BILINGUAL ACQUISITION

roadmap

• Bilingual acquisition in children

• Simultaneous bilingualism
• Successive bilingualism

• Bilingual acquisition among adults: adult SLA

BILINGUAL LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
IN CHILDREN
 The history of childhood bilingualism study: [Bialystok, 1991.CUP]

• Initial studies were motivated by educational needs and policy.

• This was heavily biased against bilingualism in particular and against
immigration in general.
• Bilingualism was considered a disorder that should be treated by ruthless
instruction in a majority language, eradicating the ‘invading language’.
• Often this invading language was the language of home, heritage, culture of the
child.
• The evidence was loud and clear. Immigrant children in North American schools
were less successful than their monolingual peers
• Easy explanation was that bilingualism was to blame.
• However, there was a change in perception in the early 1970s, when the Anglophone
Canadian children had been ‘sentenced’ to French immersion program.

• These children were educated either entirely or partially in French.

• But they did not display the ‘bilingual pathology’, so bilingualism was not the culprit.
• Some recent developments in the field of language research has
contributed to direct exploration of the linguistic and cognitive
developments in bilingual children.

• Bilingualism studies became ‘mainstream’:

• For a rather long time second language acquisition was considered a secondary
issue.
• The more important problem to be solved was first language acquisition among
children.
• Now that we know a great deal about that aspect, its perhaps time to focus on
the L2.
• There was a shift in emphasis in psycholinguistic research- from product description to
processes : behaviorism to cognitive aspects. language acquisition among children was
increasingly seen as co-developing with their intellectual development.

• Children’s development was understood in terms of them developing schemas as a

function of specific experiences. As they grow, these schemas are elaborated and
restructured.

• The critical aspect of this theory is that children’s experiences determine important
aspects of cognitive organization which, in turn, influence their intellectual achievement.

• This is where the importance of bilingualism as an experience got highlighted.

• So, what’s new?

• There are three main approaches historically, to studying bilingualism among

children. Though education remained a constant focus, it was more or less
inferred from findings from these approaches.

• Applied Linguistics

• Sociolinguistics

• Psycholinguistics
Applied Linguistics
• Applied linguistics looks at practical applications of language studies.

• 3 major approaches in this includes:

A. Contrastive Analysis and Transfer Theory

B. Creative Construction Hypothesis
C. Language Acquisition Device
A.
• Focus is on ‘contrastive analysis’.

• The linguistic comparisons between two languages reveal the sources of

difficulty for the learner.

• This depends on findings where the two languages differ from each other.

• The underlying theory was that learners learnt second language by

substituting target language forms etc., into the language they already know,
i.e. their first language.

• So, second language learning was explained through transfer.

B.
• Transfer theory was replaced by ‘creative construction’ hypothesis in
the mid 1970s.

• This says that one learns a second language by using the same
processes they used for first language, all over again.
C.

• Perhaps the most popular account of second language learning was given
by Chomsky.

• Here, it is believed that we learn language by setting principles and

parameters on the Language Acquisition Device as per the language.

• Therefore, second language learning involves resetting some of these

parameters.
Sociolinguistic
• Studies in this domain focused on the critical contextual facts that
distinguished one bilingual from another:

• Low Vs High status language

• Additive Vs Subtractive bilingualism:

• Additive Bilingualism is the process of learning the target language
while preserving the usage of one’s mother tongue.
• On the other hand, Subtractive Bilingualism is the process of
learning the target language with the intention of replacing one’s
mother tongue.
•
• Full Vs. Partial control of language, etc.
Psycholinguistic
• Psycholinguistics explores the psychological processes responsible for language
use in humans.

• This type of research focused on why some people learned a second language way
better than others.

• Variables like aptitude, motivation, form of instruction etc. are assessed.

