Lenneberg

8 Key excerpts on "Lenneberg"

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  eBook - ePub

  Age and the Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language

  • María del Pilar García Mayo, María Luisa García Lecumberri(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Multilingual Matters

    (Publisher)

  Penfield's notion about the 'unphysiological' nature of later language learning was very much echoed in the work of Lenneberg, the person who is generally acknowledged as the 'father' of the Critical Period Hypothesis relative to language acquisition. Lenneberg saw the human capacity for language acquisition as constrained by a critical period beginning at age two and ending around puberty, this period coinciding with the lateralization process – the specialisation of the dominant hemisphere of the brain for language functions. He adduced a wide range of evidence pointing to changes in the brain that were occurring during this period. However, his claim that lateralisation ends at puberty has been significantly undermined by later studies which reinterpret the data in question as indicating that the process is already complete in early childhood (see, e.g., Kinsbourne & Hiscock, 1977; Krashen, 1973). Moreover, that part of Lenneberg's argument which referred to L2 learning, namely his suggestion that after puberty the learning of L2s required 'labored effort' and foreign accents could not be 'overcome easily' (Lenneberg, 1967: 176) was of dubious status in scientific terms. While his arguments in relation to the maturation of the brain development were supported with a range of neurological evidence (some of which has, as has been noted, since been reinterpreted), no evidence was offered in respect of his claims regarding post-pubertal L2 learning, which relied instead simply on an implicit appeal to popular assumptions.

  The Concept of Critical Period

  Before we proceed further in our discussion of the Critical Period Hypothesis (henceforth CPH), it may be worth reminding ourselves how the concept of critical period is usually understood in the biological sciences. The example that is usually cited in this connection is that provided by Lorenz (1958), who noted that new-born goslings became irreversibly attached to the first moving object they perceived after hatching. Usually, the first moving object in question is the gosling's mother. However, any other moving object will trigger the relevant reaction if it comes into the gosling's line of vision in the post-hatching period. The period during which the attachment of this kind may be effected is limited in duration, and beyond that period the gosling will no longer fix its following behaviour in the way described. Indeed, when this particular period ends, goslings will retreat from rather than follow moving objects.

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  The Psychology of Language

  From Data to Theory

  • Trevor A. Harley(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  The critical period hypothesis of Lenneberg (1967) comprises two related ideas. The first idea is that certain biological events related to language development can only happen in an early critical period. In particular, hemispheric specialization takes place during the critical period, and during this time children possess a degree of flexibility that is lost when the critical period ends. The second component of the critical period hypothesis is that certain linguistic events must happen to the child during this period for development to proceed normally. Proponents of this hypothesis argue that language is acquired most efficiently during the critical period. The idea of a critical period for the development of particular processes is not unique to humans. Songbirds display hemispheric specialization in that only one hemisphere controls singing (Demers, 1988). Many birds such as the chaffinch are born with the rudiments of a song, but must be exposed to the male song of their species between the ages of 10 and 15 days in order to acquire it normally. Evidence for a critical period for human linguistic development comes from many sources. Many songbirds, such as the chaffinch, are born with the rudiments of a song, but must be exposed to the male song of their species between the ages of 10 and 15 days in order to acquire it normally. Evidence from the development of lateralization The structure of the brain is not completely fixed at birth. A considerable amount of development continues after birth and throughout childhood (and indeed perhaps in adolescence); this process of development is called maturation. Furthermore, the brain (primarily the cortex) shows some degree of plasticity, in the sense that after damage it can to some extent recover and reorganize, or can adapt in response to pronounced changes in input, even in adulthood

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  Language Acquisition

  The Age Factor

  • David Singleton, Lisa Ryan(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Multilingual Matters

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 3

  The Critical Period Hypothesis: L1-related Evidence

  Introductory

  The popularly held view that there is a ‘critical period’ for language development is not generally subjected to more than rather superficial scrutiny. Most adults simply take it for granted, for example, that children are of their nature equipped to learn a foreign language with much less effort and in a generally more competent manner than they themselves are able to manage. Introductory psychology texts often treat the matter in a similarly axiomatic fashion but endow the assumptions they make with scientific credentials by introducing concepts and terminology from such domains as neuropsychology and nativist linguistics. This is not to say that the Critical Period Hypothesis is without its critics. Indeed, the question of whether there is a critical period for language development has generated fierce debate among researchers and continues to do so. As was indicated in Chapter 1 , the discussion has both a theoretical and a practical dimension and is of interest to L1 acquisition researchers and L2 acquisition researchers alike. For some theoreticians the Critical Period Hypothesis is important because the notion of maturational constraints on language acquisition is seen as related to the idea that language development is underpinned by special bioprogramming. In the more practical sphere of language education, the Critical Period Hypothesis has ramifications with respect to decision-making about the starting point for the introduction of L2 instruction in schools. The L2 issues will be discussed in detail in Chapters 4 and 6

