understanding of the language. Younger children
usually remain in this phase longer than older children. Children may rely on using gestures in this period, and use few words in
the second language.

Ø He will begin to use short or imitative sentences. The child may use one-word labels or memorized phrases such as “I dunno”
or “What’s this?”. These sentences are not constructed from the child’s own vocabulary or knowledge of the language. Rather,
they are phrases he has heard and memorized.

Ø Eventually, he will begin to produce his own sentences. These sentences are not entirely memorized, and incorporate some
of the child’s own newly-learned vocabulary. The child may use a “formula” at first when constructing sentences and insert his
own word into a common phrase such as “I want…” or “I do…”. Eventually the child becomes more and more fluent, but
continues to make grammatical mistakes or produce sentences that sound abbreviated because he is missing some grammatical
rules (e.g. “I no want eat apple” instead of “I don’t want to eat an apple”).

Other modes of second language acquisition:

· Natural acquisition means that a language is learned without formal instruction.

· Guided acquisition means that the knowledge of a language is acquired by means of instructions (e.g. learning at school).

· Symmetric acquisition means that several languages are equally mastered with a similar proficiency.

· Asymmetric acquisition means that one language dominates the other.

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION TEACHING METHODS

Grammar-translation: the student memorizes words, inflected words, and syntactic rules and uses them to translate from
native to target language and vice versa; most commonly used method in schools because it does not require teacher to be
fluent; however, least effective method of teaching

Direct Method: the native language is not used at all in the classroom, and the student must learn the new language without
formal instruction; based on theories of first language acquisition

Audio-lingual: heavy use of dialogs and audio, based on the assumption that language learning is acquired mainly through
imitation, repetition, and reinforcement; influenced by psychology

Natural Approach: emphasis on vocabulary and not grammar; focus on meaning, not form; use of authentic materials instead
of textbook

Silent Way: teachers remain passive observers while students learn, which is a process of personal growth; no grammatical
explanation or modeling by the teacher

Total Physical Response: students play active role as listener and performer, must respond to imperative drills with physical
action

Suggestopedia: students always remain comfortable and relaxed and learn through memorization of meaningful texts,
although the goal is understanding

Community Language Learning: materials are developed as course progresses and teacher understands what students need and
want to learn; learning involves the whole person and language is seen as more than just communication

Community Language Teaching: incorporates all components of language and helps students with various learning styles; use
of communication-based activities with authentic materials, needs of learner are taken into consideration when planning topics
and objectives
PRELIMS #05

Multilingualism is the use of two or more languages, either by an individual speaker or by a community of speakers.

Two examples of highly multilingual societies:

Republic of South Africa. (Linguistic Pluralism) Following the collapse of apartheid regime in 1990, the republic of south Africa
became a multilingual nation with 11 official languages.
Republic of Vanuatu. A joint condominium of both British and French, upon gaining independence, they make a distinction
between a national language, official languages and languages of education. It divides up these functions between French,
English and Bislama.

Vitality is the likelihood that a language will continue being used for a range of social functions by a community of speakers. It
refers to demographic, social and institutional strength of a language and its speakers.

Status Factors
v If the speakers of a language have high social status within the larger community (because of higher social or economic status)
their ethnolinguistic vitality will be higher too.

v The status of the language within and outside the community also matters. (peoples’ attitude towards language in question,
like Latin in Europe)

v So too does the historical status that variety has had in the community in question. (e.g. Latin maintained relatively high
vitality in Europe many centuries after it died out)

Institutional Factors
v Formal. Use of a language in the popular mass media, as the medium of education, and in official government business all
increase its vitality (South Africa and Vanuatu languages).

v Informal. Even if the language is not widely used for daily conversation, local and home-based activities, such as maintenance
of a language for religious purposes and for regular cultural events, can retain a degree of vitality; this will also favor its long-
term maintenance.
e.g. Arabic is the language of the Koran and Hadith that gives it considerable informal institutional vitality within the Muslim
community. Furthermore, the language has high socio-historical status in the Muslim community. The books are an important
factor in providing a sense of cultural continuity for the community.

Demographic Factors
v If the group of people speaking the language appreciably outnumber the speakers of other languages, and particularly if they
are relatively concentrated in a specific area, then the long-term prognosis for the maintenance of that language is improved.
(e.g. Maori language in New Zealand)

v Immigration/emigration is important because it provides a ready ‘top-up’ of proficient users of a language variety and the
associated social and cultural traditions.

