LINGUIST List 5.510

Tue 03 May 1994

Qs: PC software, Language Acquisition, MAC software

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1. Marta Carulla, specification of my question
2. , Query: Books on Cross-linguistic Language Acquisition
3. , Query: Some things that don't make sense
4. Dr Judy L Delin, Mac Linguistics Software

Recently there has been a query on the list concerning Chinese software
for the MAC. I am very interested in also knowing what software is available
for PC.
If this issue has not been on the list before, I will, of course, put a
summary on the list of all the information received.

Thank you

Marta Carulla
Facultat de Traduccio
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
e-mail: carullaupf.es

Could anybody recommend some books--or survey or other
important articles--on the topic of language acquisition
from a cross-linguistic perspective. That is, I am
after the question of the extent to which the language
being learned influences the way that the learning itself
takes place. To put this in context, I am looking for
arguments for the view that language is largely the way
it is because of the way it was before, i.e., that the
language learner is heavily weighed down by the burden
of history. This is intended, among other things, to
explain drift and such remarkable facts as the persistence
of the same basic types of syntax in large groups of
genetically related languages (e.g., Western Austronesian).

Please send replies to me and I will post a summary.

I am wondering if anybody knows of any explanations that have
proposed--or have any ideas--regarding the following apparent
contradictions implicit in some widely held ideas:

(a) There is all that research that says that infants can
hear all the possible adult phonological distinctions, even
those which are irrelevant to the language they are exposed
to, but it is also widely held that sound change arises
because children do not learn all the adult distinction. Does
this mean that children in some parts of the US could perfectly
well hear the distinction between _cot_ and _caught_ but did
not choose to make it and then lost the ability to hear it?
And if so what is the age at which a child loses the ability to
hear the distinctions which it has not acquired EVEN THOUGH
adults in his/her community are making the distinction all
the time?

(b) Language change is supposed to be the same everywhere
(since the laws of language are all the same for all humans),
yet certain changes seem to occur only in certain areas
(e.g., the development of rich tonal systems from consonantal
distinctions). How is this explained?

(c) Some features of a language are supposed to be marked
and others unmarked. Why then are there features which
appear to be marked in some languages and unmarked in
others? I have in mind, for example, the click consonants?
If they are unmarked, why are they no found all over
the earth? And if they are marked, why are they so darn
frequent in the languages in which they do occur?

We have a small (one person, one year) grant to develop integrated linguistics
teaching software for a mid-range Macintosh, and are keen to use existing
Mac-based software as much as possible. We are aware of a fair amount of
software already, but there is a lot out there---especially in-house
productions that may not be widely known. I would be very grateful for
information on software for teaching and learning in whatever area of
linguistic study that we might be able to look at and consider for
possible inclusion in a workbench for linguistics. This may be a FAQ, but
I would like the information to be as up to date as possible, which is
why I am asking again. There may be a lot of interest: we will willingly
summarise to the net.

We have some funds for buying in likely-looking software, so don"t hesitate
to get in touch if you are selling some! We can also get things via gopher,
ftp, mosaic, or whatever.

Many thanks in advance

Judy Delin, Lecturer in Language and Linguistics, University of Stirling
Stirling FK9 4LA UK Tel +44 (0)786 467974, 466086