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  Key Concepts in Bilingualism

  • Fredric W. Field(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Developed by the biologist Eric Lenneberg, the hypothesis seemed to fit with most people’s intuitions and the idea that children seem to have a unique ability to just grab languages out of the air (with no teachers, no textbooks, and no testing). However, critics have questioned what empirical data says to test the hypothesis. The questions: (a) Do children have an inborn advantage; if so, what are its causes? (b) What are the relevant age limits (the beginning and end of this special period)? and (c) What aspects of language development does it apply to (various levels of grammar) (Hoff 2009)? Lenneberg based his hypothesis on the imprinting of goslings shortly after hatching. There is a sensitive period in which they follow the first moving object (usually the mother) they see. If this period elapses, then imprinting does not occur. According to the hypothesis, the beginning of the sensitive period, a special open window for language acquisition, is age two, the emergence of the two-word stage and, therefore, syntax. (This showed a clear bias toward a syntactic view of language and its acquisition. Consequently, his theory was linked to Chomsky’s early work, e.g., the Language Acquisition Device or LAD.) This special period was believed to end at puberty (say, 9–13), with a link to brain lateralization , when cer-tain abilities became “located” in either the left hemisphere or the right hemisphere of the brain. Recent work, however, suggests that children show language ability at a much younger age (so they must be acquiring it). For instance, cooing noises and other pre-linguistic sounds emerge at around four months of age; and the beginnings of the acquisition of target-language phonology is evidenced by six months. In addi-tion, lateralization of language functions may appear even at birth, that is, certain abilities are already located in specific areas of the brain at birth.

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  The Age Factor and Early Language Learning

  • Marianne Nikolov(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  These findings, however, do not mean that ELL is a waste of time. Studies provide insights into complex ways of how young learners develop and o¤er an opportunity to discuss research methodology and areas for further research. As will be argued, the ad-vantages and outcomes of an early start need to be analyzed in the spe-cific contexts where young learners and their teachers interact with one another in classrooms in hugely varying conditions. Therefore, further research is necessary indeed. 1. The age factor and the Critical Period Hypothesis 1.1. The Critical Period Hypothesis Young learners are widely perceived to aquire languages in a qualita-tively di¤erent way from adolescents and adults. Children before a cer-tain age seem to pick up a new language with ease and success, whereas older learners often fail to do so. Discussions on the age factor tend to focus on the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) for language (e.g., Scovel 1988, 2000; Singleton 2001, 2005). The CPH has been a hotly debated research area not only in second language acquisition (SLA) research, but also in linguistic theory and cognitive science (Hernandez, Ping and MacWhinney 2005; Paradis 2004; Pinker 1994; McWhinney 2005). Some researchers argue that di¤erent critical, or sensitive, periods char-acterize language acquisition in di¤erent linguistic areas, and ‘‘the exis-tence, or not, of one or more sensitive periods for SLA has major impli-cations for the validity of any SLA theory’’ (Long 2005: 311). An important distinction has been confirmed in recent cognitive and neurobiological explanations of SLA reflecting a dual procedural/declara-tive dimension widely accepted in cognitive science (e.g., McWhinney 2005; Paradis 2004; Ullman 2001). Two systems exist side by side: a rule-based analytic procedural system, and a formulaic, exemplar-based declarative system (Skehan 1998).