• Most importantly, second language learning was understood to be complex in

ways that were thought irrelevant to first language acquisition.
• Psycholinguistic understanding divides Childhood bilingualism into of two
types:

• simultaneous VS successive

• Simultaneous bilingualism refers to a situation where the child starts

leaning both languages simultaneously.

• Successive is when he learns one after the other.

• These two types are different on many variables.

Some important differences

simultaneous successive

• Two languages learnt together • One language learnt after another

• Onset of language learning is ‘early’ • Onset of second language is ‘late’

• Almost always the two languages are • Almost always the second language is
learnt in natural settings, like home, learnt in a tutored environment
peer group etc.
The age factor
• Age is deemed the most crucial factor in dividing the bilingual children into
the two groups.

• The most agreed upon age is 3 years.

• Many researchers have provided support to this claim, from learning strategy
and neurological points of view . (McLaughlin 1978; Long 1990; Hyltenstam &Abrahamsson 2003;
Obler et al 1982; Hahne & Friederici 2001 )

• After age 3, any new language is represented differently in the brain.

• However it is considered to be better to have a continuum, rather than a strict cut off
age.
BFLA
• In order to clear the confusion surrounding when simultaneous turns into
successive, De Houwer (2009) came up with the term Bilingual First Language
Acquisition (BFLA).

• He defined it as , “the development of language in young children who hear two

languages spoken to them from birth”.

• This can be considered a strict definition, but takes care of the starting age of the
two language’s acquisition.

• However, this definition does not exclude the passive bilinguals, who hear two
languages but use only one.
A solution
• From a research perspective, passive bilinguals are difficult to assess.

• In order to understand the finer aspects of simultaneous bilingualism, it is important

to study those children who speak in both of her languages.

• Hence, Grosjean & Li (2013) suggests combining Houwer’s definition with Grosjean’s
definition of bilingualism(2008): ‘the regular use of two or more languages’

• Thus, the new working definition of BFLA can be:

• ‘Concurrent acquisition of two languages in a child who is exposed to them from
birth and uses both regularly in early childhood’.
• Simultaneous bilingualism: no one language is first language, nor is one
more privileged.

• Hence one cannot use first language (L1), second language (L2) in this
case.

• Some researchers also prefer using language A and language α, instead of

language A and B to denote the two languages in such cases.
 Simultaneous learning and its effect
• Studies have found that children simultaneously learning two languages at an
early stage often cannot distinguish between their two languages.

• Almost all studies on infant bilingual language have found that children tend to
‘mix’ components of their two languages at all levels: Phonological, lexical,
phrasal etc.

• scientists have claimed these prove the underlying unitary language system.
Three stage model
• Proposed by Volterra and Taeschner (1978)

• Based on a longitudinal study

• two German Italian simultaneous bilingual girls

• Based in Italy
Stages of acquisition

Source: Müller, N., & Cantone, K. (2009).

• In the learning process through which a child becomes bilingual from early
infancy, three stages can be distinguished:

(1) The child has one lexical system which includes words from both languages
and one syntactic system; sort of ‘fused’ system.

(2) The child distinguishes two different lexicons but applies the same syntactic
rules to both languages;

(3) [about 2.9 to 3 years]: the child has two linguistic codes, differentiated both
in lexicon and in syntax, but each language is exclusively associated with the
person using that language.
Stage I
• At this stage, children have one lexical system that includes words from
both languages.

• A word in one language almost always does not have a corresponding

word in the other language.

• Words from two languages frequently appear together in two-three

word constructions.

• Children at this stage do not use much of sentences.

• Often, children do not consider two corresponding words in two languages,
as corresponding.

• In one case reported, an Italian-German bilingual child used the words la

[‘there’ in Italian] and da [‘there’ in German] to mean different things: la for
visible things and da for invisible things.
• The child Lisa, who lived in Rome, where the father spoke Italian and
mother spoke German.
Lisa: miao miao [while coming from outside and going to her mother]
Mother: wo ist miao? {where is miao?}
Lisa: La miao. {there miao}
Mother : wo ist miao?
[Pulling her mother outside and continuing the conversation]
Lisa: da ist miao. {there is miao}
• Again, Lisa uses da and daki in interesting ways. Da is derived from dare
[IIIP Sg; ‘to give’] and daki is derived from danke [‘thank you’ in German].

