rolandi@gollum.UUCP (12/05/87)
Among linguists it is accepted as a truism that infants the world over emit the same set of basic phonemic babblings. If all infants start out with the same set of babblings, presumably a superset of the IPA, what happens to them as their users get older? Why can't adults call up the constituents of these elemental babblings when acquiring a foreign language and thereby do so without retaining an accent? Because these "constituents" have become the victims of disuse. When a child learns only one language, the child's culture essentially ignores all phonemic utterances that are not included in its language. Although initially included in the infant's behavioral repertoire, phonemes unused by the verbal community do not mediate reinforcement. They thereby become less probable, ultimately falling entirely from the repertoire. Whether or not this motor loss is accompanied by changes in neurology is an experimental question, but the CAUSE of the behavioral loss is the fact that they are unreinforced by the child's verbal community. (see Skinner, 1957) There may well be some neurological correlate to this change in linguistic ability. But before one is to assume that some neural process is the CAUSE, (like our handy and unexplained explanation, the "crystallization process") I think one should first consider the possibility that the neural process is instead the EFFECT. Would anyone seriously maintain that unused muscles do not fall to atrophy? Regarding Mark Edwards contribution to the "why do adults have accents?" discussion, >... what if we taught the adult ... ------ > I'm tired of the arguments, it can't be done because it hasn't been > done in the past. If that were true than there would be a lot less > Steven Jobs and Bill Gates in the world. it's refreshing to see someone scrutinize the acquisition method before jumping to the conclusion that there is some internal mechanism involved. Unlike the hypothesized internal mechanism, methods of acquisition are much more available to experimentation. To say that adults do not learn languages without accents does not mean that they CANNOT do so. The question at this point becomes, "How does one TEACH an adult a second language without retaining an accent?" I'd like to pose that question to any speech pathologists out there..... w.rolandi u.s.carolina departments of linguistics and psychology ncr advanced development, columbia ncrcae!gollum!rolandi job(ok) :- disclaim(rolandi,Everything).