Chapter 8：Socio- linguistics
Define or explain the following terms:
Sociolinguistics: The subdiscipline of linguistics that studies language variation and language use in social context.
Speech community: A group of people who form a community (which may have as few members as a family or as many members as a country), and share the same language or a particular variety of language.
Speech variety: Also known as language variety, refers to any distinguishable form of speech used by a speaker or group of speakers.
Language planning: Language standardization is known as language planning. This means that certain authorities, such as the government or government agency of a country, choose a particular speech variety and spread the use of it, including its pronunciation and spelling systems, across regional boundaries. Idiolect: An idiolect is a personal dialect of an individual speaker that combines aspects of all the elements regarding regional, social, and stylistic variation, in one form or another. (In a narrower sense, what makes up one’s idiolect includes also such factors as voice quality, pitch and speech rhythm, which all contribute to the identifying features in an individual’ s speech.) Standard language: A superposed, socially prestigious dialect of language. It is the language employed by the government and the judiciary system, used by the mass media, and taught in educational institutions, including school settings where the language is taught as a foreign or second language.
Nonstandard language: Language varieties other than the standard are called nonstandard, or vernacular, languages.
Lingua franca: A variety of language that serves as a medium of communication among groups of people from diverse linguistic backgrounds. The term lingual franca can be generalized to refer to any other language used as a trade or communication medium. Thus, any language can be it.
Pidgin: A marginal contact language with a limited vocabulary and reduced grammatical structures, used by native speakers of other languages as a means of business communication.
Creole: A creole language is originally a pidgin that has become established as a native language in some speech community. When a pidgin comes to be adopted by a population as its primary language, and children learn it as their first language, then the pidgin language is called a creole.
Diglossia: A term first introduced by Ferguson in 1959 to refer to a sociolinguistic situation in which two very different varieties of language co-exist in a speech community, each with a distinct range of purely social function and appropriate for certain situations.
Bilingualism: Bilingualism refers to a linguistic situation in which two standard languages are used either by an individual or by a group of speakers, such as the inhabitants of a particular region or a nation. There are bilingual communities in which their members commonly use two languages in their daily lives.
Domain使用域: Domain refers to the phenomenon that most bilingual communities have one thing in common, that is, a fairly clear functional differentiation of the two languages in respect of speech situations. For example: the Home Domain, Employment Domain etc.
Code-switching: A bilingual speaker often uses two languages alternatively during a conversation with another bilingual speaker, a speech situation known as code-switching.
Ethnic dialect: An ethnic language variety is a social dialect of a language, often cutting across regional differences. An ethnic dialect is spoken mainly by a less privileged population that has experienced some form of social isolation, such as racial discrimination or segregation. Social dialects (or sociolects): Varieties of language used by people belonging to particular social classes.
Register: Registers are language varieties appropriate for use in particular speech situations, in contrast to language varieties that are associated with the social or regional grouping of their customary users. For that reason, registers are also known as situational dialects.
Address term: An address term, or address form, refers to the word or words used to address somebody in speech or writing.
Slang: Slang is a casual use of language that consists of expressive but nonstandard vocabulary, typically of arbitrary, flashy and often ephemeral coinages and figures of speech characterized by spontaneity and sometimes by raciness.
Linguistic taboo: Refers to a word or expression that is prohibited by the “polite” society from general use. Obscene, profane, or swear words are all taboo words that are to be avoided entirely, or at least avoided in mixed company.
Euphemism: A euphemism is a mild, indirect, or less offensive word or expression substituted when the speaker or writer fears more direct wording might be harsh, unpleasantly direct, or offensive. For example, we say “portly” instead of “fat”. In many cultures, people avoid using direct words that pertain to death or dying.
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What are the distinctions between bilingualism and diglossia?
Bilingualism refers to a linguistic situation in which two standard languages are used in a speech community; whereas in a diglossic community, two varieties of language are used for different situations, one being more standard and higher, and used for more formal matters, and the other less prestigious, and used for colloquial situations.
Discuss with examples some of the linguistic differences between Standard English and Black English. (features of Black English)
One of the most prominent phonological characteristics of Black English is the frequent simplification of consonant clusters at the end of words when one of the two consonants is an alveolar /t/, /d/, /s/, or /z/.The application of this simplification rule may delete the past - tense morpheme, so “past “and “passed “are both pronounced like “pass.”