• She uses the word ‘daki’ when she wants to thank someone, give
something to someone, or to get something from somebody.
Daki bukh [her mother had just given her a book]
Daki [while giving a pencil to her mother]
Mamma tita daki [she wants her mother to give her the pencil]

• She learnt to use da around 1 year 10 months and used it only to give
something to somebody
Da [offering a sweet to her mother]
• So, at this stage, the child’s speech has only one lexical form.

• Some researchers have called this form of language a “language

system of his own”.

• It is only when the knowledge of the two languages grows and the
child is able to generalize across languages, that she is able to
distinguish between two lexical systems.

• When the child reaches this stage, the child begins to use sentences
in one language.
Stage II
• At this stage the child is able to distinguish words from different
languages, but applies the same syntactic rule to both.

• The child now has corresponding words in both the languages, in the
sense that the same object is indicated by two different words pertaining
to two different languages.

• Significantly, words drawn from two lexicons do not occur together in

construction. However, how they arrive at this stage depends on some
factors that may influence this choice.
• In case of Lisa, she learnt the word occhhiali [‘glasses’] early as her
father wears them. One day, her mother draws a woman wearing
glasses and teaches her the word brillen [‘glasses’ in German]. She
then tells her to show the drawing to father and tell him what it
shows.

Father: cos’e questo? [what is this?]

Lisa: ‘Brillen’ [she repeats ‘Brillen’ many times but never says
‘occhiali’]
Then she points to father’s glasses and says: ‘Occhiali’.
• She repeats the same every time she looks at father’s glasses and
insists on calling them ‘occhiali’ and does not agree to call them
‘brillen’.

• Even after her mother tells her that ‘occhiali di papi’ corresponds to
‘papa’s brillen’

• It takes her a long time to agree that ‘occhiali’ and ‘brillen’ are
essentially the same thing. But she remains strongly influenced by the
context in which she learnt the two words.
Stage III
• At this stage the child speaks two languages differentiated at both
lexical and syntactic level.
• However, each language is associated with the person using that
language: one person—one language phenomena.
• E.g.
ein kleines haus [a small house]
questa e Lisa piccolina [this is Lisa small]
• Only at the end of this stage, when the tendency to categorize people in
terms of their language decreases, can one say that a child is truly
bilingual.

• Bilingual children more often than not, fall in the category of

simultaneous, balanced, compound bilinguals in ideal condition.
• Rate of mixing varies considerably across studies.

• A summary of various studies claimed that the rate of mixing is at 20%-

30% in Stage I, 12%-20% at Stage II and 6%-12% at Stage III and so on.
Though this remains a fact, the explanations for the same is
controversial.
explanations
• Unitary language system
• Mixing possible even in adult speech
• Parents’ linguistic practice
• Context of use
• Incomplete reporting
• Better options in one language
• Structural linguistic factors, like more salient function words in Estonian in Vihman
1985.
• Monolingual children too use overextension. Hence it is not a salient feature of
simultaneous bilingual children only.
• Etc.
Types of strategies
1. One person one language: language depends on the person.

2. One language one environment: language depends on the setting.

3. One language without community support one environment: parents with

different native languages, speak one of these at home and the ambient
language, which is neither of their native language, outside home.

4. Two languages without community support – one environment: where the

child is exposed to two languages from each parent/caregiver and another
outside.
There are other possibilities as well

• Bilingual: parents themselves are bilingual

• Non-native parents: where one parent addresses the child in a second

language, despite an otherwise monolingual setting
Counter to the three stage formula

• Given that there are many types of strategies that lead to successive bilingualism,
the three stage formula has been questioned.

