Questions tagged [language-acquisition]
The study of language learning, especially the processes by which first languages are learned by children.
156 questions
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Does an internationally adopted child have an advantage when acquiring their original native language?
This question is mainly a reference request. I will use the term first native language for the language of the adoptee's birth region and second native language for the language of their adoption ...
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Is there a word order that is more natural for the brain development?
I know this is a totally subjective experience, and it doesn't tell much, but I have several children, and they all used the verb first when learning how to combine words. Their sentences looked like &...
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Do second language learners, at times, perceive the language to be acquired as more quiet or more difficult to hear when uttered, volume independent?
Has any person experienced the perceived lowering of volume or difficulty in hearing (perception of increased noise, for example) when attempting to listen to a second language? Is the effect ...
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Which papers exemplify the attrition of the L1 in the interface of language modules?
I’m intending to write my BA thesis on language attrition and I have a problem finding info. So I’m looking for papers that exemplify the attrition of the L1 in the interface of language modules (...
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I'm having trouble understanding chomskyan linguistics
ok so I'm trying to understand the argument for an innate language faculty, and specifically Chomsky's opposition to the behaviorist model of language acquisition. Behaviorists thought that language ...
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How do Latin American Spanish speakers acquire vosotros forms?
In travels throughout Latin America, during which I spoke Spanish learned in Spain, local people had no problem understanding my use of vosotros forms even if they lived in very isolated rural areas ...
user41876
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What is the reason for learning vocabulary without understanding the concept behind it
I've recently had a discussion with a friend who said that he believes that putting labels on things kills understanding. Meaning if a person learns a name for something before they learn what it ...
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When is the telegraphic stage in English?
If you Google "telegraphic speech," many lay articles (1, 2, and the APA dictionary) mention an approximate age range of 18-24/30 months for the production of telegraphic speech.
However, I ...
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Multiple-characters vocabulary acquisition by L1 Japanese/Chinese
I am looking for any evidence/reference on how L1 Japanese or L1 Chinese people acquire their multiple hanzi/kanji vocabulary. Take as simple as 折り畳み/折叠 (to fold). Words like 食べる/吃 and 飲む/喝 are not ...
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Is the rarity of dental sounds explained by babies not immediately having teeth?
Dental consonants, which involve the corona of the tongue contacting the teeth (typically the upper teeth) are known to be rare throughout the world’s languages. More specifically, phonemic ...
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Controversy & Debate in SLA: Can I ever get concrete takeaways?
I learned Mandarin in high school and later in life (now) started becoming interested in how I was able to acquire it, i.e., the study of SLA.
My goal: As of now, I hope to have concrete strategies ...
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Is Influence of Substratum's phonology biological? [closed]
As a follow up to a recent question (1) where it is argued that the effect of substrate on the second language is most remarkable in phonology:
Do you know if this has biological reasons in production ...
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When teaching word stress to ESL students, is it worth teaching secondary stress placement?
I often incorporate stress training into my classes as it is very important for intelligibility (as better awareness of stress placement will give students clearer speaking and better listening skills)...
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what are ways to calculate difficulty / required time to learn specific languages
The amount of effort and time required to learn a language highly depends on the language(s) already known. For example, generally, learning a language within the same language family will be ...
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"Ser"/"estar" acquisition in bilingual children (English-Spanish)
For the last week I've been wondering about how bilingual children (English-Spanish) might struggle with the acquisition of the "ser"/"estar" copulas, considering how these are ...
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Do bilinguals have smaller vocabularies in each language than monolinguals?
There is conflicting information online, and I believe search engines just push me the "pop facts" instead of the modern scientific consensus.
Do native bilinguals have smaller vocabularies ...
user31190
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What are the best ways to learn to distinguish vowels?
Apologies if this question is redundant. It seems pretty basic, but I couldn't find a post that seemed relevant. If there is one, please forward it!
My question is "What are the most effective ...
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Language acquisition by 100% immersion -- any cases you know of?
I am looking for documented cases where some person or group of people learned a language (= gained ability to communicate) with no prior knowledge of the target language through being immersed in ~...
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Where are the original research papers on when phonemes are acquired developmentally?
I received this as a guide to when the phonemes are acquired developmentally, such as:
1-2 years - The child is able to say the following sounds in words - /p/, /b/, /m/, /n/, /t/, /d/
Where can I ...
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Book recommendation on language acquisition of phonetics and phonology in American children?
I'm looking for answers to the following questions about language acquisition, as far as phonetics are concerned. I'm particularly interested in American English, though failing that any language ...
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Are there any audio recordings of the speech of the feral child Genie?
Genie (Susan Wiley) is the pseudonym of a feral child whose linguistic development was considered extremely important in the study of the critical period for language acquisition as she had virtually ...
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During second language acquisition, is it common for the speech organs to get tired by speaking the second language?
I am a non-native speaker of English (I'd rather not say what my native language is). I have noticed that my speech organs (tongue, lips, jaws and also the palate but I'm not so sure if it's the ...
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Learning linguistics for language acquisition
I am hoping to learn multiple languages (specifically, French, German, and Russian) in the near future, and I was hoping that knowing some linguistics would accelerate the process.
My Questions:
1.) ...
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Master's degree in linguistics [closed]
I am a student of Translation Studies (Slovene-German and English-German translation) from the University of Ljubljana, currently in my final year of bachelor's degree. At the time I'm in the process ...
