LINGUIST List 22.3134 Fri Aug 05 2011 Review: Applied Ling; Cognitive Sci; Lang Acq: Kail & Hickmann (2010) Editor for this issue: Rajiv Rao <rajivlinguistlist.org> This LINGUIST List issue is a review of a book published by one of our supporting publishers, commissioned by our book review editorial staff. We welcome discussion of this book review on the list, and particularly invite the author(s) or editor(s) of this book to join in. If you are interested in reviewing a book for LINGUIST, look for the most recent posting with the subject "Reviews: AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW", and follow the instructions at the top of the message. You can also contact the book review staff directly. Directory         1.     Ursula Kania , Language Acquisition across Linguistic and Cognitive Systems Message 1: Language Acquisition across Linguistic and Cognitive Systems Date: 05-Aug-2011 From: Ursula Kania <kaniauni-leipzig.de> Subject: Language Acquisition across Linguistic and Cognitive Systems E-mail this message to a friend Discuss this message Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/22/22-338.html EDITORS: Kail, Michèle and Hickmann, Maya TITLE: Language Acquisition across Linguistic and Cognitive Systems SERIES TITLE: Language Acquisition and Language Disorders 52 PUBLISHER: John Benjamins YEAR: 2010 Ursula Kania, English Department, University of Leipzig (Germany) SUMMARY During the last two decades, various disciplines of the cognitive sciences have produced numerous contributions to the study of language acquisition which are based on a variety of theoretical frameworks, and use different methods as well as data from many different languages. The edited volume under review contains 17 individual contributions with the aim of bringing together these different strands of research focusing on linguistic as well as cognitive determinants in the acquisition process. Included are articles on (typical as well as atypical) first language acquisition, early bilingualism and second language acquisition. The volume is the newest title in the series 'Language Acquisition and Language Disorders'. As the editors point out, a first version of all chapters previously appeared in Kaye, Fayol & Hickmann (2008) but all contributions have been revised and updated for the current volume. The book is aimed primarily at researchers and students in the field of language acquisition, but the editors note that teachers, clinicians and parents may also find this book of interest. The book is divided into three parts: PART I ('Emergence and dynamics of language acquisition and disorders', Chapters 1-4) offers an introduction to the topic (the two major theoretical frameworks and modelling techniques) and presents findings on the bootstrapping question and language disorders. PART II ('First language acquisition: Universals and diversity', Chapters 5-11) starts out with an introduction to a cross-linguistic perspective, and then presents and discusses findings on universal and language-specific factors in language acquisition. Part III ('Bilingualism and second language acquisition: A multidisciplinary perspective', Chapters 12-17) broadens the scope by focusing on (early versus late) bilingualism and second language learning. PART I Chapter 1, 'A tale of two paradigms', by Brian MacWhinney, contrasts two major theoretical frameworks, i.e. Chomsky's Universal Grammar (UG) and the emergentist approach, focusing on eight core questions in which the two frameworks diverge. UG is also referred to as 'linguistic nativism' since this approach postulates that some aspects of grammar cannot be learned from the input (which is thought to be impoverished) and must therefore be hard-wired in a language-specific faculty in the brain. In contrast to this, the emergentist view holds that language relies on general cognitive abilities and that children can learn language on the basis of their rich linguistic environment using general learning strategies. In the second part of his chapter, MacWhinney elaborates on the logic of emergentist approaches and links the recent paradigm shift towards emergentism to advances in fields like biology and the availability of new empirical methods like the analysis of CHILDES-corpora, imaging techniques, and modelling. In Chapter 2, 'Dynamic systems methods in the study of language acquisition', Paul van Geert offers insights into how language acquisition can be seen and modelled as a dynamic system. In the first part of the chapter, the author provides a short introduction to dynamic systems theory and its possible contribution to research in language development. Essentially, a dynamic systems approach to language acquisition views language as a complex, emergent system with sets of interacting variables, whose characteristics can be modelled in order to describe and explain developmental changes. In the second part, van Geert discusses a study that uses empirical as well as simulated data to describe the developmental trajectory from 1 to 3 word utterances in French child speech. In Chapter 3, 'Early