• Later works argues that children are able to differentiate words of the two
languages from early on.

• Genesse (1989): Reason for mixing is not due to lack of equivalent words.

• Cantone (2007): showed that children differ in terms of mixing. Some children mix
only in one language, some don’t mix at all while other mix both.
• Meisel (1989): showed that fused syntactic system may not hold. His study
involved studying syntactically contrasting grammatical systems in German-French
bilinguals. He showed that from the very beginning children acquired these systems
differently.

• Muller et al (2002) : This work looked at learning of verb-second property among

German-Italian bilingual child Carlotta. She could use this language specific
structure from early age.

• Muller et al (2006): investigated language specific subject realization in German –

Italian bilingual child Jan. German has lexically realized subject, whereas Italian has
null subject in majority of cases. The child clearly could differentiate between the
two systems.

• Thus, findings suggest that there is NO fused system, lexically or syntactically in

the initial stages of bilingual development.
The two development hypotheses
• Separate Development Hypothesis: De Houwer, 1990.

• This hypothesis holds that each language develops separately. Several studies have showed
evidence for this (Meisel 1994, 2001; De Houwer 1990, 2009).

• Interdependent development hypothesis: Paradis & Genesee 1996.

• Says that the two languages develop in an interdependent way, thus leading to mixing.
Many studies have found evidence for this too (Dopke 2000; Silva_Corvalan & Montanari
2008; Yip & Matthews 2000, 2007).
Cross linguistic influence (CLI)

• CLI is a common phenomenon in simultaneous bilingualism and interdependent

hypothesis has a ready explanation for the same, through ‘fused’ system.

• However, SDH does not allow CLI.

• So, how does one explain the contradicting evidence?

Three possible explanations

• language dominance: in Yip& Matthews (2007) study, the bilingual child had
Cantonese as dominant over English and hence showed influence of Cantonese
over English.

• Interpretation of data: Mishina-Mori (2005) finds proof of both SDH and CLI between
Japanese and English. But the same data was interpreted as SDH only by De
Houwer.

• Some domains are more vulnerable for CLI while others are not.
Language as composed of subsystems?

• Muller (2009) suggests that languages need not be seen as a ‘single system’ but
rather as a system with many subsystems.

• Hence, languages can develop separately and still influence one another, at
various sub-system levels.

• In fact, simultaneous bilingualism allows separation of some grammatical aspects,

while keeping other domains open for cross linguistic influence.
Hulk and Muller (2000)
• This detailed study proposes that:
• Linguistic properties or grammatical aspects/structures can predict CLI
• Language dominance/preference may not .

• These grammatical conditions are:

1. The vulnerable grammatical phenomenon is an interface property, e.g.

interface between syntax and pragmatics
2. The surface strings of the two languages are similar for the expression of
this vulnerable grammatical property. Language A allows one option while
language B allows two options.
example
• Dislocated sentences, which are syntactic structures that serve the pragmatic
function of foregrounding or backgrounding of sentence parts. This is common in
French.

• French-English bilingual children use more dislocations in their English than

monolingual English speaking children.

• Here the interface is between syntax and pragmatics, where a syntactic function
has a pragmatic function and between French and English, there are overlap
between the languages on the expression of the same.

• Hence CLI is seen.

Some other theoretical points of
interest
• Bilingual acquisition problems

• Balanced/unbalanced development

• Input problem
Problem of bilingual acquisition
• Question: How does the child develop his grammar of two languages, given the
sparse input?

• This is a problem even in monolingual acquisition, bilingual scenario just makes it

harder.

• This problem has been talked about from generative, emergentist and other
theoretical perspectives.

• In BFLA, for example, “facts are at ;east twice as complex”.

complexity

• Quantity: in an idealized case, where we can assume balanced input from two
languages, the child hears half as much input as the corresponding monolingual
child. In more realistic cases, the input will not be balanced. This may lead to
development of the weaker language later.

