2014LVI

lingua posnaniensis (1)

DOI: 10.2478/linpo-2014-0008

First and second language acquisition:

Towards a reconcillation

Nicole Nau

Institute of Linguistics, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, [email protected]

Abstract: Nicole Nau. First and second language acquisition: Towards a reconcillation. The Poznań
Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences. PL ISSN 0079-4740, ISBN 978-83-7654-384-0,
pp. 125–140
For the past two decades, research on first language acquisition on the one side, and on second language
acquisition and learning on the other have largely developed separately, probably as a reaction to the
failure of earlier attempts to use the same methods or simply transfer insights gained in one of the fields
to the other. This article argues that a reconciliation may be fruitful, provided that different aspects
which have often got blurred in the discussion are considered separately. These aspects include the
assessment of multilingualism and monolingualism, the age factor and the definition of “first” and “sec-
ond” language, the understanding of linguistic competence and of completeness of acquisition, different
forms of acquisition and learning, and uniformity vs. individual differences in the process of language
acquisition. By challenging some widely held views on characteristics of first language acquisition and
its differences to second language learning, more fine-grained research questions are revealed, some of
which have been addressed in recent studies on language acquisition and multilingualism.
Keywords: first language acquisition, second language acquisition, multilingualism

1. Introduction

The comparison of first and second language acquisition is a topic that has turned up
repeatedly in various fields of linguistics, such as psycholinguistics, theoretical linguistics,
or applied linguistics. The goals of such comparison, as well as its results, vary greatly. The
question at the base of the debate is: are the processes active in the study of a foreign lan-
guage essentially the same as the processes by which children acquire their mother tongue,
or are they essentially different? Adherents of the natural approach to language learning,
which originated in the second half of the 19th century, assume that the first is true. A naïve
version of this view can often be found in descriptions of language learning methods, such
as in the following text promoting the teach-yourself aids of the Assimil brand:
How did you learn to speak? You probably don’t even know. You listened to your parents, gradually un-
derstanding the meanings of sounds, words, and then whole sentences. Then, once you had absorbed – or
assimilated – the meanings of the word associations, you began to link words and form your own sen-

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tences. Assimil applied this same natural process adapting it to the abilities of adults, young and old. (http://
en.assimil.com/la-methode-assimil)1

The extreme opposite view, in terms of both content and sophistication, can be found
in the work of theoretical linguists from the generative camp, who argue for a fundamental
difference. In their view, first language acquisition is based on an innate Universal Gram-
mar, using mechanisms that for neurobiological reasons are available only to young children
(see especially Meisel 2011 for a decided stance but with a balanced discussion). Scholars
of second language acquisition research have often expressed views in between these oppo-
site extremes, proposing that some processes and strategies are the same in first and second
language acquisition while others differ (see Cook 2010 for an overview and a detailed
discussion).
In this paper I will argue for a differentiated approach to the problem that acknowledges
its Matryoshka-like nature: like the famous Russian dolls, each (seemingly simple) question
entails another (seemingly simple) question, each seemingly unquestionable truth leads to
new questions. This will become evident in Section 2, where I discuss three widely held
views about fundamental characteristics of first language acquisition, and consider some
of the questions they entail with respect to second language acquisition. In Section 3 I will
turn to the similarities and differences that can be observed in the process of first and second
language learning. My aim is to challenge the assumption that the differences between FLA
and SLA2 are crucial for an understanding of how languages are acquired, and to call for
a broader understanding of the “Language Making Capacity”, as it is sometimes called. My
interest in this topic grew, on the one hand, out of my own experience as a language learner
and teacher, and on the other hand through teaching classes on language acquisition and
learning.

2. Fundamentals of language acquisition –

crucial differences between FLA and SLA?

2.1. Ubiquity and necessity

I will start with a statement that seems to be impossible to challenge:

(1) First language acquisition is a normal and necessary part of a human individual’s
development.
All children acquire a first language when exposed to it. Exceptions to this rule are only
found in certain cases of severe disabilities that deprive the child not only of language, but
also of many other aspects of physical and cognitive development. The normality of first
language acquisition has never been doubted and does not have to be proved. It is possible to
question the second part of thesis (1) – that first language acquisition is necessary for human
development. However, it is nearly impossible to prove or disprove this. In any situation
1
I would mention that, without sharing the underlying assumptions, I am convinced of the advantages of
the method for certain purposes – I used it successfully in the early phase of learning Polish and developing the
listening skills that I needed when starting to work in Poznań.
2
For convenience, I will use the abbreviations FLA for first language acquisition and SLA for second lan-
guage acquisition throughout this paper.