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  High-Level Language Proficiency in Second Language and Multilingual Contexts

  • Kenneth Hyltenstam, Inge Bartning, Lars Fant(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  1 Age Effects on Language Acquisition, Retention and Loss Key Hypotheses and Findings Niclas Abrahamsson, Kenneth Hyltenstam and Emanuel Bylund 1.1 Introduction One of the longest-standing scientific debates on language acquisition concerns the relationship between age of first exposure and language development, the big divide being between proponents and opponents of the idea of one or several critical period(s) for language. While being perhaps the most- observed language acquisition phenomenon among laypeople, ironically, chil- dren’ s success in second language (L2) acquisition relative to that of adults is still, fifty years after the publication of Lenneberg’ s (1967) Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), a highly contested issue among scholars of linguistics, cognitive psychology, second language acquisition and bilingualism. Considering the boldness of a biologically underpinned hypothesis on human language acquisition that assumes maturational changes to be the cause of child–adult differences, it should have come as no surprise to Lenneberg (nor anyone else) that the CPH was to become subject to falsification, and quite intensively so. The earliest challenges were based on an entirely unrestricted interpretation of the hypothesis espoused by some researchers (e.g. Asher & Price 1967; Olson & Samuels 1973; Snow & Hoefnagel-Höhle 1977, 1978), who compared the language performance of small children, older children, adolescents and/or adults either in a ‘teach and test’ format in laboratory-like settings, sometimes with target structures from languages previously unknown to the participants, or for their initial language learning achievements during their first few months of residence in new language settings. Because adoles- cent and adult learners outperformed child learners, and because older children did better than very young children in these extremely time-constrained and sometimes artificial learning situations, the CPH was considered falsified.

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  Mind, Brain, and Language

  Multidisciplinary Perspectives

  • Marie T. Banich, Molly Mack(Authors)
  • 2003(Publication Date)
  • Psychology Press

    (Publisher)

  But what is most evident is that, due to the heterogeneity of its interpretations and the generality of its applications in language-acquisition studies, the critical-period concept needs clarification and the terms critical and sensitive period require modification, (See Bornstein, 1987, chap. 1, for an excellent account of the defining characteristics of such a period, and Moltz, 1973, for his distinction between a critical and optimal period, akin to the reformulated version proposed later in this chapter.) Proposed Revised Definition of the Critical/Sensitive Period. Many researchers have abandoned the term critical period in favor of the term sensitive period when referring to language acquisition, asserting that, when an age-based declination in linguistic ability occurs, the declination is gradual rather than sudden or abrupt, as would be suggested by the notion of a critical period. Yet one can simply change the size of the intervals on the x axis of a graph purporting to demonstrate the presence of a critical period (e.g., change the measurement of time from years to months or weeks) and render gradual what was previously sudden. That is, mere numerical manipulation can make what appears to be a critical period into a sensitive period, and vice versa. (Customarily, in graphic representations of critical or sensitive periods, time is represented on the x axis and values associated with a particular trait, physical feature, mental property, ability, or behavior are represented on the y axis.) It is thus proposed that the term critical be applied only to that time during which complete acquisition or normal development of a behavior, property, and so on occurs and that the term sensitive be applied to that time during which partial acquisition or development of a behavior, property, and so on remains possible—refected graphically as a linear departure from, then arrival at, asymptote as demonstrated in Fig. 12.6

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  Second Language Acquisition

  Second Language Systems

  • Neal Snape, Tanja Kupisch(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  Generativist SLA researchers disagree about whether second language (L2) learners have full access to UG after the first language has been acquired, as some believe that learning a second language is fundamentally An Introduction to Linguistic Terms 5 different from learning a first language (Bley-Vroman, 1989 , 1990). Section 1.3 extends the debate over the access to UG in SLA by providing an outline of the Critical Period Hypothesis (Lenneberg, 1967 ). The left hemisphere of the brain is typically better at processing linguistic signals, and two areas related to speech are located in the left hemisphere: Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area (Aitchison, 2008 ). Early studies on patients with brain damage showed how after a certain age language could no longer be transferred from the damaged left hemisphere to the right healthy hemisphere (Penfield and Roberts, 1959 ). The implications of the findings were extended to L1 and L2 acquisition. The question posed by researchers was: if normally developing children miss the window of opportunity to start acquiring the first language from birth, is it too late, and from what age is it too late? Obviously, for SLA, if one starts learning a second language as an older L2 learner (e.g., generally, after the age of around 12), it may mean that once a critical period for language is passed, it will no longer be possible to reach native-like attainment in the L2. According to more recent proposals, there are multiple critical or sensitive periods, and for some aspects it may be that by as early as 3–4 years old, it is already too late to acquire certain phenomena in the same way as monolingual children would do. We will discuss this point of view in relation to a study of verb placement in Polish children acquiring German as an early second language.

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