• Quality: even in case of a monolingual child, a given sample input is compatible

with numerous underlying grammars. This only gets compounded in case of a
bilingual child.

• So, for bilingual children, Poverty of stimulus can be reframed as Poverty of the
Dual Stimulus.
Balanced Vs unbalanced development

• In an ideal scenario, the input would be 50% in each language.

• But that is not realistic. Often there is no balance between the two language’s
input.

• This may result in unbalanced development in the two languages.

• The language faculty is often thought to be fully capable of handling the challenges
of input (like monolingual children), but in reality, unbalanced bilingualism is a
possibility.
Input effect

• It has been argued that in case of bilingual acquisition, input plays a larger role
than that of monolingual children.

• Hence it is necessary to estimate the same.

• For example, the Singapore English may show a lot of Chinese influence. But is it
due to the way Singapore English is spoken or due to unbalanced input of the two
languages in childhood?
SUCCESSIVE BILINGUALISM
Some differences

• Opposed to simultaneous bilingualism .

• Here, there is a first language and there is a second language.

• The first language is the native language, language of home, the dominant,
more frequently used and stronger language.

• The second language is less dominant, less frequently used and weaker
too.
• Technically successive bilingualism includes both children and adult
learners.

• But there are significant differences between the two groups in terms of
speed and accuracy of outcome.

• Hence, the issues related to successive bilingualism or second language

acquisition (SLA) has ‘age’ as an important issue.
AGE
Cognitive and neural basis of learning
languages: CPH

• Lenneberg (1967) proposed that automatic acquisition of language in natural

settings can take place only within a particular time window: 2 years to puberty.

• This idea was derived from first language acquisition research and applied to SLA as
well.

• Since language learning is an innate faculty, it should have a sensitive time window
to learn it. Just as songbirds cannot learn to sing, if they are not exposed to the
same within a particular time frame after birth.

• This period was called Critical Period and the theory Critical Period Hypothesis
(CPH).
• After this period language learning become slow and hence is less successful.

• The reason :

• constraints of brain development.

• Brain maturation and lateralization
• The end point of CPH signals puberty, when brain lateralization was thought to be
complete.
Experimental studies
• Initially CPH appeared tenable
• By 1980’s, however, questions started to emerge.

• Studies compared children and adult second language learners on learning speed
and ultimate attainment of second language.

• One of the first such studies was carried out by Snow and Hoefnagel-Höhle (1978)
• Subjects: native speakers of English who spent a year in Netherlands learning Dutch
• Results: older children (12-15 yrs) had a faster rate of learning than younger (3-5,
6-7, 8-10).

• This was one of the first studies to counter the claim that older learners donot learn
as well as younger ones.
• Similarly,
• One important aspect of Lenneberg’s claim was brain lateralization.

• However, later studies found

• Lateralization completes in children much before puberty

• Hence the timeline needs to revisited
Johnson & Newport (1989)
• This study was carried out on Chinese and Korean immigrants in US
• Critical variable: age of arrival in US
• Other factors: duration of stay, motivation, cultural identification

• Task: grammaticality judgment

• E.g.
• The farmer bought two pig at the market
• The bat flewed into our attic last night
• Result:

• There was a clear distinction in terms of age and performance

• Those who arrived before age 16, performance was correlated with the
number years spent in US.

• For those who arrived after age 16: performance was varied and was
found to be correlated with other factors like motivation etc (social
variables)
• Johnson & Newport’s findings brought in new questions to CPH.

• 1. the cut off age may not be fixed.

• 2. there are factors other than age that can contribute to learning.

• 3. ‘less is more’ hypothesis: less well developed cognitive capacity ‘helps’ children
learn better.

• Children are not ‘overwhelmed’ by a new language as they do not overanalyse. They
perform only simple computations to the incoming stimuli and this helps in learning.

• Older learners may suffer more from the negative transfer while learning a new language.
entrenchment
• Another way to look at the CPH effect is through the idea of ‘entrenchment’.
(Hernandez, Li & MacWhinney 2005).