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where a child is deprived of exposition to human language (be it spoken or signed), other as-
pects accompanying normal physical, cognitive, and social development are likewise lack-
ing, and the exact role of language within this complex cannot be determined.
In contrast, the normality and necessity of acquiring more than one language has been
much debated by linguists and laymen alike, and is still a matter of controversy. On the one
hand, the use of several languages by the same individual is a widespread phenomenon.
While there are without doubt communities whose members rarely get in touch with other
languages, on a worldwide scale multilingualism seems to be rather the rule than the excep-
tion in both industrialized and non-industrialized societies. Its normalness is often asserted
in academic and popular articles, for example:
“multilingualism is humankind’s norm” (Ellis 2005: 3);
“most of the world’s population is bilingual or multilingual” (Valdés, online);
“there are many more bilingual or multilingual individuals in the world than there are monolingual” (Tucker
1999, cited in the Wikipedia entry on Multilingualism).3

Despite this fact, in linguistic studies monolingualism is often treated as if it were the
norm. It is taken as the unmarked case, with bilingualism as the marked case. A telling ex-
ample is given by Cruz-Ferreira: she reports that the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science invites scholars to discuss “how language is affected by bilingualism”, but
it would be strange to pose an analogous question about monolingualism (Cruz-Ferreira
2010: 2, citing AAASZ).4 However, if the use of more than one language is normal and
natural for the greater part of humankind, then it is monolingualism and not multilingualism
that is the marked case, and its causes and effects should be made the topic of research. This
reasoning seems currently to be gaining ground in sociolinguistics, including studies in lan-
guage planning and education policy. In 2008, the journal Sociolinguistic Studies devoted
a special issue to monolingualism, probably the first of its kind.
In psycholinguistics, the idea of multilingualism as the unmarked case has not yet found
much support. This is understandable, as it may have far-reaching consequences: it pro-
vokes disturbing questions about the normality and necessity of competence in more than
one language for the fully-fledged development of an individual. The following quote from
a renowned scholar of second language acquisition expresses a thought-provoking view
about language acquisition and linguistic competence:
Going beyond this comes the argument that the overall theory of language acquisition has to accommodate
the human potential for learning more than one language from the outset not as a footnote to the acquisition
of the first language […]. Looked at through the looking-glass of multi-competence, language acquisition is
acquiring two or more languages; monolingual first language acquisition is a historical accident that stops
the child reaching the normal human multi-competence state. The monolingual native speaker is language-
deprived; they would have acquired multi-competence in more than one language if their caretakers had not
deprived them of a second language […]. (Cook 2010: 156, emphasis mine)
3
While these claims seem plausible, they should be taken with caution, as they are based on estimates
(with no or vague references to sources) or unconvincing arguments – for example, comparing the number of the
world’s languages (about 7000) with the number of states (about 200) does not say anything about the number of
bilingual individuals in the world (it does not exclude the possibility that, say, only 10% of the world’s population
might use more than one language or that bilingualism occurs only in one corner of the world).
4
The issue of the normality of multilingualism vs. monolingualism has been addressed in several academic
articles. E. Ellis 2006 gives a critical overview of different views on monolingualism. See also Auer & Wei 2007;
Cruz-Ferreira 2010.

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Psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research on bilingual children and adults has shown
that there are differences in the processing of thoughts and language between monolingual
and bilingual individuals (for overviews see Bialystok 2005; Nitsch 2007). The exact nature
and the scale of these differences is still not clear, and maybe never will be. While earlier
claims about general advantages of bilingualism (for example, that children raised bilingual-
ly are “more intelligent” than monolingual children) were not confirmed by more thorough
research, there is good evidence for bilinguals’ achieving better results in certain types of
tasks that involve the processing and memorization of information. Bialystok explains the
results of her experimental research with children by how acquiring and using more than
one language shapes cognitive development:
The environmental experience of using two languages from childhood provides massive practice in the atten-
tion and inhibition centers of the prefrontal cortex and promotes their development. (Bialystok 2005: 428).

Studies with adults have shown that the regular use of more than one language has
a positive effect on retaining executive control processes that generally decline in older
individuals (Bialystok et al. 2004). In February 2011, another result of research on bilin-
gualism and the brain became a headline event far beyond the scientific community: it was
found that bilingualism delays the onset of dementia in a statistically significant way (see
APS Media coverage).
If we adopt the point of view of bilingualism as the unmarked case, these results have
to be formulated as “monolingualism advances the onset of dementia”, “monolingualism
speeds up age-related decline of cognitive abilities”, and – to reformulate a statement about
bilingualism made by Bialystok (2005: 428) – “monolingualism changes something funda-
mental about the way cognitive processes are shaped by young children”.
At this point it is necessary to recall that the reverse of a false assumption does not au-
tomatically lead to a correct conclusion. The provocative statements formulated in the pre-
vious paragraph are useful if they lead to a reconsideration of assumed truths about mono-
lingualism as the norm. However, conceiving monolingualism as an abnormity is clearly
missing the point. Stimulation of brain activity and cognitive development has also been
shown for other activities, for example, chess playing, but we do not think of non-chess-
playing children as being hindered in their cognitive development. Instead, the conclusion
that we should draw is that statement (1) may be broadened in one of the following ways:
(1’) The acquisition of one or more languages is a normal and necessary part of a human
individual’s development.
(1’’) Language acquisition is a normal and necessary part of a human individual’s de-
velopment.
In my eyes, (1’’) expresses the main wisdom contained in (1), while avoiding the traps
into which the word “first” may lure us. Some of the problems of the distinction between
first and other languages will be discussed in the following section.