Another salient characteristic of Black English phonological system concerns the deletion of some word-final stop consonants in words like “side” and “borrowed.” Speakers of Black English frequently delete these word-final stops, pronouncing “side” like “sigh” and “borrowed” like “borrow.”
One prominent syntactic feature is the frequent absence of various forms of the copula “be” in Black English, which are required of Standard English. Compare the following expressions in Black English and Standard English: (1) Black English Standard English They mine. They’ re mine. You crazy. You re crazy.
Another distinctive syntactic feature of Black English is the systematic use of the expression “it is” where Standard English uses “there is” in the sense of “there exists”: Is it a Mr. Johnson in this office?
Another aspect of Black English is the use of double negation constructions. Whenever the verb is negated, the indefinite pronouns “something”, “somebody”, and “some” become the negative indefinites “nothing”, “nobody”, and “none”, for example: He don’t know nothing. (He doesn’t know anything.)
List several ways in which the speech of women and the speech of men differ from each other.(理解)
Women tend to use more prestigious forms, more polite and indirect language, and more specific color terms than their male counterparts. Females are found to use more questions than declarative statements in comparison with males.
展开：1) In normal situations, female speakers tend to use more prestigious forms than their male counterparts with the same general social background. For example, standard English forms such as “I did it” and “he isn’t” can be found more often in the speech of females, while the more colloquial “I done it” and “he ain’t” occur more frequently in the speech of males.
2) Another feature often associated with so-called women’s language is politeness. Usually, tough and rough speeches have connotations of masculinity and are not considered to be desirable feminine qualities. In general, men’s language is more straightforward, less polite, and more direct, and women’s language is more indirect, less blunt, and more circumlocutory.
3) This phenomenon of sex-preferential differentiation is also reflected in the relative frequency with which males and females use the same lexical items. For example, certain words that are closely associated with women may sound typically feminine as a result of that association. For example, some English adjectives like “lovely”, ”nice”, ”darling” and “cute” occur more often in female speeches and therefore cause feminine association.
4) Females have also been shown to possess a greater variety of specific color terms than males, in spite of the fact that men do not necessarily possess less acute color perception than women. On the other hand, males have the reputation of possessing a larger vocabulary in traditionally male-dominated domains such as sports, hunting and the military.
5) Sex-preferential differentiation is also seen in the speech acts of males and females. A request in English such as “Close the door when you leave” can be phrased in a number of ways ranging from a harsh command to a very polite request:
a. Close the door when you leave.
b. Please close the door when you leave.
c. Would you please close the door when you leave? d. Could you close the door when you leave?
Although the above options are all available to both men and women, it is usually the more polite forms that are selected by female speakers. In general, females are found to use more questions than declarative statements in comparison with males.
The following words are considered instances（实例） of
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sexist language. Find alternatives to these masculine-marked words:
businessman → business executive cleaning woman → housekeeper
forefather → ancestor housewife → homemaker kinsman → relative layman → nonspecialist spokesman → speaker, representative
statesman → leader stewardess → flight attendant workmanship → skilled job, quality job
mankind → people manpower → personnel mothering → nurturing chairman → chair/moderator mailman → postal worker/letter carrier
fireman → fire fighter policeman → police safety officer salesman → sales representative
dustman → sanitation engineer to man(v.) → to operate
A formal remark may have basically the same content as an informal one, but not necessarily the same social meaning. Write two directives and two statements with the same content but in two different register forms, each appropriate for a particular context. Directives:
Formal: Kindly extinguish（熄灭）the illumination（照明） upon exiting.
Less formal: Please turn off the lights on your way out. Statements:
Formal: We regret（遗憾） to inform（通知） you that permission is not granted（准予）.
Less formal: We are sorry to tell you that you don’t have our permission.
Change the following informal statements for formal situations:
1)The delegates were savvy（知道，了解） of the fact that the document they were signing wasn’t perfect.
The delegates understood that the document they were signing was not perfect.
2)The candidate slammed（猛力抨击） her opponent for often changing his tune on the issues.
The candidate criticized her opponent for often changing his views on the issues.
3)Stickley furniture may not be real smooth, but it’s pricey（昂贵的） and fresh（新颖的）.