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Are analytic languages easier to learn compared to synthetic languages?
I believe the Czech linguist Karel Oliva mentioned it somewhere that analytic languages are like a hill - one can make a progress relatively easily from the beginning but there's always more to learn (...
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What idea(s) do you have of 'Proto' in discussions in linguistics? [closed]
I've always been interested in the concept of 'proto' - for sort of artistic or conceptual reasons (or for conceptual art aspects). I had thought a few years ago about an art or photo or writing ...
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As a relatively proficient heritage speaker, should I consider myself a "native" speaker, or something else?
Should heritage speakers with a decent level of proficiency (say a middle school level of reading/writing ability) consider themselves "native", or something else?
"Native" would be appropriate in ...
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How do we know that abstract words mean the same thing to all of us?
When a baby is learning a language some words must be easier to grasp. You show them a banana and say "This is a banana." You show them a train and say "This is a train." But how can we really be sure ...
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How do children learn to identify different languages?
A child can be raised in a sufficiently bilingual context that they learn two languages simultaneously, e.g. English & Spanish, Norwegian and Saami. The end product is that they have two ...
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Does understanding in Russian imply understanding in English? [closed]
I am a native Russian speaker. There is a Past Continuous as well as a Past Simple tense in Russian, does that mean that my brain understands how the tenses work in English too? (English is not my ...
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Does a polyglot think in every language he speaks or only in the mother-tongue?
some teachers say if you want to speak English , think in English.Since language and thought are different as is evident from the answers to the question* Are language and thought the same?*how can ...
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Does the study of linguistics help one to be a good speaker and good writer of languages?
Linguistics is the systematic study of languages.
Some people say "What chemistry is to medicine, linguistics is to language."
It is a fact that linguistics helps one to study languages ...
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Are language and thought the same?
I want to know whether language and thought are the same.
I think language enriches one's thought and thought helps one to use language better. Without language how could man think? Did they ...
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Is Wikipedia's argument for Universal Grammar completely fallacious?
Wikipedia's article about Chomsky makes the following argument for Universal Grammar:
For example, although children are exposed to only a very small and
finite subset of the allowable syntactic ...
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What are typical child and adult vocabulary growth rates?
What are typical vocabulary growth rates (say, in words / day) for children and adults in their native languages? Has there been enough research to plot vocabulary growth rate vs age?
I'm especially ...
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Is it possible to become truly Native Level in a secondary language?
I will specify that people born into bilingual families do not count. It must be someone who started learning the language after childhood (where one's susceptibility to language is virtually cheating)...
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Is there a difference between foreign and native accents?
As the title says, are there any linguistic differences between accents acquired from birth/childhood and accents ued by adult language learners who speak the language fluently, but still with a ...
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Critical Period for reading, writing, and listening?
I have heard about about the critical period hypothesis and how that applies to things like accents and stuff, but is there a critical period for reading, writing, and listening? After a certain age ...
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Do grammatically close languages tend to begin to use literal translations of some words in other senses in that other language?
Let's have an English phrase "let's have" and the Czech equivalent "mějme". Perhaps, at some point in the past, someone was translating a math textbook and didn't know how to translate "let's have" in ...
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How many languages can a person reasonably know?
I was looking at this video about Japanese Kanji on youtube, and found a discussion where people were talking about learning too many languages. Several claimed that they started to forget English ...
user19661
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Why is the English phoneme /θ/ pronounced like /t/ in Indian accents but /s/ in Chinese accents?
The dental fricatives (/θ/ and /ð/; spelled with th) often present a challenge to non-native learners of English. Depending on the speaker's native language, different phonemes may be substituted. In ...
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Corpus for simple or basic english
I'm trying to find a good, extensive corpus that uses "simple" or "basic" English, in the sense that it should be easily understandable to people who are not proficient in the English language. For ...
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Language Acquisition in Children from single parent
I understand this is a complex issue but I wonder if someone here can shed some light on the current understanding of this situation.
I am a Portuguese father of two living in Germany. My wife is ...
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What are the structural similarities that exist common to all languages?
What (if any) are the structural similarities that all languages share that allows them to be taken in and learned by virtually all humans starting at a very young age?
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Research on development of language of modality in children 8-12?
Let me quickly introduce myself to provide a context for my questions. My PhD research focuses on ways that we can teach primary school children (9-12) ways of handling complex, contradictory and ...
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Is there a word-list for child English?
Are there any publications which list words of English that one might reasonably expect a child to know? I assume that "father" would be on the list, and "allophone; metallurgy" would not be. As for ...
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Are two word utterances by young children grammatically analysed?
At an early stage of acquisition the utterances children produce consist of only two words. Can these two word utterances be seen as syntactically or semantically analysed in any way? How productive ...
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Early language acquisition from non-native input
This answer on the Parenting Stack Exchange describes the possible effect on a child's overall language ability when well-meaning immigrant parents with limited mastery of the local language attempt ...
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Is there any "standard" definition of "linguistic input"?
Recently, I've started wondering how to characterize "linguistic input" and realized that the notion is very rarely unpacked. It seems as if everyone takes it to be obvious, and immediately goes to ...
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Can learning a new language help with speech impairment?
I'm not a linguist, but i can see the connection between speech impairment and language learning.
I'm only asking because I have a slight speech impairment myself (unable to pronounce guttural sounds ...
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