2.2. Age

Some of the essential properties of first language acquisition result from the fact ex-
pressed in the following statement:
(2) First language acquisition takes place in early childhood.
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At first sight, this statement seems to be uncontroversial – nobody doubts that infants
and young children are engaged in acquiring their native language (or languages). How-
ever, there are two questions where doubt and disagreement are imaginable. The first one is
whether first language acquisition, or more precisely, its beginning, is possible only during
the first years of life – a question readily answered in the affirmative by most if not all lin-
guists and psychologists. One should keep in mind that it is not possible to test this claim,
and the empirical evidence from studies of so-called feral children is suggestive rather than
conclusive.5 The construct of a Critical Period for the onset of first language acquisition
thus remains a thesis that cannot be proved or disproved; it is of course a very plausible
one. The second question is whether first language acquisition takes place during childhood
only; in other words, at what age first language acquisition is completed (and whether it is
ever complete at all). If one holds the opinion (as at least many non-linguists do) that school
children, adolescents and even adults continue to perfect their native language, statement (2)
becomes trivial and fragmentary. Young children certainly acquire the basics of a language,
but who would claim that five-year-olds (or even ten-year-olds) have a perfect mastery of
their mother tongue? Indeed, some linguists do seem to make such claims; see for instance
the following statement from a popular textbook of linguistics:
From first words to virtual adult competence takes three to four years. (Fromkin et al. 2010: 351–352)

What is meant by “virtual adult competence”, given that no five-year-old speaks like an
adult?
The answer to the question of how long language acquisition goes on depends on which
of the many aspects that make a language one has in mind. No-one doubts that new words
are acquired at any age. Many linguists investigating child language have focused on certain
aspects of grammar that are usually acquired before the age of five. The choice of these
aspects is determined by theoretical considerations about the nature and structure of hu-
man languages and by a certain research interest. This is most evident in research based on
the generative (“Chomskyan”) approach to language, which is also the one underlying the
textbook quoted above. Chomsky’s theory of a Universal Grammar has inspired many in-
vestigations of first language acquisition where the primary interest is not to investigate how
children acquire language in all its complexity, but rather to find evidence for certain pos-
tulates of the theory. One may argue that “language in all its complexity” is too broad and
heterogeneous a subject, and for the scientific study of language acquisition it is necessary to
select certain features (cf. Meisel 2011). But even for such features, “complete acquisition”
may be attained much later (or never). Recent research by Ewa Dąbrowska and associates
(see Dąbrowska 2008; 2012a; 2012b; and work cited there) has provided evidence that even
some basic grammatical features, such as case marking in Polish or the passive in English,
are not completely acquired in childhood. Instead, their acquisition continues, and adult
native speakers may show different degrees of competence regarding these features. These
findings challenge the conviction that “one will never find native speakers who acquired
incomplete grammatical knowledge of their language” (Meisel 2011: 13).
5
Cf. DeKeyser & Larson-Hall (2005: 89): “even in these cases, it was impossible to determine to what
extent extreme social deprivation, maybe even food deprivation or sensory deprivation, may have been confoun-
ded with language input deprivation.”

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A more accurate formulation of statement (2) thus may be the following:

