Journal of Research (Urdu), BZU - Multan

(جرنل آف ریسرچ (اردو

Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan (Pakistan)
ISSN (print): 1726-9067
ISSN (online): 1816-3424

Cognitive Neuroscience In Second Language Acquisition

  • Dr. Muhammad Shahbaz Arif/
  • December 31, 2002
Keywords
English Grammar L2 Learners School Congnitice Neuroscience Second Language Acquisition
Abstract

In the investigation of the morphosyntactic development of the English verb, this study examines whether or not the cognitive neuroscience has any role in the acquisition of the inflectional category by L2 learners from the beginning, that is, if the functional category I exists in L2 grammars from the earliest stages which is guided by some pre-programmed sequence guided by mental cognition. Furthermore, this study will also reveal some striking facts from Urdu pronouns which show some acquisition problems in the syntactic representation of English grammar. We adopted the hypotheses that the acquisition of the English inflectional morphology develops in brain similarly across all L2 learners in which the functional category I is present in the L2 grammars from the beginning, but the features [+tense, +agr] of I develop separately over time. The study of syntactic development proceeds with the framework of the Government-Binding Theory (Chomsky 1981, 1986). The data were drawn from random sample of 240 normally distributed population learning English as their second language cross-sectionally  (from different groups of L2 learners, where each group was exposed to a specific teaching time, that is, of interest for us) in classes at school.

