11/8/01

This is a “transcript” of portions of our class discussion on 11/7/01. Statements here should not be interpreted as “truth” or necessarily even accurate! I typed in what I heard people saying. Susan

Notes from Class Discussion on November 7, 2001

What were you doing when Lori was speaking in French?

Was it frustrating?

It was fun because I’m familiar with some of the words; like a game trying to piece together what was being said.

Surprised at how much I remembered. I couldn’t speak to you in French but I understood a lot of what you were saying?

- Does that mean that the ability to learn the language is innate?

- Two views on this question:

- Born to speak

- One of many things we could do. We do it because others are doing it

There are lots of things we could be doing, that our genes would allow us to do but that we don’t necessarily do.

It’s a combination of what you can do and what you do do. Because we use it, it develops.

Always confused by the innate question. Part of the evidence is the stuff on phoneme recognition development. But that isn’t the core quality of language – meaning and communication are the core. So why would phoneme recognition mean that language is innate?

Birds can fly because they have wings. Is that innate to them?

There are many qualities of being human that lend themselves to language and thinking.

So, are you saying it might not be innate but be a product of experience and culture?

Innate is a hardwired thing that they do – bee dance for example. Born with the ability seems different.

Innate implies a nonconditional manifestation. Automatically going to be displayed with no need for environmental conditions to be present. This is the strictest, biological definition of innate. Does it?

Why can’t a predisposition be innate? Because it is conditional on the environmental circumstances supporting the realization of the behavior.

Everyone knows that there is a need for environmental input.

Innate issue comes from Chomsky – not language specific.

If you are on a desert island with no one around, does language develop. Humans develop language and other species don’t. Really depends what the definition of innate is.

So what is innate about language?

What is the test for innateness?

Language doesn’t manifest without input from the speech community. So then can it be innate?

Are we okay to say that language is just an acquired skill? Ivan says yes.

We are predisposed to walk. Is walking an innate predisposition?

Are humans born with the ability to use a language? Yes, under the right conditions.

Just having the potential to do something doesn’t make it innate.

If you argue that language is innate, wouldn’t it make sense to say it is hardwired and proceed in a predictable sequence?

What evidence could you marshal to decide the issue?

Critical period is relevant here. Shows that we have a small time period in which to acquire. How strong is the evidence for the critical period? There is evidence that adults actually learn L2 faster than kids. If first language isn’t acquired by adolescence it is unlikely that it will be acquired because the brain is loses some of its plasticity. The case study evidence suggests a sensitive period rather than a critical period. For kids who don’t acquire language, what else don’t they acquire?

Order of acquisition may be more germane to the innateness claim than critical or sensitive period. How do we account for the same sequence in children in very different environments if there is not an innate quality to language? Similarity in needs. The amount of input required to extract categorical knowledge is too large for them not to be operating with some rules from the start.

Why can’t they abstract from the input? Quality of the input doesn’t support it.

What are the mechanisms/processes by which you capitalize on the speech input you are exposed to?

Communicative value and function

Interactional context – use of language for particular purposes

Child abstracts pattern similarities

Are these active processes? Is the child an active agent in the language acquisition process? Is it a pattern abstraction or a pattern matching process? Are you remembering a context in which the word was used and use it again? Are you judging similarity and generalizing over similar events? Feedback – where is that involved? Rule abstraction and hypothesis testing.

Mary Joan presentation: From knowing to telling (Hudson and Shapiro) – how is knowledge (content, structure, microlinguistic, contextual) translated into narratives? Several types of narratives: scripts, personal narratives, stories. Knowing to telling – need to know how to tell.

Ivan presentation – Kinds of narrative genre skills – Hicks. Family of things called narratives. Genres – could be a kind of social skill and a kind of linguistic skill. Ways of telling – by adults to children. Narratives as factual accounts or fictional stories – white. AA community – interactive lively conversation; performance story telling – Hawaii. AA and White kids; shown Red Balloon. Tell the story, newspaper report, event casting. Found differences in the analysis of two kids. News report and events casting were highly evaluative in AA. Story – shortened summary. White MC student: - scene by scene description; little evaluative.

Heather Orom – functions of connectives

Write 3 or 4 sentences about what happened to you this morning:

I woke up and got ready to go running. I wondered if it was warm enough for shorts and short sleeves. I compromised and wore shorts and a long sleeve shirt. I ran 7 miles in 67 minutes. When I got back to the house I got ready to go to work.

Handout

A short section on second language learning

Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis – more similar L1 and L2 the faster your acquisition of L2.

Distinction between fluency and proficiency in a language – restricts fluency to L1; proficiency is fluency in L2.

Differentiation – more similar the two languages, the more interference and thus harder.