(2’) First language acquisition begins in infancy (at birth, or even before).
Turning now to second language acquisition, the questions provoked by statement (2’)
include: Can second language acquisition start at any age? If not, what limits the earliest
possible beginning? Answers to these questions will depend on the distinction between first
and second languages, which in turn is connected with assumptions about the nature of their
acquisition. A second language may be defined as a language acquired after the first lan-
guage – in this case, second language acquisition cannot start at birth, but only after (some
substantial part of) a first language has been acquired. This view connects the question of
the earliest possible beginning of second language acquisition with the question of the age
at which first language acquisition is completed, which, as we have seen, can be answered
in different ways. Alternatively, we may define a second language as a language acquired in
addition to the first language.
In situations where a young child acquires two languages simultaneously, the question
arises whether both are to be called first languages, or else how to determine which is the
first and which is the second language. Often this question is answered with reference to
age, with cut-off points varying between one month and five years. De Houwer (1995: 223)
defines bilingual first language acquisition (resulting in two first languages) as “the acquisi-
tion of two or more languages from birth or from a month after birth”. According to this
definition languages whose acquisition starts later than in the first month of life are second
languages. For McLaughlin (1978) the dividing point is much later: he calls first languages
(the result of simultaneous as opposed to successive bilingualism) those acquired before
the age of three. Meisel (2011: 204–206) argues for a dividing line between the age of three
and four, combining evidence from child language research (from a UG perspective) and
neurobiology.
In my own view, a more important factor than the age at which a child is first exposed
to a language is the intensity and the kind of the exposure. To acquire a language as a first
language, a substantial amount of input is needed, and exposure to the language has to be
regular and continued. A second language may be familiar to a child from the very begin-
ning of life (for example, heard from nurses in the hospital where they are born) but still
felt to be second in order if it is not the main language used in the immediate environment.
While many children in the world grow up bilingual, only some of them have more or less
equal input in two languages in the first years of life. Even in bilingual families, often one
language is dominant. Furthermore, it is normal that the input changes over time as the
circumstances of life change – a crucial change is often noted when a child growing in a bi-
lingual family starts attending a monolingual kindergarten. As stated above, bilingualism is
the worldwide norm, but totally balanced bilingualism, or “equilingualism”, as it is called
by Baetens Beadsmore (1986: 9), is a rare exception; it may even be a fiction invented at
the early stages of research on bilingualism. The idea of equilingualism is further connected
with the view that every “normal” individual has perfect competence in their native lan-
guage, where perfect competence is defined as that of a monolingual speaker.
Disentangling the distinction between first and second languages from the age factor, we
may distinguish between two different research questions: (a) are first and second languages
acquired in a different way?; and (b) are languages acquired differently in childhood (and
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up to which age)? Given the problem of determining what are first and second languages
for young children, the second question seems to be more feasible for empirical research.
Research on language acquisition at various ages and in various settings has shown that
age effects can be observed at many different points in time, from early childhood to old
age.6 These research results contest the the earlier view that there is one critical period for
language acquisition. While the classic version of this thesis (starting with Lenneberg 1967)
maintained that successful language acquisition is possible only when it starts before a cer-
tain age (mostly considered to be during puberty), current controversies center on the ques-
tion whether and to what extent different mechanisms are active in language acquisition.
I will turn to this controversy in the next section.
Another pair of questions connected to age and the distinction between first and second
languages concerns the result of language acquisition: (a) does first language acquisition
lead to different results – a different kind of competence – than second language acquisi-
tion?; and (b) is the result of language acquisition during childhood different from that
of acquisition at later periods in life? Most non-linguists and many linguists have a ready
answer to (b), namely that languages are best acquired during childhood and that someone
starting to learn a second language after childhood (or after adolescence) will never reach
the highest level of competence. However, this naïve view of the superiority of early vs. late
language acquisition has to be qualified in several ways. First, it is not an absolute truth –
there are, after all, second language users who started acquisition as adults and have reached
so-called native-like competence (Birdsong 2005 gives an estimate of 5% of such L2 users).
Second, even as a tendency it is not equally true for different components of competence –
phonological competence and native-like pronunciation being the most age-sensitive parts.
For other components, circumstances of acquisition, domains and frequency of language
use etc. may be more important factors than age; for example, the use of a language in edu-
cation, or in one’s professional life, or whether it is used in reading and writing or only in
spoken form. These factors also play an important role for variant (a) of the question con-
sidered in this paragraph: there is in principle no difference in competence (at least in a non-
Chomskyan understanding) between first and second languages (as defined by order of
acquisition, disregarding the age of onset). While for some time it was assumed that first and
second languages were stored and processed in different parts of the brain, recent research
has shown that this is not the case, or at least not necessarily (Perani & Abutalebi 2005).
The first language a child acquires – the native language – may over time become weak-
er, and a second language may become dominant in some or all domains. As Cook (1999)
argues, it is impossible to define the concept of native language by criteria other than that
it is the first language (or a first language) acquired in childhood in the family. None of
the characteristics often attributed to native languages or the native speaker (such as sub-
conscious knowledge of rules, creativity of language use, or identification with a language
community) is necessary or sufficient for a definition; all are also possible characteristics of
a successfully acquired second language.
6
See Birdsong (2005) for a research overview, from which he draws the conclusion: “there is no apparent
period within which age effects are observed; rather, they persist indefinitely” (Birdsong 2005: 109). Meisel
(2007; 2011) attributes age effects during childhood to different sensible phases for parts of UG. Snedeker et al.
(to appear) found that young children acquiring the language of their adopted family used different strategies
depending on whether the age of adoption was 2–3 or 4–5 years.

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Furthermore, the results of early as well as late, first as well as second language acquisi-
tion are not irreversible – language competence once acquired may also be lost again. Inter-
estingly, an early age of acquisition does not guarantee preservation; rather the opposite is
true: it is more likely that after 10 years without contact a language acquired and used only
from birth to age 5 will be completely lost, than with a language acquired and used only
from, say, age 20 to 25.7 Pallier et al. (2003) show in their study of Korean children adopted
into French families that a first language replaced by a second language can be lost without
leaving a trace in the brain, even if the replacement set in as late as age 8. While total attri-
tion may be an extreme case, partial attrition is probably quite widespread, given that the
use of different languages in different domains is normal, and it is common for a language
acquired after the age of five to be used in important domains of an adult’s life. Adolescents
who are educated in a second language do not develop their first language to the same
degree as those who receive education in their first language. Adults who conduct most of
their daily life in a second language tend to lose a part of their native-language competence.
I conclude that language acquisition as well as language attrition may take place at any
time during a person’s life:
(2’’) Language acquisition is a lifelong experience.
This is not to deny that childhood is an especially important period for language ac-
quisition. However, treating it as the only one, or the only one that is relevant for linguistic
research, is too narrow a view and leads to the exclusion of many important aspects of hu-
man language. Similarly, the assumption that linguistic knowledge acquired in childhood is
intrinsically superior to linguistic knowledge acquired later in life leads to a research per-
spective that ignores many facts of multilingual life, which is, as discussed above, the norm
for most people of the world. This has been pointed out by Cook:
To call what the vast majority of L2 users achieve ‘failure’ is to accept that the only valid view of the world
is that of the monolingual: knowing only one language is normal, knowing two is unusual. Only in a mono-
lingual universe is a multi-competent person a failure for not speaking like a monolingual. (Cook 2010: 154)