bootstrapping of syntactic acquisition', Anne Christophe, Séverine Millotte, Perrinne Brusini and Elodie Cauvet address the so-called bootstrapping question, i.e. if/how far children are able to use their knowledge in one domain (e.g. phonology) to simplify the tasks they face in another domain (e.g. syntax). They present experimental data focusing on the interaction of phrasal prosody and function words in the early acquisition of French, concluding that children: 1. use their perception of prosodic units and function words to assign a syntactic category to content words; and 2. can subsequently make use of syntactic context to infer something about the meaning and the grammatical category of unknown words. The fourth and final chapter of the first part, 'Language acquisition in developmental disorders', by Michael S. C. Thomas, deals with language development in atypical populations, focusing on Williams Syndrome (WS) and SLI (Specific Language Impairment). In Thomas' view, neurogenetic disorders (like WS) and disorders defined on the basis of behavioural deficits (like SLI) should not be characterised in terms of a normal system with certain components missing or malfunctioning. Rather, the linguistic behaviour of individuals suffering from such conditions should be seen as resulting from different sets of constraints under which the adaptive language learning system operates. Observed language profiles may thus result from the use of alternative pathways (redundancy, observed in, for example, vocabulary acquisition in WS) and compensation strategies (in SLI, where the declarative memory system tries to compensate for impairment in the procedural memory system, for example, in the learning of inflections). PART II Elena Lieven's chapter, 'Language Development in a cross-linguistic context', provides an overview of the advances in this field during the last two decades and concludes that cross-linguistic research is absolutely necessary in order to develop psychologically plausible accounts of language development, since successful language learning of typologically diverse languages in different communicative environments has to be accounted for. Chapter 6, 'A typological approach to first language acquisition', by Wolfgang U. Dressler argues for the comparison of the acquisition of (groups of) similar languages, categorised by ordering typology. Presenting results from the 'Cross-linguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition', Dressler shows how universal, typological and language-specific properties exert an influence on the acquisition process in the domain of morphology. Chapter 7, 'Linguistic relativity in first language acquisition: Spatial language and cognition', by Maya Hickmann, reports on a number of studies she and her collaborators conducted on children's and adults' expression of (path and manner of) motion in French and English. While there is an overall increase in semantic density with age, English (a satellite-framed language) also exhibits a higher semantic density relative to French (a verb-framed language) in all age-groups, suggesting that language specific and general cognitive factors interact to shape development. However, it remains to be seen whether this also has consequences for non-linguistic representations of motion events. Chapter 8 also deals with linguistic relativity, but presents findings that support the opposite (i.e. universalistic) view. The author Csaba Pléh reports 'On the importance of goals in child language: Acquisition and impairment data from Hungarian'. He draws on two sets of findings (from normal subjects and patients with WS acquiring Hungarian) that provide support for the universalistic approach, according to which there are general cognitive biases (e.g. towards the expression of goals) that influence the organisation of spatial language. Chapter 9, 'Promoting patients in narrative discourse: A developmental perspective', by Harriet Jisa, Florence Chenu, Gabriella Fekete and Hayat Omar, addresses the question of how children acquiring a variety of languages (Amharic, English, French, Hungarian) develop/use the ability to switch perspectives in narrative productions, indicated by their marking of participant roles. The findings suggest that children start using these different forms (for the same function) at roughly the same age in all languages, despite the fact that there are different formal options to topicalise patients in the four languages. The next contribution ('On-line grammaticality judgments: A comparative study of French and Portuguese', Chapter 10) aims at specifying a possible interaction between language-specific and universal constraints. The authors, Michèle Kail, Armanda Costa and Isabel Hub Faria, present results of an experimental study conducted with French and Portuguese monolinguals. Overall, performance improves with age, and late grammatical violations are detected more quickly than early ones. However, intraphrasal violations are detected more rapidly than interphrasal violations in French, while the Portuguese results show the opposite