Stickley furniture may not be very comfortable, but it is expensive and fashionable. The negative effects of slang
Although slang is often very vivid and expressive and almost everyone uses it on some occasions, the term slang has traditionally carried a negative connotation: it is often perceived as a low or vulgar form of language and is deemed to be undesirable in formal styles of language. Slang is sometimes referred to as vernacular, and some forms of slang fall under the term colloquialism, referring to informal conversation styles of language. These terms do not carry negative connotations.
What effect does it have on our use of language?
In sociolinguistics, a linguistic taboo, denotes any prohibition on the use of particular lexical items to refer to objects or acts. As language use is contextualized in particular social settings, linguistic taboo originates from social taboo. (When an act is taboo, reference to this act may also become taboo. Taboo words and expressions reflect the particular social customs and views of a particular culture.)
As linguistic taboo reflects social taboo, certain words are more likely to be avoided. For example, the words related to sex, sex organs and excrement排泄物 in many cultures. The avoidance of using taboo language mirrors social attitudes, emotions and value judgments, and has no linguistic basis.
The effect of the euphemism
Although the use of euphemisms has the effect of removing derogatory贬损 overtones暗示, the disassociative effect is never long-lasting.
Euphemisms may have a short life-span, but the use of euphemisms as a way of disassociating the denotative meaning of a word with its negative connotation is effective, at least to speakers of certain social groups.
However, an excessive use of euphemism may have negative effects. As a matter of fact, many euphemisms have become cliches陈腔滥调 that are to be avoided in formal speech and writing. They also tend to be wordy and to give writing a timid quality. In addition, euphemism can be evasive or even deceitful. Because they are often improperly used to obscure the intended meaning, many people find them offensive and prefer plain language.
Excessive use of euphemism may have negative effects. Rewrite each of the following sentences to eliminate euphemistic expressions:
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1)The employees who had been notified of an interruption in their employment were referred to their outplacement manager. The laid-off（被解雇的）employees were told to speak to the person who would try to help them find new jobs.
2)The official acknowledged that he had misspoken when he said the troops had not engaged in any protective-reaction missions.
The official admitted that he had lied when he claimed the troops had not engaged in any offensive （攻击性）missions. 3)The prisoner’s life will be terminated at dawn.
The prisoner will be executed（处死，执行） at dawn.
4)The non-essential personnel in this division will be vacationed by next week.
The unnecessary people in this division will be laid off by next week.
5)Reaching the top of the ladder of success must be a moving experience.
Being successful must be a pleasant experience. 6)I was told that he did away with himself. I was told that he had committed suicide.
7)He’ll be accountable despite his diabolical（恶魔的） skill. He’ll be accountable despite his impressive skill.
8)It is a widespread but unproven hypothesis that the parameters of significant personal change for persons in mid-life are extremely narrow.
It is a widely held myth that middle-aged people can’t change. 9)I purchased a residential property that was in need of substantial upgrading.
I bought a house in need of repair.
Chapter 9：Psychological Linguistics Define or explain the following terms:
Psycholinguistics: The study of language in relation to the mind. It is viewed as the intersection of psychology and linguistics, drawing equally upon the language we acquire, produce and comprehend, and the mind or brain in which our linguistic and cognitive faculties are localized and organized, and interact with each other in particular ways.
Neurons: Lying under the skull, the human brain contains an average of ten billion nerve cells called neurons.
Cerebral cortex: The outside surface of the brain, it is the decision-making organ of the body, which receives messages from all the sensory organs and initiating all voluntary actions. Hemisphere: The brain is divided into two roughly symmetrical halves, called hemispheres, one on the right and one on the left. Brain lateralization: The localization of cognitive and perceptual functions in a particular hemisphere of the brain. Linguistic lateralization: It is the brain’s neurological specialization for language. Linguistic lateralization in terms of left hemispheric dominance for language is found to exist in an overwhelming majority of human beings.
Dichotic listening test: It involves simultaneously presenting, through earphones, two different auditory signals, one to the right ear and the other to the left ear. The test tells us the existence of the right ear advantage.
Right ear advantage: Since the speech signals in the left ear takes a non-direct route and a longer time before processing than a linguistic signal received through the right ear, linguistic stimuli heard in the left ear are reported less accurately than those heard in the right ear. This phenomenon is called the right ear advantage.
The language centers: They are specific areas that are responsible for language within the brain. In addition to the motor area which is responsible for physical articulation of utterances, three areas of the left hemisphere are vital to language, namely, Broca’s area, Wernicke’s area and the angular gyrus.