2.3. Acquisition vs. learning

Second language acquisition is a phenomenon probably as old as the existence of differ-

ent languages, but it became a subject of scientific research surprisingly late. For centuries,
linguists and teachers had conceived knowledge of a second language only as the outcome
of studying that language, the result of instructed learning. Only after research on first lan-
guage acquisition had started to boom in the 1960s did the perspective – and the terminology
– change from second language learning to second language acquisition. But was this switch
appropriate? Controversy soon arose centering on the opposition of acquiring versus learn-
ing a language. As might be expected, the central terms of the controversy are often only
vaguely defined. Generally speaking, “acquisition” is conceived as an unconscious process
of building up linguistic knowledge through processing input without formal instruction,
while “learning” is a conscious process, the activity of studying a language with the help of
explanations given by a teacher and/or a book. A radical form of the Critical Period Hypoth-
7
I do not have a proof of this statement. Total attrition of a childhood language has been reported in several
studies, but I am not aware of studies of total attrition of a later learned second language.

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esis mentioned above includes the postulate that language acquisition in this sense is possi-
ble only up to a certain age (for example, before puberty); afterwards there is only language
learning, the results of which will never equal those of acquisition. Another approach that
was much discussed in SLA research in the 1980s and 1990s was put forward by Stephen
Krashen (1981), who proposed a model in which both acquisition and learning are integral
parts. Acquisition is the more important process as it leads to primary linguistic knowledge,
while learning results in metalinguistic knowledge used by a so-called monitor that controls
and alters linguistic performance. In his view, learning can never turn into acquisition. This
Monitor Model is still part of the curriculum of most courses on second language acquisition
or applied linguistics, although few people would support it today.
Whether adults are able to acquire or only to learn a second language, or whether the
linguistic knowledge that results from acquisition is principally different from the linguistic
knowledge that results from learning, are questions that cannot be solved by empirical re-
search. They depend on the theoretical approach chosen, and are of importance only relative
to a certain theory. Therefore, most linguists interested in SLA have lost interest in estab-
lishing a difference in principle between acquisition and learning of second languages, and
often use the two terms synonymously. A new discussion that has partly replaced the old
controversy concerns different types of learning (see below).
When it comes to first language acquisition, a similar discussion centers around the
question of whether and in what respects children “learn” their mother tongue, whether they
are, or can be, “taught” to speak. A widespread opinion about this question, often to be found
in linguistic textbooks, is expressed in the following statement:
(3) Children acquire their mother tongue without instruction.
Again, this thesis is most vehemently acclaimed within the generative school, among
others by Noam Chomsky himself, who has always emphasized that language is essentially
an innate capacity, not a learned skill. In an educational film Chomsky compares speaking
to walking and declares categorically:
That we are taught to walk is impossible. And pretty much the same is true of language. Nobody is taught
language. (Noam Chomsky in the film The Human Language Series, Part 2, 1994, cited after Fromkin et al.
2010: 330)

Whether we would subscribe to this statement will depend on our understanding of

teaching and learning (and, of course, language). Obviously, children are not taught the ba-
sic grammar of their mother tongue by explicit descriptive rules (“if the subject is in the sin-
gular, the verb takes the ending -s in the present tense”), but this is surely not the only way
of teaching. If we include repeating, enforcing, correcting, presenting a model, or modifying
input as teaching techniques, many people would surely hesitate to deny them any relevance
for first language acquisition. There is anecdotal evidence of children resisting correction
that is often cited in textbooks, but of course this cannot be taken as proof that the techniques
mentioned never have any effect.8 The strong position taken by Chomsky and his followers
of the impossibility of teaching language relies on a belief, not empirical evidence. Rather
than adopting it as a dogma, it could be made the basis of research questions that may
8
I presume that anyone who has taught a foreign language to adults for some time can tell similar anecdotes
about the “learning resistance” of some students, so there is no difference here in principle between children’s
FLA and adults’ SLA.