Ethnolinguistic Vitality
v High vitality: If a language is widely spoken and used and can be spoken for generations.
v Low vitality: If a language is shifted and not used anymore.
v Use of a particular language variety is an extremely significant factor in defining a cultural or ethnic identity.

Vitality and Prestige

v If a language ranks highly in terms of institutional measures of vitality, it will always have a degree of overt prestige associated
with it. (e.g. a language required for government jobs is desirable and prestigious for people).

v Notion of ethnolinguistic vitality avoids the need to make a distinction between norms that people are consciously orienting to
(overt prestige) and those that they seem to be less consciously orienting to (covert prestige).

Diglossia two languages with distinct functional roles in one community. The situation of societal bilingualism and
institutionalized code- switching. In the past it was defined as a situation where two closely related languages are used in speech
community. Now it's extended to refer to any two languages (even typologically unrelated ones) that have this kind of social and
functional distribution.

High Variety Low Variety

Language with higher overt prestige used in formal Vernacular variety. Language used in informal context
context (e.g. church, newspapers) (e.g. home or market)
In diglossia, two varieties in use in the community may have historical link to each other, and have its roots in the other, but
different functions (e.g. Classical and Vernacular Arabic).

· Vernacular Arabic acquired naturally by children and were the everyday medium of communication in the home and with
family and friends.

· Classical Arabic were used for written media (e.g. newspapers and government documents) and when reading aloud from
a script or set texts (e.g. radio news broadcasts or teachings in a church or a mosque).

Nested or overlapping diglossia might occur if you had three or more languages.
e.g. Tanzania: In some domains the local vernaculars function as the L to Swahili’s H. But in other domains, Swahili is the L to
English’s H.

Fishman argued that “no reason to limit diglossia only to situations where the varieties were diachronically related”. This shifts
the emphasis from language structure to shared norms for acquisition and use in the community.

Code switching

Ø moving between different languages or varieties

Ø the alternation between varieties, or codes, across sentences or clause boundaries

People speaking more than one language, or who have command over more than one variety of any language, are equally aware
that in some contexts one variety will serve their needs better than another. So depending on where they are, or who they are
talking to, they change the variety they use.

Domain
The social and physical setting in which speakers find themselves.

Situation(al) A more idiosyncratic and personalized view of the context or situation of language use. In this text, used to describe
one of the motivations for code switching.

Diglossic community is one that is characterized by highly predictable domain-based code switching. Code switching is not
necessarily institutionalized in the way diglossia is. There is more individual creativity and flexibility involved.

Example of code switching (domain and addressee influence):

· Tanzania: vernacular language(rangi) and official language(swahili)
· In the market and in the bank

Passive knowledge – the ability to understand but not to speak a language

Active knowledge – the ability to understand and produce a language

Code mixing – generally refers to alternations between varieties, or codes, within a clause or phrase; the situation where people
switch between different languages within the same sentence
There can be a lot of mixing of codes during a single exchange or even within a single speaker’s turn. There are mixed codes
which signal in-group humor and affection. Conversely, they can show hostility to outsiders who may not understand all the
mixed constituents or may not understand the conventions governing how the codes are mixed. Mixed code serves as solidarity
marker.

Attitudes to Switching

In some multilingual communities mixing constituents from one language with another language can be seriously frowned upon.
The terms used to describe the mixed utterances are often pejorative or jocular, like Spanglish or Franglais.

Speech Level

Replacement of vocabulary with sometimes radically different forms in the different styles associated with different social group
or castes.

The person you are talking to, may have a considerable effect on your speaking style. In some languages these effects are
codified, and there are different speech levels that must be used when you are talking to someone of higher or lower status than
you.
· e.g. Javanese, which is typical of the languages in Indonesia distinguishes low, mid and high speech levels.

The structure of a sentence does not change radically according to speech level, but the vocabulary can be entirely replaced.

ADVANTAGES OF MULTILINGUALISM
* Personal and social benefit: It helps to gain recognition and status in eyes of society. Also in a multilingual country like India,
characterized by tantalizing cultural diversity multilingualism helps to access the social network among different linguistic
communities. It also helps to connect the social sites and keep us in touch with people of all parts of the world.
* Cognitive and academic benefits: It helps to understand the reading process through multilingual interpretation in a better
way. Multilingual proficiency increases one’s prospect of higher education. Also multilingual person has enhanced executive
function and better at some aspects of language learning compared to monolinguals.
* Economic benefits: It enhances one’s competitive skill in global perspective. those people who are engaging in the tourist or
BPO, they have to deal with people belonging to so many linguistic background so here multilingualism plays a vital role. It is also
important for those people who give essential services like free legal or medical help, rights of the consumers etc.