Language acquisition and language change.

نویسنده

  • David Lightfoot
چکیده

Children acquire a mature language system and sometimes this system differs from that of their parents. This is a significant part of language change and understanding acquisition is key to understanding this kind of change in people's internal grammars. I outline one approach to language acquisition, based on children finding cues expressed in the input they are exposed to. This enables us to understand historical change in grammars: change in external language sometimes triggers a new internal grammar as cues come to be expressed differently. Work on language variation, acquisition, and change converges, and these three areas are mutually dependent; empirical work in one area may enrich understanding more generally, opening the way to new kinds of empirical work. Seen this way, language is a complex system and language change can be treated productively in the context of complexity science. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Comparing Experiential Approaches: Structured Language Learning Experiences versus Conversation Partners for Changing Pre-Service Teacher Beliefs

Research has shown that language teachers’ beliefs are often difficult to change through education.  Experiential learning may help, but more research is needed to understand how experiential approaches shape perceptions. This study compares two approaches, conversation partners (CONV) and structured language learning experiences (SLLE), integrated into a course in language acquisition. Partici...

متن کامل

Language development and acquisition in children

Language acquisition is a natural developmental process and is unique to Homo sapiens in which a child acquiring his or her mother tongue as a first language.  The simplest theory of language development is that children learn language by imitating adult language. A second possibility is that children acquire language through conditioning. Noam Chomsky put forward innateness hypothesis. Piaget ...

متن کامل

A Dynamical System Approach to Research in Second Language Acquisition

Epistemologically speaking, second language acquisition research (SLAR) might be reconsidered from a complex dynamical system view with interconnected aspects in the ecosystem of language acquisition. The present paper attempts to introduce the tenets of complex system theory and its application in SLAR. It has been suggested that the present dominant traditions in language acquisition research...

متن کامل

Language Acquisition and English Achievement at Grade Four Senior High School

This study aimed to explore the relationship between language acquisition and grade four senior high school (G4SHS) students’ achievement in English as a foreign language (EFL). To this end the 41-item English Language Acquisition Scale (ELAS) designed by Khodadady and Younesi (2017) was administered to 518 G4SHS students. Also to find the probable relationship between ELAS, its latent variable...

متن کامل

Factors Underlying Characteristics of Acquisition of English Language in EFL Classrooms

This study tried to find out what factors underline the characteristics of acquisition of English language in EFL classrooms. To this end, the Characteristics of English Language Acquisition Scale (ELAS) consisting of 41 items was designed by the researchers of this study and administered to 388 pre University Iranian EFL students at various private and public schools in Neyshabour and Zebarkha...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:
  • Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Cognitive science

دوره 1 5  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2010