• This hypothesis says that the more the L1 gets established in the brain, the more
‘entrenched’ it becomes in the system, the more resistant the system will be toward
a new language representation.

• Generalizations have already been formed.

• Entrenchment leads to stable neural systems in terms of learned patterns (of L1).

• Before entrenchment, children can easily give up generalizations and are more
eager to learn new things, including language.
Unified competition model
• MacWhinney’s 2012 model tries to account for CPH, taking into account neural,
cognitive and social variables.

• Proposes ‘risk factors’ of language learning.

• Negative transfer
• Entrenchment
• Parasitism on L1 (for learning L2, leading to negative transfer)
• Mismatched connectivity (incorrect connections between processing areas in the brain)
• Social isolation.

• In effect, it is a dynamic interplay between competing languages and their

connection to other factors are responsible for children learning L2 better.
INTERACTION
• The Interactionist hypothesis has its roots in Stephen Krashen’s
(1977/1980) theory on similar lines.

• Subconscious process of acquisition ( as opposed to learning) occurs when

the learner is focussed on meaning
• Receives adequate comprehensible input
• Importance of ‘simple codes’
• Production plays no direct role in acquisition
• Interactions involving naturalistic child and adult learners are important
The Interactionist Hypothesis:

• Associated with Michael Long’s report (1980) on input and interactional

features of native speaker (NS)-non-native speaker (NNS)(Japanese)
interview type situations.
• The hypothesis states:

• Comprehensible input is necessary for L2 acquisition

• Modifications to the interactional structure of conversation, which takes

place in the process of negotiating a communication problem, help to
make input comprehensible to an L2 learner.
• Taking the conversation as baseline data, Long’s report put forward some
important pointers:

• Input features: purely linguistic features such as vocabulary, sentence

complexity etc.

• Interactional features: clarification requests, confirmation check, self

repetitions and so on.

• Modifications to the interactional structures can prove to be critical to make

input comprehensible.
• Teri Pica’s (1987) contribution:

• Experimental designs to test the claims of Interaction Hypothesis. (Pica, Young &
Daughty 1986; Pica 1989).

• Support the hypothesis in broad terms.

• Pica also extended the interaction hypothesis in one major way.

• Emphasised the importance of social relationships between participants as

a determinant of interactions.

• Learners and interlocutors are have unequal status in terms of

knowledge of the language.

• They should behave like equivalents as conversation participants,

ensuring success of the interaction.
• More recently,

• Oliver (1998):
• checked if and how children negotiated for meaning,
• the strategies that they used, and
• compared these to the interactions of adult learners .

• found that children negotiate for meaning, using a wide range of strategies
• clarification requests,
• confirmation checks,
• comprehension checks and
• repetitions.

• children use fewer comprehension checks than for adults.

• Long (1996) updated the Interaction Hypothesis.

• Pointed out: children need not only positive evidence – what is possible in L2 but
also negative evidence --- what is not possible in L2.

• These findings have been worked into pedagogical strategies over time.
Studies combining age and interaction
methods
• Differences have been found in the L2 Ultimate Attainment of younger and older
child L2 learners based on longitudinal studies.
• Differences in UA may be accounted for by the language preferences of the two
groups which emerged over time.

• Jia and Aaronson (2003):

• Longitudinal study over three years in an English as Second Language setting

• Chinese L1 children: six young (ages 5-9) and four adolescents (12-16).
• differences in UA may be accounted for by the language preferences of the two groups
which emerged over time.
• While the younger children switched their preference to English in the first year, the older
learners maintained a preference for Chinese even after three years.
• Similarly,

• Foreign Language settings for children who began L2 learning at different

ages have shown that
• after the same hours of instruction,
• Late beginners showed advantages over those who started earlier.

• The amount of input and practice that the children were exposed to in FL
setting may be one reason for this.
• Thus, quality of input and not age seems factor.