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lead to new insights, such as: Which aspects of first language knowledge CAN be taught?
How are these aspects taught? At what age is such teaching successful? If one accepts, as
I have argued above, that first language acquisition is not completed in early childhood, the
idea of teaching parts of a first language no longer seems so absurd. I have already cited
Dąbrowska’s pioneering research on the continuing acquisition of some aspects of gram-
mar, such as the Polish genitive or the English passive. It includes an empirical study of the
effects of explicit teaching: adult native speakers who had displayed non-complete acquisi-
tion of a feature performed significantly better in the tests after a short training session; the
effects were long-lasting (Dąbrowska 2012a). Further investigations of this kind may show
to what extent a “focus on form” (to use a popular label of SLA research and practice) is
a beneficial if not a necessary part of first language acquisition.
The strict opposition of acquisition and learning can also be challenged if they are not
conceived as homogenous: there may be different ways of both learning and acquiring, or
simply different ways of acquiring a language, of which some resemble our prototypical
conception of “learning” more than others. In SLA research and applied linguistics, a dis-
tinction is often made between explicit and implicit learning (DeKeyser 2003).9 The concept
of implicit learning is similar to that of “acquisition” as defined at the beginning of this
section: it refers to the building of knowledge by processing data, also to the acquisition of
some aspects (for example, of grammar) present in the input while focusing on other aspects
(for example, the content or goal of a communicative event). Explicit learning, on the other
hand, refers to learning the aspect that is in focus.
DeKeyser & Larson-Hall argue that there are crucial differences regarding preference
for and the effectiveness of one of these ways of learning with respect to age: “Children
can learn very little explicitly; adults can learn very little implicitly” (DeKeyser & Larson-
Hall 2005: 101). In their opinion, this difference is at the heart of age effects in language
acquisition and justifies the postulation of a Critical Period, as “language acquisition from
mere exposure (i.e., implicit learning), the only mechanism available to the young child, is
severely limited in older adolescents and adults” (89). These statements are based on empiri-
cal research, and there is little doubt that they are correct as general tendencies. One may
add that, while all children seem to be good at implicit learning, in older learners there are
considerable individual differences: some adults profit more from implicit learning, some
rely almost exclusively on explicit learning, while still others combine both types of learn-
ing (these are often the most successful students in language classes using a communicative
approach).
In the USA and several other Western countries, first language acquisition research in
the second half of the 20th century was dominated by the generativist approach to language.
Acquisition of grammar was therefore most often explained as the unfolding of innate lin-
guistic rules, adjusting universal principles to the specific rules of the language of the child’s
environment. Towards the end of the 20th century, alternative approaches and models were
gaining ground, especially constructivism. Interestingly, the presence of alternative models
of explanation has not only led researchers to abandon or to modify their previous theory (as
is usually the case), but also to consider the possibility of different mechanisms of acquisi-

9
A partially overlapping distinction is made between intentional and incidental learning, which I will not
consider here (see Hulstijn 2003).

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tion “coexisting”. One possibility of such coexistence is the division of labor according to
the aspect of grammar that is acquired. Generativists still claim that it is the very core that
is acquired by parameter-setting, while anything acquired by other mechanisms is at the
periphery. Dąbrowska (2000), among others, has challenged this view by arguing that es-
sential parts of the Polish case system cannot be acquired by parameter-setting. As part of
her conclusions she states:
First, the “periphery” is not as peripheral as some would have us believe: in fact, the “core” constitutes only
a very small part of linguistic knowledge. At the end of the day, the elaborate clanking machinery of PP
theory does not accomplish very much, and most of what the child needs to know in order to communicate
successfully must be acquired with the help of learning mechanisms other than parameter-setting. Secondly,
given that some aspects of language must be learned, we must seriously consider what mental capacities are
necessary to learn them. (Dąbrowska 2000: 93)

Note that Dąbrowska uses the word “learning” here for (parts of) first language acquisi-
tion.
In their study on child second language acquisition under circumstances that resemble
first language acquisition – children from China and Eastern Europe adopted into English-
speaking families between the age of two and five – Snedeker et al. (to appear) observed
different mechanisms used by younger and older subjects. It is also possible that different
mechanisms are involved in the acquisition of any particular feature at different stages. For
example, the first phase(s) of acquisition may be triggered by innate mechanisms, but its
continuation may depend more on the kind of input and the experience an individual has
with different varieties and modes of language.
In any case it seems plausible to assume that in a process as complex as acquiring lan-
guage, different mechanisms are at work and interact. Isolating a small set of supposedly in-
nate mechanisms and opposing them to everything else is likely to hinder a full understanding
of language acquisition, especially if research focuses only on that small set and neglects other
aspects for ideological reasons. A binary opposition of acquisition vs. learning, or implicit vs.
explicit learning is probably too simple, and finer-grained differentiations will be more fruitful.