pattern. Interpreted within a Competition Model framework, this could be due to the fact that relevant morphological information is not phonologically salient in Portuguese (i.e. low cue perceptibility). It is thus suggested that universal constraints and language-specific properties interact to shape on-line processing and the detection of violations. Chapter 11, written by the late Clive Perdue, summarises and discusses research addressing 'The expression of finiteness by L1 and L2 learners of Dutch, French, and German'. While there are similarities in the performance of L1 and L2 learners, findings suggest that children inevitably acquire M(orphological)-finiteness with great speed and relative ease, while adult learners (like children) learn ways of expressing S(emantic)-finiteness, but (unlike children) may never master M-finiteness. Since Perdue includes L2 learners in his cross-linguistic comparison, this chapter serves as a bridge between PART II (with a focus on cross-linguistic research) and PART III (which includes contributions on bilingualism and second language learning). PART III Chapter 12, 'Age of onset in successive acquisition of bilingualism: Effects on grammatical development', by Jürgen M. Meisel, serves both as an introduction to and an evaluation of the differences between first and second language acquisition, focusing on the age factor and the notion of a critical period. Adopting the maturation hypothesis, incomplete L2 development is explained by the assumption that the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) that guides L1 development is not fully accessible to L2 learners because of specific constraints that are caused by neural maturation. While Meisel assumes that there is a ''cluster of sensitive periods'' (225) affecting different areas of grammar, rather than one single critical period, he argues that critical changes happen earlier than is commonly assumed (at 3;6-4 years and again at 6-7), making a very young age of acquisition the most crucial factor for ultimate attainment. Chapter 13, 'The development of person-number verbal morphology in different types of learners', by Suzanne Schlyter, draws on analyses of spontaneous spoken and written data obtained from adult Swedish learners of French and bilingual Swedish-French children. Comparisons between those groups show that there are marked differences between L1 and L2 development concerning the speed and course of development. Furthermore, modality-specific characteristics exert an influence; e.g. since there is a transparent, one-to-one mapping of form and function in the written marking of 3rd person plural in French (-nt), it is mastered earlier than the same marking (that has different phonological realisations) in spoken French. If and how developmental patterns observed in L1 and L2 learners can be modelled is the focus of Chapter 14, 'Re-thinking the bilingual interactive-activation model from a developmental perspective (BIA-d)'. The authors (Jonathan Grainger, Katherine Midgley and Philip J. Holcomb) offer a brief introduction to the model, which assumes that word recognition in bilinguals is initially language-nonselective and that representations in the non-target language have to be inhibited top-down. Furthermore, L1 and L2 lexical representations are thought to be part of a ''single lateral inhibitory network'' (275). This contrasts with claims on lexical processing in second language learners made by the revised hierarchical model (RHM, Kroll & Stewart 1994), which assumes that L1 and L2 are linked through excitatory connections between translation cognates. A developmental version of the BIA is introduced (BIA-d), which aims to integrate the increasing proficiency of late L2 learners, thus offering a coherent framework that unites the RHM and the BIA and paves the way for more dynamic models of language learning. In Chapter 15, 'Foreign language vocabulary learning: Word-type effects during the labelling stage', Annette M. B. de Groot and Rosanne C. L. van den Brink review the results of twelve experimental studies that focus on the influence of a variety of factors on the acquisition and long-term retention of foreign-language (FL) words. Dutch participants were taught new words via paired-associate-learning materials (picture-word and/or word-word pairs) and recall scores were obtained in tests between training sessions and in a delayed recall test (one week later). Concreteness, typicality and cognate status of the FL words led to better learning and higher retention compared to abstract, non-typical and non-cognate items, which has implications for the manner and frequency with which FL words should be presented in the FL classroom. Chapter 16, by Christophe Pallier, very briefly summarises research on 'Cerebral imaging and individual differences in language learning'. Studies have shown that there seem to be ''cerebral correlates of abilities involved in second language acquisition'' (303). However, the exact nature of those correlates and their development with increasing proficiency of language learners remain as