• (García Mayo & García Lecumberri, 2003 ;Myles & Mitchell, 2012; Muñoz, 2006, 2006b;
Nikolov & Mihaljević Djigunović, 2006, 2011; Unsworth, de Bot, Persson, & Prins, 2012)
Different instructional settings and types of learners

• different instructional settings have distinct Language learning

opportunities

• FL Vs SL settings

• Foreign language setting L2 as a foreign language typically in a

classroom
• no access to the same outside the classroom.

• L2 as a second language the access to the language outside classroom.

• Differential strategies to address the FL condition

• programs like Content Based Instruction, theme-based language teaching and

CLIL.

• Initially, content based teaching mainly involved teaching grammatical categories

etc., but over time it included a context through which the language was to be
taught.

• Thus, based on a topic, the learner was immersed in learning so that their learning
is not out of context of real use. This way it is related to theme-based learning.
• Content and language integrated learning [CLIL] is now popular worldwide as a tool.
• It is “an educational approach where curricular content is taught through the medium of a
foreign language, typically to students participating in some form of mainstream
education at the primary, secondary, or tertiary level”.

• As more schools implement CLIL, research undertaken in this setting has begun to
emerge.
• Results:
• type of interaction the learners engaged in varied according to instructional setting (CLIL vs
mainstream):
• CLIL learners produced fewer negotiation strategies than mainstream learners;
• CLIL learners used L1 to a lesser extent than mainstream learners.
• CLIL learners usually receive more hours of instruction in the TL than mainstream learners
• They are purported to receive more meaningful input that is, resulting in improved TL proficiency
• t CLIL programs allow learners to assess themselves
• (Azkarai and Imaz Agirre 2016; Coyle, 2007;
Nikolov 2016)
• Immersion

• immersion programs are well established (Lasagabaster & Sierra, 2010).

• Unlike CLIL, in immersion settings, it is usually a local language that is taught

• the teachers are often bilingual, while in CLIL settings this is not always the case

• the starting age in immersion settings is usually earlier than for CLIL.

• concerned the types of input and feedback that maximize opportunities for L2 development.

• learners developed their metalinguistic awareness and produced more target-like language.
 • Variation within immersion program:

• patterns of interactional feedback, uptake, and repairs in French and

Japanese for immersion learners in 4th and 5th grades
• French students produced more errors than the Japanese learners
• there was a greater level of uptake by the Japanese than the French
learners
(Lyster and Mori
2006)

• important predictors within the immersion method:

• the characteristics of the learners
• the instructional context.
 Socio-cultural perspective and child SLA research

• explored the patterns of interaction, interactional characteristics, such as turn-taking or topic

development, and self-evaluations
(Swain, 1998; Swain & Lapkin, 1998; Butler and Zeng (2014,
2015)

• E.g.
• Chinese EFL learners in 4th and 6th grades in task-based interaction.
• 4th graders showed less engagement,
• their patterns of interaction were not stable across tasks.
• In contrast the 6th graders interacted with a high degree of mutuality (i.e. collaborative patterns),
• showed greater engagement with extended topic sequences
• different functional types of utterances.
• Interestingly, they rated their proficiency in their L2 (English) lower than did the 4th graders.
 Children as researchers

• Recently, Pinter (2014) claimed it necessary for children to be part of research, that
they should have a more active role in it, and propose that researchers should
consider children as co-researchers.

• Research in this line uses questionnaires to assess the children’s own viewpoint of
their learning situation, motivation, change in learning strategies [as they grow
older] etc.

• The general finding from such work is that children are capable of reflecting on their
own development.
ADULT SLA
• Second language acquisition [SLA] in adults have been investigated from formal and
cognitive approaches that are based in a grammatical or psychological theory of
language.
•
• There are also other domains like:
• Research on aptitude
• Individual differences
• Motivation and the social factors that affect SLA, that is, the acquisition process from a learner’s
perspective.