References

Aldridge, G (1989) The Acquisition of INFL, Ph.D thesis. Reproduced by Indiana Univefrsity Linguistics Club Publications
Atkinson, M. (1992) Children’s Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell
Babar J.A. Khan (1987) The Ergative Case in Hindi-Urdu in studies in the Linguistic Sciences 17.
Borer, H. & Wexler, K. (1987) The maturation of syntax. In T. Roeper and E.  Williamas (eds.), Parameter Setting, Dordrecht:  Reidel, 123-172.
Borer, H. & Wexler, K. (1992) Bi-unique relations and the maturation of grammatical principles. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 10, 147-189.
Borer, H. and Wexler, K. (1991) Maturation of Gr. Principles. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 24:421-459
Brown, R. (1973) A First Language: The Early Stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
Butt, M. (1991) Acquisition of the ergative in Urdu. MS., Stanford University
Butt, M. (1995) The structure of complex Predicates in Urdu,  CSL1 Publications, Stanford, California.
Carnie, Andrew (1993) Nominal Predications and Absolutive Case Marking in Irish; ‘MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 19, 89-129
Chomsky, N. (1981) Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht. Foris
Chomsky, N. (1986) Barriers. Cambridge, M A:MIT Press
Chomsky, N. (1990) Some notes on economy of derivation and  representation. MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 10, 43-74.
Chomsky, N. (1992) “A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory”. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 1, 1-69.
Clahsen, H. (1990) “Constriants on Parameter Setting: A Grammatical Analysis of Some Acquisition Stages in German Child Language”. Language Acquisition 1, 361-391.
Clahsen, H., Penke, M. & Teresa Parodi (1993) “Functional Categories in Early Child German” Language Acquisition 3, 395-429   
Cook, Vivian, J (1988) Chomsky’s universal grammar: an introduction, Oxford: Blackwell
Cook, Vivian, J (1993) Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition. London: MacMillan.
Davison, A. (1985) Case and control in Hindi-Urdu. Studies in the Linguistic Science 15 (2): 9-23
De Villiers, J. 1992 “On the Acquisition of Functional Placement:  Functional Categories and V2 Phenomena in  Language Acquisition (Studies in Theoretical  Psycholinguistics) eds. by Meisel, 423-443.  Dordrecht:Kluwer.
Dulay, H. C. and Burt, M.K. (1973) Should we teach children syntax? Language Learning 23:245-258
Dwivedi, V. (1991) Negation as a fucntional projection in Hindi. In K. Hunt, T. Perry, and V. Samiian (Eds.) Proceedings of the Western Conference on Linguistics, 88-101. California State University of Fresno: Dept. Of Linguistics.
Epstein, S., Flynn, S., & Martohardjono, M. (1993) The strong continuity hypothesis: Some evidence from functional categories in adult L2 acquisition. Paper presented at the Workshop on Recent Advances in Second Language Acquisition, MIT, Cambridge, M.A.
Eubank, L (1991) Point counterpoint: Universal Grammar in the Second Language. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Eubank, L. (1994) ‘Optionality and the “Initial State” in L2 development in T. Hesktra and B. Schwartz (eds.) Language Acquisition Studies in UG
Flynn, S. and O’Neil, W. (1988) Linguistic theory and second language acquisition. Dordrecht: Kluwer
Gita Martohardjona, Samuel David Epstein and Suzanne Flynn (1998) Universal Grammar: Hypothesis Space or Grammar selection procedures? Is UG affected by Critical Periods? Behavioral and Brain Sciences V 21, Issue 4 pp 612-614 CUP/USA
Grondin, N. & White, L (1996) ‘Functional categories in child  acquisition of French’. Language Acquisition, 5, 1-34
Guilfoyle, E. & Noonan, M. (1992) “Functional Categories and Language Acquisition”,Canadian Journal of Linguistics 37, 241-272.       
Hawkins, Roger (1998) Second Language Syntax: An   Overview   
Hoekstra, T. Schwartz (eds.) (1994) Language Acquisition Studies in Generative Grammar: Papers in Honor of Kenneth Wexler from the 1991 GLOW Workshops. Amerterdam: Benjamins.
Hyams, N. (1992a) A reanalysis of null subjects in child language. in J. Weissenborn, H. Goodluck, T. Roeper(eds), Theoretical issues in language acquisition, Hilladdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 249-267.1992b Morphosyntactic development in Italian and its relevance to parameter-setting models: Comments on the paper by Pizzuto & Caselli.  Journal of Child Language 19, 695-709.
Hyams, N. (1992b) “The Genesis of Clausal Structure”. The Acquisition of Verb Placement: Functional Categories and V2 Phenomena in Language Acquisition (Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics) eds. by J. Meisel,     371-400. Kluwer Academic Publishers
Kachru, Y., Braj B. Kachru, and Tej K. Bhatia (1976) The notion ‘Subject’. A note on Hindi-Urdu, Kashmiri, and Panjabi in The notion of subject in South Asian Languages 79-108 (Manindra K. Verma, ed.)   
Lardiere, Donna (1998) “Case and Tense in the ‘fossilized’ steady state”,Second Language Research 14, No.1
Mahajan, Anoop, K. (1990) The A/A-Bar Distinction and Movement Theory, Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis
Marantz, A. (1995) “The Minimalist Program” in Government and Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program, eds. by G. Webelhuth, 349-382. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell
Meisel, J. (1990) “INFL-ection: Subjects and Subject-Verb  Agreement”. Two First Languages: Early Grammatical Development in Bilingual Children eds. by J. Meisel, 237-300. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Foris.
Ouhalla, J. (1991) ‘Functional Categories and Parametric  Variation’ London: Routledge
Pierce, A. (1992) Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory  (Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer.
Platzack, C. (1990) “A Grammar without Functional Categoreis: AS syntactic Study of Early Swedish Child Language” Nordic Jopurnal of Linguistics 13, 107-126.
Platzack, C. (1992) “Functional Categories and Early Swedish” in The Acquisition of Verb Placement:Functional Categories and Ve Phenomena in Language Acquisition (Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics)eds. by J. Meisel, 63-82.
Poeppel,D. and K. Wexler (1993) The full competence hypothesis of clause        structure in early German. Language 69, 1-33.
Pollock, J. (1989) Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic inquiry 20, 365-424.
Radford, A. (1988) Small children’s small clauses. Transactions of the Philological Society 86, 1-46.
Radford, A. (1990) Syntactic Theory and the Acquisition of English Syntax, Oxford, England: Basil Blackwell.
Radford, A. (1992) “The Acquisition of the Morphosyntax of Finite Verbs in English” in The Acquisition of Verb Placement: Functional Categories and V2 Phenomena in Language Acquisition (Studies in Theoreticdal Psycholinguistics) ed. by Meisel, J. 23-62. The Netherlands: Kluwer.
Radford, A. (1995) “Children - Architects and Brickies?” Proceedings of the Boston University Conference on Language Development 19 ed. by MacLaughlin, D. & McEwan, S. 1-19.
Radford, (1997) Syntax; a minimalist introduction, Cambridge university press
Saleemi, A.P. (1992) Universal Grammar and Language Learnability
Towell, R. (1994) Approaches to Second Language Acquisition. R. Hawkins Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters.
Vainiklea, A & Young Scholten (1994) ‘Direct Access to x’- Theory: Language Acquisition Studies in General Grammar in Second Language Research 12, 1: 7-39
Webelhuth, Gert (ed) (1995) Government and Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program, Principles and Parameters in Syntactic Theory
Wexler and Manzini (1987) ‘Parameters and Learnability’ in Roeper T.,& Williams, E (eds): Parameters and Linguistic Theory, Reidel, Dordrecht
Wexler, K. (1994) Finiteness and head movement in early child grammar. In D. Lighfoot and N.Hornstein (eds.), Verb Movement, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 305-350.
Zobl,  H. and Liceras J. (1994) Functional Categories and Acquisition Orders.  Language Learning 44:159-180

Statistics

Author(s):

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, G.C. University, Faisalabad

Pakistan


Details:

Type: Article
Volume: 2
Issue: 1
Language: English
Id: 5e85e6b18a4c7
Pages 19 - 46
Discipline: English
Published December 31, 2002

Statistics

  • 382
  • 107
  • 78

Copyrights

Journal of Research (Urdu) uses Creative Commons license Authors, retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.