Re: Do children learn language more easily?

In article <17777.15154.394696.87628@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Ar an chéad lá de mí na Nollaig, scríobh Nathan Sanders:

> > The UN calls people children up until the age of eighteen; even the US
> > Army doesnâ??t enlist people under 17.
>
> The UN's definition of "children" is irrelevant when talking about
> language acquisition. Everything necessary for using a native
> language competently is learned within the first five years.

So you donâ??t have the basic politeness to deal with what he writes as he
writes it?

The subject as I understand it is a comparison of first language
acquisition versus (non-native) second language acquisition. The
native speech of 17-year-olds is completely irrelevant to such a
discussion.

Also, I flat-out disagree that everything necessary for using a native
language competently _as an adult_ is learned within the first five
years.

Perhaps you have a broken definition of linguistic competence. It
doesn't include trivia, technical vocabulary, or knowledge of general
social behavior.

Language is a system of communicating ideas --- it is not the ideas
themselves.

Children by the age of 5 have acquired the system: syntax, morphology,
phonology, phonotactics, etc. The ideas will come with life
experience, but they'll add very little to the underlying linguistic
system.

And if youâ??re going to compare the two processes, you need to have
the same desired result; and an adult learning a language wants an adult
command of the language, not the command of a five-year-old.

That depends on one's goals, of course. Wanting to speak like a
native speaker and wanting to effectively communicate a set of
specific ideas are two very different goals. The former is concerned
with learning the entire linguistic system at a native level; the
latter is concerned with learning just enough to satisfy your
particular needs.

Again, the difference between adult and child needs crops up, and we
find that second language learners, not native speakers, have the
speech of someone who was driven by need (i.e., minimally sufficient,
rather than superfluously robust).

> [...] A three-year-old child is not only learning Spanish, but is also
> still in the stages of learning the very fundamentals of language (and of
> the nature of the world and society) that you now take for granted as an
> adult. You're free to learn things in a completely different order,
> while he is forced to progress through a certain set of developmental
> milestones. So there will certainly be pieces of language that you can
> pick up faster than he can.

That is, pieces of the language are easier for me.

Faster does not mean easier, if by easier, you mean less actual
effort. Second language acquisition is an active process; you have to
make a conscious effort to learn the language (it is "onerous", after
all!). First language acquisition happens whether the child wants to
or not.

The results speak for themselves: millions of adults worldwide
successfully refuse to learn a second language, but not one single
child ever in recorded history has successfully refused to learn a
first language.

If language-learning for children is as hard as it is for adults, then
some children somewhere would have just given up, especially given
that adults have much longer attention spans and patience, as well as
more developed knowledge of the importance of language.

> You're confusing content with ability to express content. I can't say
> anything useful about Dedekind domains or diophantine approximations,
> but that doesn't mean that my command of English is not "effective".

Itâ??s not effective in those contexts. But knowledge of those contexts is not
a social expectation,

It depends on who you socialize with. I spend a lot of time
surrounded by mathematicians who know all sorts of things that I just
can't talk to them about, but I seriously doubt they think my
*language* is what is lacking.

whereas if you couldnâ??t say anything useful or
understand a conversation about democracy versus dictatorship, potatoes
versus tomatoes, whether or not and why a woman is attractive, then your
command of English would not bad, it would not be effective to the level
expected of a native speaker.

Those expectations have nothing to do with knowledge of their
*language*, but with knowledge of their *world*.

> Once he reaches five years old, a child can say useful things about
> anything he comprehends (and some things that he can't). It's just
> that, as a five-year-old, he necessarily will have been exposed to
> fewer things than an adult has, and thus, will understand fewer
> things, so his language will *appear* to be less effective because he
> has fewer things to talk about (with adults).

And when a second language learner canâ??t talk with adult native speakers
about household vocabulary, about travel, about food, that second language
learnerâ??s command of the language is bad, and needs to be improved. And?

The point is, the reason he can't talk about them is that his language
is impaired, because he is certainly aware of the world he wants to
describe. Give him any subject he knows, and it will be hit or miss
whether he can talk about it, and his ability to discuss even the most
mundane topics will vary wildly.

This is a completely different situation from a child discussing
politics, because he has a sufficient language system in place, but
has not yet experienced enough of the world to have anything to talk
about. Give him any subject *he* knows, and he can talk about it
effortlessly.