• For now, we will discuss only the formal and cognitive approaches.

• The main issues with adult SLA, like childhood SLA also center around the topics of age
and input.
• some recent findings contradicting CPH for adult L2 learners:

• First, Comparison between early and late learners are not viable as input (quantity
and quality) varies.

• Secondly, on theoretical grounds, it is argued that native-like attainment is possible

for some learners with respect to some modules of the grammar, and even
individual properties within modules.

• E.g. no critical period for the acquisition of phrasal semantics

• But bottleneck expected with:
• functional morphology
• syntax-discourse interface
(Montrul & Slabakova 2003; Sorace, 2011; Flege 2009; Montrul, 2009; Kim and Goodall 2011).
Another serious counter to CPH is known as ‘The Bilingual Turn’.

• Bilinguals should no longer be compared to monolingual controls in the whole of the

L2A research,
• but particularly so in the critical period research.

[Ortega, 2009; Cook (2008) and Singleton

(2003)]

• neuroscience data show the bilingual experience has an effect on neural pathways,
different from monolinguals.
Input
all the comprehensible primary linguistic data that learners are exposed to.
• Recent studies have pointed out the effect of input variable on language
acquisition

• the more variability/ambiguity in the input there is, the longer it will take the
learner to converge on the adult grammar.
• A study on existing dialectal differences in Spanish to test a situation that they cannot be
created experimentally.

• Chilean Spanish and Mexican Spanish differ in phonetic realization of plural morphology.

• In Mexican Spanish, plural is overtly realized as [s] on nouns, adjectives and determiners.

• Chilean Spanish (subject to sociolinguistic variation) this piece of inflectional morphology

undergoes a regular process of lenition to aspiration or to nothing. Plural morphology is not
completely absent in Chilean Spanish, but it is rendered unreliable as linguistic evidence,
being pronounced about 50% of the time.

• Both younger and older Mexican children were significantly more accurate than their
Chilean counterparts.
( Miller and Schmitt 2010)
Complex adaptive system

• Within these approaches, language is treated as a complex adaptive system involving

multiple agents.

• The system is adaptive in the sense that speakers’ behavior is based on their past
experience.

• The structures of language emerge from interacting patterns of experience, social

interaction, and general cognitive processes.

• (Filipovich & Hawkins 2018) more on this

later
 Processing based studies
• Processing differences between monolingual native speakers and bilingual or
multilingual L2 users, together with reliable and copious input, are emerging as
the most powerful explanations of L1-L2 competence differences.

• The views on L2 processing divide into two main positions largely as follows:

Processing mechanisms in the second language are essentially the same as in the
first language, but the pressures of bilingualism can lead to apparent L1-L2
differences. Hence the difference is quantitative and not qualitative.
Shallow Structure Hypothesis (Clahsen & Felser, 2006) maintain that there are
qualitative differences between L1 and L2 users.

• The shallow processing [that depends more on lexical knowledge, pragmatic routines,
basic argument structure etc but lacks finer structural details], characteristic of
native processing some of the time, is the only type of processing available to L2
users.

• Semantic processing is favored rather than deep knowledge of syntactic rules. Hence
the learners essentially use two different techniques of processing in L1 Vs L2.
• However, low-educated, low-reading-span or non-proficient native speakers also
resolve to using semantic-based processing most of the time.

• Hence it is a matter of exposure than whether it is L1 or L2.

• Study involving Greek-English bilinguals with either naturalistic or classroom

exposure to English and found that their naturalistic learners (but not the
classroom learners) were indeed processing the intermediate traces [complex
syntactic processes] like native speakers.

(Indefrey, 2006; Pliatsikas and

Marinis, 2012)
Conclusion
• Factors such as type of exposure (naturalistic versus classroom),
• experience with complex language constructions,
• language proficiency can probably account for a good portion of the
recognized variation between L1 and L2 processing and, thus, learning.
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