Broca’s area : It refers to the frontal lobe in the left cerebral hemisphere, which is vital to language. This area is discovered by Paul Broca, a French surgeon and anatomist. Wernicke’s area: It refers to the different area of the left cerebral hemisphere. This area is discovered by Carl Wernicke, a German physician.
Angular gyrus: The angular gyrus lies behind Wernicke’ s area. The angular gyrus is the language center responsible for converting a visual stimulus into an auditory form and vice versa. This area is crucial for the matching of a spoken form with a perceived object, for the naming of objects, and for the comprehension of written language, all of which require connections between visual and speech regions.
The critical period hypothesis: It refers to a period in one’s life extending from about age two to puberty, during which the human brain is most ready to acquire a particular language and language learning can proceed easily, swiftly, and without explicit instruction.
Cerebral plasticity: According to Lenneberg, prior to the end of the critical period, both hemispheres are involved to some extent in language and one can take over if the other is damaged. This neurological flexibility is called cerebral plasticity .
Genie’s case: The language faculty of an average human degenerates after the critical period and consequently, most
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linguistic skills cannot develop.
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic determinism): A theory put forward by the American anthropological linguists Sapir and his student Whorf which states that the way people view the world is determined wholly or partly by the structure of their native language.
Linguistic relativism: Whorf believed that speakers of different languages perceive and experience the world differently, that is relative to their linguistic background, hence the notion of linguistic relativism .
Interpersonal communication: It means language users use language to convey information, thoughts and feelings from one person to another, or to control each other’ s behavior.
Intrapersonal communication: the process of using language within the individual to facilitate one’s own thought and aid the formulation and manipulation of concepts.
Subvocal speech: A term used to refer to thought when thought and language are identical or closely parallel to each other.
Overt thought: A term used to refer to speech when language and thought are identical or closely parallel to each other, we may regard speech as “overt thought.”
What are the biological foundations of language?
Of all organisms, human beings are the only spontaneous creators and users of highly sophisticated languages that permit the communication of a wide range of knowledge and ideas.
Evidently, our linguistic ability does not depend primarily on the structure of our vocal cords, for other mammals also have vocal cords.
Human linguistic ability largely depends, instead, on the structure and dynamics of the human brain. As far as is currently known, human beings are the only organisms in which one particular part of the left half of the brain is larger than the corresponding part of the right half. This has led to the belief that human language is biologically, or more exactly, neurologically, based.
What are the major mental functions under the control of each hemisphere?
Psychological research suggests that both hemispheres perform important mental functions and they differ only in the manner in which they treat incoming stimuli. For example, the right hemisphere processes stimuli more holistically全面地 and the left hemisphere more analytically分析地.
Brain lateralization for major mental functions under the control of each hemisphere is given as follows: (1) Left hemisphere Right hemisphere
language and speech perception of nonlinguistic sounds analytic reasoning holistic reasoning
temporal ordering visual and spatial skills reading and writing recognition of patterns
calculation recognition of musical melodies associative thought
Because each cerebral hemisphere has unique functional superiority, it seems inappropriate to refer to the language-domiant left hemisphere as the major one. It is more accurate to conceive of the hemispheres as complementarily specialized.
Describe one research technique that has provided linguists with information about the localization of speech and language in the brain.
A research technique known as the “dichotic listening” has been used to study how the brain controls hearing and language. When performing a dichotic listening task, subjects wear earphones and simultaneously receive different sounds in the right and left ear, and are asked to repeat what they hear.
Dichotic listening research makes use of the generally established fact that anything experienced on the right-hand side of the body is processed in the left hemisphere of the brain, and vice versa. During dichotic listening experiments, subjects reported hearing the language spoken to their right ears prior to the language spoken to their left ears. The results provide empirical support for the belief that the left hemisphere of the brain is dominant for language and speech.
Many left-handed people have their language centers in the right hemisphere of the brain. What type of result would we expect to obtain from such people on a dichotic listening task?
Since the left-handed subjects have language centers resident in their right hemisphere of the brain, they would hear the auditory signal given to the left ear first. This is because it takes a shorter time for the signal to go directly from the left ear to the right side of the brain than it does for the signal spoken to the right ear to travel first to the left hemisphere and then onto the right hemisphere for processing.
Describe the processes of language perception, comprehension and production.
From the perspective of psycholinguistic analysis,
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language use in terms of perception, comprehension and production follows a certain pattern which involves the coordination of various language centers.