areas to be explored in future work. In Chapter 17, 'The cognitive neuroscience of second language acquisition and bilingualism: Factors that matter in L2 acquisition -- A neuro-cognitive perspective', Susanne Reiterer summarises findings from brain imaging studies in light of biological, psychological, and socio-linguistic factors that lead to individual differences in L2 acquisition. EVALUATION In their introduction, the editors state that ''[t]he general aim of the volume is to provide multidisciplinary and comparative perspectives on language acquisition concerning multiple and variable factors of typical and atypical development within a large age range as well as across languages and learners'' (3). Considering the large number and variety of contributions, this general aim has certainly been met. However, this heterogeneity concerning, for example, theoretical background and methodology, also has one (potential) drawback; since a descriptive linguist may not know much about brain imaging and a cognitive psychologist might not be familiar with concepts from language typology, short but comprehensive introductions are needed in order to make all contributions accessible and to encourage readers to indeed take a multidisciplinary perspective instead of just focusing on contributions from their own field. Most of the chapters solve the task quite well but some simply do not offer enough background information to enable the reader to judge the value of the research presented (e.g. Chapter 16). Apart from this, all contributions require a considerable amount of background knowledge concerning basic linguistic and psychological terminology. Therefore, especially teachers and parents may only find a small part of this publication accessible and teachers may be disappointed to find out that only Chapter 15 provides some implications at a practical level. Nonetheless, for the major part of the intended audience (i.e. researchers working in the field of language acquisition), this edited volume is very valuable. As with most edited volumes, the contributions are of mixed quality, but overall, this publication succeeds in summarising and discussing the most prominent strands of recent, ongoing and possible future research in language acquisition. Apart from the shift towards emergentist approaches outlined by MacWhinney (Chapter 1), the book mirrors some of the most important recent developments in the field, for example, the use of modelling (Chapters 2, 3, 4) and brain imaging techniques (Chapters 4, 16, 17), as well as an increase in research from a cross-linguistic perspective (Chapters 5-11). Furthermore, the search for 'converging evidence' is reflected in an increased use of combinations of methods (e.g. corpus data and modelling (Chapter 2)) and the attempt to integrate findings from atypical populations, bilinguals and second language learners into a more comprehensive account of language development (e.g. Chapter 14, in which the authors outline a model that bridges the 'gap' between second language and bilingual language learners). The inclusion of these contributions is one of the great merits of the book, since it is in these cases that the volume truly succeeds in ''bring[ing] together different strands of research'' (1). There are still many aspects that require further research and nearly all contributions offer interesting suggestions in this respect. Apart from that, there are striking omissions that reflect areas of neglect in past and present research. For example, the index of languages shows a strong bias towards Indo-European languages (especially English, French and German) and indicates that the focus of (most) cross-linguistic research is still rather narrow. All in all, the volume 'Language Acquisition across Linguistic and Cognitive Systems' offers a very wide and interesting sample of recent contributions to the study of language acquisition and will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on language acquisition in various fields of cognitive science. REFERENCES Kaye, Michèle, Michel Fayol & Hickmann, Maya (eds.). 2008. Apprentissage des langue. Paris: CNRS Editions. Kroll, Judith F. & Stewart, Erika. 1994. Category interference in translation and picture naming: Evidence for asymmetric connections between bilingual memory representations. Journal of Memory and Language 33. 149-174. ABOUT THE REVIEWER Ursula Kania (BA/MA) is a research assistant and PhD student at the University of Leipzig, Germany. She teaches undergraduate courses in (synchronic and diachronic) English linguistics. Her main research interests are construction grammar and usage-based approaches to first and second language acquisition. She is a member of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association (GCLA/DGKL) and the International Association for the Study of Child Language (IASCL). Her PhD project is entitled 'The L1-Acquisition of (non)canonical polar question constructions in English'. Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 05-Aug-2011       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.