3. Observing differences and similarities

It is often said that all children acquire their mother tongue in the same way and at the
same age. Second language acquisition, on the other hand, is characterized by a variety of
individual differences. It is worth scrutinizing this assumed opposition by exploring ques-
tions such as the following: How uniform is first language acquisition – are there not indi-
vidual differences here too? Which aspects that make up the uniformity of first language ac-
quisition are found in second language acquisition as well? And, maybe most interesting for
SLA research, but up to now least explored: Can individual preferences in second language
acquisition be linked to characteristics of first language acquisition by the same speaker?
Are there ways to language that some individuals prefer in general? Do such preferences
change with age, or with growing experience with more than one language?
Individual differences in first language acquisition have been found in rate and in “style”
(see Bates et al. 1995 for an overview). The first aspect is easier to observe and to measure.
Evidently, not all children start to speak at exactly the same age. While textbooks teach that the

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first word is usually uttered around the first birthday, cross-sectional studies have confirmed
that a considerable range is normal: early talkers may start with 8 months, late talkers towards
the end of their second year. At the age of 16 months a vocabulary range of 0–155 items was
found in children from American English families (Bates et al. 1995). A longitudinal study of
128 children carried out in the 1970s in the UK (the Bristol Project, see Wells 1985) showed
that the order in which English children acquired certain aspects of grammar, semantics and
pragmatics was relatively fixed, while there was considerable difference concerning the rate of
progress. Skehan (1987: 3) comments on these findings: “the implication of this variability in
rate is that the child brings a great deal of autonomy to the task of language learning.” When
the children who took part in the Bristol Project were in their teenage years, a smaller study
was conducted that investigated their success in second language learning in school. Skehan
(1987) found a correlation between the speed of first language acquisition and the achieve-
ments in second language classes. Research on the acquisition of first and second languages
by the same individuals over a time of more than 10 years are very rare, and the results of Ske-
han’s study give rise to several questions that cannot be answered at present. A teenager’s suc-
cess in school may depend on many factors that are not directly related to language aptitude.
The correlation Skehan found between the amount of native language input in the pre-school
years and the ease of second language learning in secondary school may indicate the benefits
of a certain style of child-raising: parents who talk more to their children will also be more
concerned with their education, and for example stimulate reading and other language-related
activities, or provide exposure to different styles and genres.
Apart from differences in rate, some (mostly longitudinal) studies of child language
have revealed differences in the way children approach the task of language acquisition.
Individual differences in “style” have been found concerning various aspects of language:
phonology, vocabulary, grammar and pragmatics (Bates et al. 1995: 120–133). For example,
“segmentally oriented” children clearly pronounce individual sounds, while “prosodically
oriented” children pay more attention to stress, number of syllables, and intonation. Some
children make early use of personal pronouns, while others prefer the use of nouns and
names when talking about persons, including themselves. Concerning the acquisition of
morphology, the amount of overgeneralizations (such as goed, bringed) may vary greatly.
Another difference concerns what children talk about in their early stages and what kind of
speech acts they produce more often: some children talk more about objects, others more
about persons; some children early on make various speech acts such as questions or de-
mands, while in the speech of others we find predominantly statements. Some researchers
have suggested that several such differences correlate – that there are two different styles in
language acquisition, or roughly two types of young acquirers. However, there is not enough
evidence for this thesis, and I rather suspect that a division of children into two basic types
is too simplistic. It would be very interesting to investigate whether an individual shows
preferences such as the ones mentioned here in both first and second language acquisition,
or, more accurately, in early as well as later language acquisition. For a feature such as ori-
entation towards prosody such a thesis seems fairly plausible10, though not necessarily true.
I am not aware of any empirical research on these aspects.
From my personal experience with second language learning and anecdotes my parents used to tell about
10

my early utterances as a child, I suspect that I have always been “prosodically oriented”.

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Having challenged the uniformity of first language acquisition, I now turn to aspects
that are undoubtedly at least very similar in children’s acquisition of language, but have
no exact parallels in later second language acquisition. An obvious point is the early stages
of FLA that are connected to physiological and cognitive maturation – an adult will never
again go through a stage of babbling before uttering their first words. This may have signifi-
cant consequences for the acquisition of phonology. Small children have already acquired
a substantial part of their native language’s phonology before they start combining words,
while adults learning a second language sometimes acquire a considerable vocabulary and
are able to form elaborate sentences in a second language without fully mastering phono-
logical distinctions.
Some researchers have proposed stages of SLA that resemble those of FLA, namely
a (non-obligatory) silent period at the onset, a stage of formulaic speech characterized by
utterances of single words and expressions learnt as wholes, followed by a stage marked by
structural and semantic simplification, gradual acquisition of grammatical morphemes and
finally elaborate sentence structures (Trawiński 2005: 54). However, it is doubtful how far
this sequence is typical for SLA in various situations. For example, complex sentences may
occur long before case morphology has been mastered.
Still, some similarities may indeed be found between the language at an early stage of
adult SLA and the speech of a young child, and it is worth considering these similarities.
The following is an illustration of the active vocabulary of a French student after six weeks
in Poland (she did not study the language systematically). This sample was not drawn up on
purpose or in any systematic way – the student simply wrote down all the Polish that came
to her mind because she was unable to fulfill another task that her colleagues were doing at
the time. (The name has been changed.)
Nie rozuviem Tak miwo mi
nie viem nie marchew
pzepracham prosze kantor
djękuye Ratta bankomat
djindobre jeden pirogi
nie mowie po polsku mam na imię Marie pomidor
jestem francsi pan serem
dowidzenia pani woda
smatch nego matka piwa
nazdrowia papa sok
Kto to jest? Tchecht
Stary brovar na razie