For example, when we speak, words are drawn from Wernicke’s area and transferred to Broca’s area, which determines the details of their form and pronunciation. The appropriate instructions are then sent to the motor area which controls the vocal tract (声道) to physically articulate the words. When we hear something and try to comprehend it, the stimulus from the auditory cortex is transmitted to Wernicke’ s area, where it is then interpreted. When we perceive a visual image, a message is sent to the angular gyrus, where it is converted into a visual pattern.
When asked to read a list of words, some aphasic patients substitute other words for those printed on the list. Often the substituted words are similar or related to the printed words, as is shown by the data given below. What does the data reveal about how words are likely to be stored in the brain? Printed Words Words Uttered by Aphasics abroad overseas decide decision liberty freedom remember memory tall long
Evidently, what is actually stored in the brain is meaning instead of form, and categorical （直截了当的）information instead of discrete（离散的） information.
Why is there considerable cerebral plasticity in the brains of young children?
First, it is claimed that preadolescent children suffering damage to the left hemisphere are able to transfer their language centers to the right brain and to reacquire the lost linguistic skills with relatively little disruption.
Second, young children are known to be excellent second language learners, while their parents often have to struggle with a new language for years without fully mastering it.
Thus, if a child does not acquire language during the critical period, for any one of a number of reasons, such as a deprivation of linguistic environment, he or she is unlikely to learn a language successfully later on.
Provide evidence for the view that there is a critical period for language acquisition.
The critical period for language acquisition coincides with the time during which the brain’s hemispheric lateralization for language and other cognitive skills takes place. It is believed that the end of the critical period corresponds to the completion of this lateralization process. Evidence in support of the critical period hypothesis comes from the fact that children acquiring their first language beyond the critical age are hardly successful, such as the case of “Genie.”
Aphasic studies also seem to support the critical period hypothesis: it is reported that preadolescent children suffering damage to the left hemisphere are able to transfer their language centers to the right hemisphere and reacquire the lost linguistic skills.
Further supporting evidence comes from studies in the field of second language acquisition: adults experience much greater difficulty in learning a second or foreign language, in contrast to young children, who are known to be excellent second language learners.
According to the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, language determines speakers’ perceptions and patterns their way of life. How in your view does language relate to thought and culture?
Language does not so much determine the way the speaker perceives the world as it functions as a means by which information can be stored and retrieved, by which a culture transmits its belief, values and norms, and by which the speaker interacts with other members of the culture.
How are language and thought related to each other?
Language and thought may be viewed as two independent circles overlapping in some parts, where language and thought are consistent with each other and one never occurs without the other. When language and thought are identical or closely parallel to each other, we may regard thought as “subvocal speech”, and speech as “overt thought. In such a case, speaking and thinking take place simultaneously.
Chapter 10：Language Acquisition Define or explain the following terms:
Language acquisition: It is concerned with language development in humans. It refers to children’s development of their first language, that is, the native language of the community in which a child has been brought up.
Biological or nativist: View of language acquisition is that humans are equipped with the neural prerequisities for
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language and language use, just as birds are biologically “prewired” to learn the songs of their species.
General principles: They are fundamental to the grammaticality of speech.
Input: The language which a learner hears or receives and from which he or she can learn.
Caretaker speech: Simple, modified speech used by parents, baby-sitter, etc. when they talk to young children who are acquiring their native language.
Behaviorist learning theory: It suggests that a child’s verbal behavior is conditioned through association between a stimulus and the following response. Children are believed to gradually assume correct forms of the language of their community when their “bad” speech gets corrected and when their good speech gets positively reinforced.
The multiword stage: When a child starts string more than two words together, the utterances may be two, three, four, or five words or longer, hence the multiword stage. (between 2 and 3) Telegraphic speech: Because of children’s resemblance to the style of language found in telegrams, utterances at this acquisition stage are often referred to as telegraphic speech.
Second language acquisition: Second language acquisition (SLA) is a general term which refers to the acquisition of a second language (L2), in contrast with first language acquisition (FLA). SLA is also used as a general term to refer to the acquisition of a foreign or subsequent language (such as a third or fourth language). Thus, SLA is primarily the study of how learners acquire or learn an additional language after they have acquired their first language (L1).
Acquisition: According to Krashen, acquisition refers to the gradual and subconscious development of ability in the first language by using it naturally in daily communicative situations. Learning: Learning is defined by Krashen as a conscious process of accumulating knowledge of a second language usually obtained in school settings.