> Which is why comparing adult and child language is exceedingly
> difficult and trickier than non-specialists appreciate. How do you
> compare native pronunciation with knowledge of technical vocabulary?

You say theyâ??re both important and need to be learned to have a good and
effective command of the language. (If, by technical vocabulary, you mean
that of the paragraph on ethics I posted.)

Technical vocabulary is only effective in certain contexts. Native
pronunciation is effective in *every* context. That's what makes it a
linguistic system.

> Which one is more "effective" for communication?

Once youâ??re not confusing phonemes and people understand your pronunciations
of words, you donâ??t need native pronunciation to talk usefully about
ethics. You do need the vocabulary of the area.

But you also need to know syntax, morphology, and phonology, which you
need to know if you want to talk about *any* subject. You don't need
vocabulary of ethics to talk about much of anything.

And it precisely the multi-purpose components of language (syntax,
morphology, phonology, etc.) that a five-year-old has mastered, and
that adult learners struggle with.

> [...] Situations are not language. Language can be used to describe
> situations, of course, and if you don't understand the situation, you
> will find it difficult, if not impossible, to accurately describe it.
> But that says nothing about your command of the language, only your
> knowledge of situations.

Knowledge of situations, and how to describe them, is a crucial part of
knowing a language. Crucial.

I know a whole lot about various situations, but that doesn't help me
with Chinese one bit. If I want to learn Chinese, I need to learn
syntax, morphology, and phonology, in addition to the vocabulary
necessary for the specific situations I'd want to talk about.

And itâ??s not co-incidence that the constantly
come up in language textbooks.

Language textbooks rarely teach you about situations qua situations,
since in the majority of cases, you are already expected to be aware
of them. They do teach you the vocabulary to *describe* the
situations you are already aware of.

(Of course, in cases where the dominant culture using the language is
different from the dominant culture of the people using the textbook,
new types of situations will also be taught to bring the readers up to
speed on the culture. That's not, in and of itself, language
learning.)

The adult language learnerâ??s situation is similar, and can be remedied in a
similar way; Iâ??m reasonably certain that after a year living in a
Spanish-speaking household through Spanish, seeing and talking about those
household events, I would beat the three-year-old hands down at describing
everyday household events.

Congratulations on beating a three-year-old! ;)

You still will lack a native command of the linguistic system, and a
five-year-old will exceed you in ability in phonotactics, wug-tests,
grammaticality judgements, specialized subsystems (baby talk,
ludlings, slang), creation of nonce forms, spontaneous speech, etc.

> [...] Who do you think is acquiring a first language? I know of no cases
> of someone successfully acquiring their first language starting after the
> age of five.

Mike Wright has a child youâ??ll be interested in.

Note my use of "first", not "native". The ability to learn a native
language continues for a few more years (it is certainly gone by about
age 10). The ability to start your *first* language does not last
past about age 5.

> [...] So why should anyone think that embarrassment is any more useful for
> language acquisition? There simply is no evidence that embarrassment
> even exists during first language acquisition,

If you mean that window up to the age of five, youâ??re not taking Rosenfelder
in good faith, and that makes your point irrelevant in the context of
discussing what he writes.

In the case of embarrassment, he seemed to be talking primarily about
phonology ("sounding funny"), or perhaps morphology or even syntax; I
seriously doubt he meant that 10-year-olds get made fun of because
they don't have the vocabulary to talk about ethics! And if he thinks
that any significant phonological, morphological, or syntactic
learning occurs after age 5, he's very wrong.

> let alone that it is a motivating factor for acquiring native-proficiency
> in a language.
>
> Consider second language acquisition, where embarrassment certainly
> abounds (just look at late night talk show jokes about Ahnuhld
> Schwarzenegger, numerous exaggerated mockery of stereotypical foreign
> accents in TV and film, etc.),

Do you get the impression that Schwarzenegger went to a playground every day
in California where every single day someone he considered an equal
ridiculed him?

No. In fact, I think his language gets made fun of more now than it
did as a child in Austria. That was the whole point --- there is more
linguistic mockery directed towards an adult speaker with a foreign
accent than there is for a child during the first language acquisition
process.

Children get made fun of for a lot of things throughout their
childhood, but during the time they are solidifying their phonology,
morphology, and syntax (ages 0 to 5), they generally aren't getting
mocked for their language at all, and certainly not to the degree that
foreign-accented adults do.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

.

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