This sample reflects a “formulaic stage” – utterances that consist of more than one word
(versions of Standard Polish nie rozumiem ‘I don’t understand’, nie mówię po polsku ‘I don’t
speak Polish’, Kto to jest? ‘who is it?’, etc.) were certainly learnt as wholes and not com-
posed by the speaker. Likewise the inflected form serem (literally ‘with cheese’) has most
probably entered the vocabulary unanalyzed. There are two categories of words in this list:
nouns (designating concrete objects and places) and pragmatic words and phrases (‘hello’,
‘goodby’, ‘see you’, ‘cheers’, ‘thank you’, etc.). The same two categories prevail in the early
vocabulary of children. The preference for nouns over verbs or adjectives at the beginning
of language development has been the subject of various research (see Li & Fang 2011 for
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a corpus analysis of the CHILDES database of English child language; Gentner & Borodit-
sky 2009 for a comparative study of typologically diverse languages and for a concise sum-
mary of previous research). It has been proposed that the preference for concrete nouns in
the early vocabulary of children acquiring various languages reflects their cognitive devel-
opment: concrete nouns are easier to handle than abstract concepts or verbs. Of course, cog-
nitive development cannot be the reason why adults build up their early L2 vocabulary with
the same kind of words when they are capable of handling abstract and complex concepts
in their first language. One of the possible reasons is that in many languages verbs are more
tightly embedded into the grammatical structure of a language and therefore harder to iso-
late and translate without a grammatical context. Nouns and pragmatic words like greetings
are also usually the first lexical items that get borrowed from one language into another. The
parallels in early vocabularies in FLA and SLA (in cases where acquisition is not strongly
guided by instruction) are striking. They may of course be superficial, the accidental result
of entirely different mechanisms, but they may also at least partly have a common ground.
Research into child language in the 1960s and 1970s revealed that the order in which
grammatical meanings and expressions are acquired is fairly similar across children. Sev-
eral researchers have tried to show a similar “natural order” in second language acquisi-
tion; however, the results are not very convincing. It seems that the order of acquisition of
grammar in SLA depends on a variety of factors and is on the whole much less predictable
than the order of acquisition in FLA. A more general aspect of the acquisition of grammar,
however, can be observed in both FLA and SLA: grammatical development follows lexical
development (for FLA see Bates & Goodman 2001). Maybe this is no absolute rule in SLA:
some adults may learn and effectively use grammatical rules in a second language while
possessing a relatively small active vocabulary. However, these learners are very rare (usu-
ally learners with an extraordinary aptitude for grammar are also good at acquiring words).
For the great majority of second language users, a growing vocabulary is a prerequisite for
a growing mastery of the grammar, and explicit teaching of grammar may have little effect
if the students’ lexicon is too small to anchor the grammatical regularity in question.
A still more general observed similarity between first and second language acquisition
is that comprehension is ahead of production: children always understand more words and
more difficult constructions than they are able to produce, and the same is true of second
language learners. This fact may seem trivial, but in my view it is an important aspect of
language development and may be worth more detailed research.

6. Conclusions

In this paper I have tried to challenge the view that there is an essential difference be-
tween first and second language acquisition. I do not deny that there are some fundamental
differences, but argue for another interpretation of these differences. One of my points is not
to confuse the opposition first vs. second language with the opposition child vs. adult. For
example, the first part of the following statement is undeniably true:
[…] infants who are learning language are also engaged in learning about how the world works. In compari-
son, L2 learners already know a great deal about the world. (MacWhinney 2005: 49)

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The accuracy of the second part, on the other hand, depends partly on the definition
of second language, as discussed in Section 2.2, but in any case we would have to exclude
child second language acquisition. Even a five-year-old is still learning a great deal about
the world. There are obvious reasons why child language development should differ from
language development at a later point in life. If considered in isolation from the age factor,
the only reason why the acquisition of a second language should differ in principle from
the acquisition of the first language is that it is SECOND – which means that the person
acquiring it already knows (substantial parts of) another language, and therefore also knows
essential aspects of language in general.
Knowing a language, and knowing about language in general, entails so much more than
the specific aspects of grammar that have been the focus of FLA research for several decades.
In the past, especially in the 1960s and 1970s, ideas and paradigms were transferred – not
very fruitfully – from FLA research to SLA research: for example, the idea of a “Language
Acquisition Device” or an innate Universal Grammar, the Critical Period, a fixed Morpheme
Acquisition Order, and others. After a period in which the two fields developed more inde-
pendently, it may now be time to consider what first language acquisition research may learn
from research on the acquisition, development, and use of other languages.

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