Language transfer: Learners will subconsciously use their L1 language knowledge in learning a second language. It can be positive or negative (interference).
Interference: It was once believed to be the major source of difficulties experienced and errors made by L2 learners on the ground that where differences existed between L1 and L2, the learner’s L1 knowledge would interfere with L2.
Contrastive analysis: A comparative procedure used to establish linguistic differences between two languages so as to predict learning difficulties caused by interference from the learner’s first language and prepare the type of teaching materials that will reduce the affects of interference.
Error analysis: An approach to the study and analysis of the errors made by second language learners which shows that there are striking similarities in the ways in which different L2 learners acquire a new language.
Interlanguage: The learner’s interim knowledge of the target language, that is, the language that a learner constructs at a given stage of SLA.
Fossilization: A learner’s interlanguage fossilized some way short of target language competence while the internalized rule system contained rules that are different from those of the target language system.
Formal instruction: It occurs in classrooms when attempts are made to raise learners’ consciousness about the nature of target language rules in order to aid learning.
Discuss the biological basis of child language acquisition. ○
1Language acquisition is a human species-specific capacity. All children are biologically equipped with this capacity at birth. That is, children are born with the neural prerequisites（先决条件） for language development and language use. ○
2Because language acquisition is biologically based, all normal children, except those with mental or physical impairments, are capable of acquiring at least one language during the early period of life, a period corresponding to the
period of neural maturation of the brain. ○
3Because language acquisition is a natural endowment, children, regardless of their cultural tradition, intelligence, and opportunities to receive formal instruction and correction, follow the same natural route of language development and acquire their native language with equal success.
Provide supporting evidence for the argument that children acquiring language do not simply memorize words and sentences.
Children’s acquisition of language is a rule-governed behavior. What they acquire is a set of rules for generating an infinite number of sentences. If language was learned through imitation and memorization of individual words and expression, children would only speak the kind of language that they were exposed to. However, it is widely recognized that children can comprehend sentences that they have never heard before, and they are heard producing utterances that connot be possibly uttered by adults. Many errors in the speech of children are not the result of imitation and memorization but the result of overgeneralization of rules. For
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example, the way a child learns to negate sentences and form questions can be considered examples of overgeneralization in syntax acquisition.
Why do we say language acquisition is primarily the acquisition of the grammatical system of language?
In principle, no human brain can store all the words and
expressions of a language. ○
1What happens is that when processing the language they hear, children construct the grammar and make sense of the expressions according to the
grammar. ○
2When producing utterances, they follow the internalized grammatical rules. ○
3Without the knowledge of the productive rules, it would be impossible for language users to produce and understand an unlimited number of novel sentences.
Different theories of child language acquisition have been advanced. Discuss two contrasting views with reference to the behaviorist learning model and the nativist（先天论者） biological model.
The behaviorist view: Language acquisition is a process of habit formation. Language is learned through stimulus and response. Reinforcement of selected responses is the key to understanding language development. Children learn to produce correct sentences because they are positively reinforced when they say something right and negatively reinforced when they say something wrong.
The nativist view: Language acquisition is the species-specific property of human beings. Children are born with an innate ability to acquire language. They are predisposed to develop their native language along a universal, predetermined route through similar stages. They go about acquiring the grammar of their native language using principles unique to language acquisition.
What is the role of correction and reinforcement in first language acquisition?
○
1According to Behaviorist learning theory, children are believed to gradually assume correct forms of the language of their community when their “bad” speech gets corrected and
when their good speech gets positively reinforced. ○
2Researchers have found that correction and reinforcement are not key factors in child language development as they were
claimed to be. ○
3When adults do attempt to correct children’s grammatical errors and the correct form is repeated, their efforts seem to have little effect, or simply doom to failure because children often do not know what the problem is and continue to use a personally constructed form. Children’s reinforcement has been found to occur usually in children’s pronunciation or reporting of the truthfulness of utterances, rather than in the grammaticality of sentences.
What is the role of imitation in first language acquisition? ○
1At one time, it was widely believed that children learned language by simply imitating the speech of those around them. We now know that this cannot be true, since many utterance types produced by children do not closely resemble structures
found in adult speech. ○
2If children learn their native tongue by imitating their parents, how can we account for the utterances that are typical of children’s language, such as the plural form “my foots,” the past tense forms of “I eated,” and the negative construction of “No the sunshining”? It is impossible that children imitate these structures from adults
because they are never heard in adult conversations. ○
3In addition, Children with speech impairment for neurological（神经学上的） or physiological（生理学上的） reasons learn the language spoken to them and understand what is said. ○
4A more reasonable explanation is that children are attempting to construct and generalize their own grammatical
rules. ○
5Some young language learners do seem to make selective use of imitation, but they do not blindly mimic adult speech in a parrot fashion, but rather exploit it in very restricted ways to improve their linguistic skills. The point is that imitation plays at best a very minor role in the child’s mastery of language.
What are the major stages that a child has to follow in first language development? What are the features of the linguistic forms at each stage?
The prelinguistic stage: At the babbling stage, the sounds and syllables that children utter are meaningless. Babbling, especially early babbling, is largely independent of the particular language to which children are exposed. The sounds produced in this period seem to include a large variety of sounds. Babbling does not seem to depend on the presence of acoustic, auditory input. When children are through the tenth and eleventh months, they are capable of using their vocalizations to express emotions and emphasis, and of attempting at the grand task of language acquisition.
The one-word stage: This stage usually occurs in the late part of the first year or the early part of the second year. At this stage children learn that sounds are related to meanings. They
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begin to use the same string of sounds of the native language to “mean” the same thing. Children’s one-word utterances are also called holophrastic sentences, because they can be used to express a concept or prediction that would be associated with an entire sentence in adult speech. One-word utterances sometimes show an overextension or underextension of reference.
The two-word stage: During the second year of life, children’s utterances gradually become longer. Children are heard uttering two-word expressions in a variety of combinations. Children’s two-word utterances can express a certain variety of grammatical relations indicated by word order, for example: Daddy hat. / Doggie bark. Two-word expressions are absent of syntactic or morphological markers. Pronouns are rare.
The multiword stage: It occurs between two and three years old. The salient(突出的) feature of the utterances at this stage ceases to be the number of words, but the variation in strings of lexical morphemes, for example: Daddy like this book./ He play little tune./This shoe all wet. The early multiword utterances typically lack inflectional morphemes and most minor lexical categories, therefore they are often called telegraphic speech. Although they lack grammatical morphemes, telegraphic sentences are not simply words that are randomly strung together, but follow the principles of sentence formation. As this type of telegram-format speech increases, a number of grammatical morphemes begin to appear in children’s speech. Simple prepositions begin to turn up in their speech. By the age of five, with an operating vocabulary of more than 2,000 words, children have completed the greater part of the language acquisition process.
Account for the phenomenon of young children’s apparent retrogression（退步） from saying, for example, “went” and “came” to “goed” and “comed.” (P262)
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1Children first learn irregular forms of verbs like “went” and “came” as individual words in regular form. ○
2Later when they encounter more instances of regular verbs denoting past events with inflectional “-ed” morphemes, they realize that the addition of “-ed” to a verb is a rule that changes the present time to the past time. At this stage, children tend to generalize this rule and apply it to all verbs, and consequently are heard producing the
“ill” forms such as “goed” and “comed.” ○
3It must be pointed out that errors from overgeneralization should not be viewed as negative, but as evidence of normal progress in language acquisition. At a later time, when they realize that there are exceptions to the rule, they begin to make distinctions between regular and irregular forms. Discuss one major factor which contributes to the difficulties most L2 learners encounter.
1）It has been suggested by some SLA scholars that learning difficulties confronting adult L2 learners arise from the fact that for most people a second language is leaned in a formal setting, rather than acquired in a natural environment.
2）Language acquisition is contrasted with language leaning on the ground that acquisition is subconscious, focusing on meaning, while learning is conscious, focusing on form. It is argued that conscious knowledge of linguistic forms does not ensure acquisition of the rules, that is, does not ensure an immediate guidance for actual performance.
What’s the difference between acquisition and learning, according to Krashen? ○
1 ○2定义 ○3A second language, Krashen argues, is more commonly learned but to some degree may also be acquired, depending on the environmental setting and the input received by the L2 learner. A rule can be learned before it is internalized (i.e., acquired), but having learned a rule does not necessarily preclude（成为…的预兆） having to acquire it later. For example, an English language learner may have learned a rule like the third person singular “-s”, but is unable to articulate the correct form in casual and spontaneous conversation because the rule has not yet been acquired. This shows that conscious knowledge of rules does not ensure an immediate guidance for actual performance.
Discuss the contrastive analysis in detail.
Contrastive Analysis was developed in order to identify and predict the areas of learning difficulty. Given this approach, it was hypothesized that L2 errors were predominantly the result of negative transfer, or mother tongue interference and second language learning was believed to be a matter of overcoming the differences between LI and L2 systems.
According to this view, the major task of second language teaching should predominantly be: first, contrast the native and the target language systems and make predictions about the language items that would cause difficulty and the errors that learners were likely to make; then use these predictions in deciding on the type of language items that needed special treatment in teaching and in material development and the type of intensive techniques that would be employed to overcome learning difficulties created by the interference.
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In practice, the Contrastive Analysis is not effective because a large proportion of grammatical errors could not be explained by mother tongue interference. Errors predicted by contrastive analysis have often not occurred, whereas many actual errors, such as “goed” and “foots”, come from overgeneralization instead of negative transfer. Errors, according to the contrastive analysis approach, are negative and had to be overcome or given up. In fact, errors produced in a learner’s second language utterance may very well be developmental errors and therefore, should not be looked upon simply as a failure to learn the correct form, but as an indication of the actual acquisition process in action. Developmental errors often result from the effort on the part of the learner to construct and test general rules of communication in the target language.
Enumerate（列举） some causes that lead to the systematic occurrence of errors in SLA.
Some major causes that lead to the systematic occurrence of errors in second language acquisition include interference from the mother tongue, interlingual interference within the target language and overgeneralization:
1)Mother tongue interference is found at the level of pronunciation, morphology, syntax, vocabulary and meaning, and can be predicted by contrasting the grammatical or other systems of the native and target languages.
2)Interlingual interference, or cross-association, occurs when the learner mixes rules and patterns of the target language and produce hybrid（混合的） structures.
3)Overgeneralization: the use of previously available strategies in new situation, i.e. the application of a particular pattern or rule of the target language in many other linguistic situations.
What is the role of input for SLA?
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1It is evident that SLA takes place only when the learner has access to L2 input and the opportunity to interact with the input. ○
2It appears that what learners need is not mere exposure to L2 data, but the kind of input data that are specially suited to their current stage of development.
Discuss the effects of formal instruction on SLA.
Although formal instruction generally focuses on the explicit teaching of linguistic forms, it aids adult L2 learners, particularly adult beginners, by providing opportunities for learners to receive modified comprehensible input that are specially suited to their current stage of L2 development. Moreover, in the “intake-type” of classroom environment,
teaching materials and methods are all finely tuned in order to meet the needs of the learner and provide them with ample opportunities to interact with the input.
How do the learner factors potentially influence the way in which a second language is acquired?
The optimum age for SLA: First language acquisition is most successful when it occurs during the early years of one’ s life before puberty, but the optimum age for SLA does not always accord with the maxim of “the younger the better”. The optimum age for SLA is early teenage. This claim is justifiable（有理由的） because this is the age when the learner’ s flexibility of the language acquisition faculty has not been completely lost while one’s cognitive skills have developed considerably（相当地）.
Motivation: Motivation in language learning can be defined in terms of the learner’s overall goal or orientation. Instrumental motivation occurs when the learner’s goal is functional, i.e. to use it as an instrument for the purpose of, for instance, securing a desirable job. Integrative motivation occurs when the learner’s goal is social, i.e. to integrate oneself with the second language community.
Acculturation: The acculturation hypothesis focuses on the social and psychological conditions under which L2 processing is most likely to take place successfully. It states simply that the more a person aspires to acculturate to the community of the target language, the further he or she will progress along the developmental continuum.
Personality: Intuitively, an outgoing personality may contribute to language acquisition. Research results, however, only partially support this hypothesis. No significant relationship has been found between talkativeness on the one hand and overall proficiency in a second language on the other. But it is recognized that as a result of being frequently exposed to and interacting with the target language, learners with an extroverted personality are likely to achieve better oral fluency than otherwise.
In sum, A good second language learner is, among other things, an adolescent who has a strong and well-defined motivation to learn. He is able to respond and adaptable to different learning situations. He seeks out all opportunities and makes maximum use of them to interact with the input. He employs appropriate learning strategies. And he is willing to identify himself or herself with the culture of the target language community.
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