Spoken Language Acquisition

Spoken Language Acquisition: A Retrospective of the Potential Influences of Chomsky's Lectures on “Language

and Problems of Knowledge” on the state of Foreign-Language Teaching.

                                                                 By Charles A. S. Heinle

                                                        

The Framework for Discussion

It is nearly twenty years after Noam Chomsky delivered his celebrated "Managua Lectures" on "Language and Problems of Knowledge" in 1986. It seems appropriate, therefore, indeed even essential, to revisit the theme of his ground-breaking lectures and to take a look, once again, at his insightful and thought provoking questions. This is especially important now, after all of the time that has passed since 1986, because Chomsky’s findings continue to provoke controversy in scientific circles, and even more confrontationally in both the academic and the general public foreign-language market areas.

Four questions were promulgated by Noam Chomsky for use in his 1986 Managua Lectures," given in Nicaragua and later published in his book "Language and Problems of Knowledge," by The MIT Press, in 1988. The lecture series included the following sections: The Framework for Discussion; The Research Program of Modern Linguistics; Principles of Language Structure I; Principles of Language Structure II; The View Beyond: Prospects for the Study of Mind.

We begin by asking the same (albeit slightly edited) four essential questions he formulated in 1986. And we will discuss them in the light of what has been happening—and what has not been happening--since then in the world of language

teaching and learning. It will not surprise anyone working in this important field of investigation to discover that these self-same basic questions will challenge us to arrive at essential insights into the nature of language, and the unique way languages are acquired by the members of the human race. Here then are the questions:

1. What is it that we must know (kind of knowledge) in order to speak and understand a language? (on the one hand as an infant, and on the other, as an adult) What is in the mind/brain of the speaker of English or Spanish or Japanese?

2. How is this knowledge acquired? How does this system of knowledge arise in the mind/brain?

3. How is this knowledge put to use in speech (or secondary systems such as writing)?

4. What are the physical mechanisms which serve as the material basis for this system of knowledge, and for the use (acquisition and use) of this knowledge?

In the mid-1970’s Chomsky compared the acquisition of language, “cognitive structures “ or a “mental organ,” to the development of body organs, because “we see no way by which it can be learned.” The child’s learning of a language is not seen as learning in an ordinary way. “Language is not learned, but grows in the child’s head by a complex interaction between genetically-determined structures and the environmental input through the senses.”

Keeping the above in mind, the task of answering question #1 is rather straight forward when you consider what must take place when a human being speaks with other human beings, and each one of them understands what the other one is saying. Obviously this activity is best described as a spoken conversation. However, the real point of the answer to this question, at this early stage of our discussion, is to understand the reality of what they are doing (the activity), and that it can only happen if each of the participants possesses the same spoken language knowledge as the other person(s) involved in the conversation. So, without begging the question, the only possible answer to the question “what is it that we must ‘know’ in order to be able to speak and understand a language,” is that the two (or possibly more) individuals speaking must each possess the knowledge of the same particular and specific target language being used. Once this uncontroversial “answer” is established, this information enables us to proceed to the next question, #2.

Question 2 asks the “how” or “in what way did this system of knowledge (in this particular case it happens to be the Spanish language being spoken) arise in the mind/brain? And the answer has to be that the speakers acquired their Spanish language knowledge in one of the only two ways in which spoken languages can be acquired. And these are either by (1) being born into a Spanish-speaking community, or (2) acquiring Spanish as an adult in a second-language immersion program, which permits the system of knowledge’ to be somehow ‘represented’ in the brain in some physical configuration.

The jury is still out on the question of the precise steps of “how” spoken language is acquired. Most adults seriously question whether their capacity to acquire speaking proficiency in a second language is even possible. Clearly “Language learning” is not really something that the infant (or adult) does. It is something that happens to the child placed in an appropriate environment, much as the child’s body grows and matures in a predetermined way when provided with appropriate nutrition and environmental stimulation. The environment determines the way the parameters of universal grammar are set, yielding different languages. In a somewhat similar way the early visual environment determines the density of receptors for horizontal and vertical lines, as has been shown experimentally.

Furthermore, the difference between a rich and stimulating environment and an impoverished environment may be substantial, in language acquisition, as in physical growth or, more accurately, as in other aspects of physical growth, the acquisition of language being simply one of these aspects. What a learner hears passively will be quickly forgotten. What learners discover for themselves when their natural curiosity and creative impulses are aroused not only will be remembered but will be the basis for further exploration and inquiry and perhaps significant intellectual contributions.”

And that leads us to question #3, which asks us to explain how we use this knowledge? Here the question of perception and production of language knowledge – and it’s use confronts us with its invisible operations hidden from close observation since the mind/brain is still being viewed through a glass darkly – but gradually more than the bare outlines will yield to the new brain scanning systems presently being applied to the question. There are many theories of how language operates. And in every case these theories seem to fall back – in part – to the previous question, #2, which asks, “How is

this knowledge acquired? And here, in between the several theories, it sits, waiting for the answer to question #4, which is, “What are the physical mechanisms involved in the representation, acquisition, and the use of this knowledge?”

Given the fact that there are thousands of individual languages spoken by millions of human beings, it is possible to consider that the central singular characteristic about these languages is that only members of the species Homo sapiens possess these languages.

Languages evolve over time, but always and only are spoken (and or written) by humans. Perhaps there is one biological language ancestor of all human languages, which came into the human genome and which is transmitted as a universal characteristic which allows languages to fit special cases, allowing them to operate and allowing many cases of specialization to exist, but to still stay within the bounds of this mother of all languages. This universal grammar, for lack of a better name, may well provide the physical and mental states of the large brain which enables Homo sapiens to continue his grand performance in the unique zoo of world languages.

Discussion: Question and Answer Period

After raising his questions Chomsky then went on to discuss them with the language teachers who made up a large part of the audience in Managua. Citing his theoretical findings, and his suggestion of the innate language faculty in the mind/brain as a distinctive human possession, he raised the issue of what is needed to account for the emergence of language in humans --and how it might impact the possibilities of language instruction in schools.

He summed up his use of the four questions as follows: #“The answers to these four questions that we would be inclined to give today (or at least, that we should be inclined to give today), are quite different from those that were accepted with little controversy as recently as a generation ago. To the extent that these questions were even posed, some years ago, the answers offered then would then have been something like the following:

“Language is a habit system, a system of dispositions to behavior, acquired through training and conditioning. Any innovative aspects of this behavior are the result of “analogy.”

The physical mechanisms are essentially those involved in catching a ball and other skilled performances. It was generally believed that language is “over -learned;” the problem to account for the fact that so much experience and training are needed to establish such simple skills. Attention to the facts quickly demonstrates that these (earlier) ideas are not simply in error but are entirely beyond any hope of repair. They must be abandoned, as essentially worthless.” He summed up his statement with the suggestion that the then current ideas of language teaching activities are so utterly divorced from the real world that one has to wonder how these myths achieved the respectability accorded to them, and how they could have come to dominate such a large part of intellectual life and discourse.

Notice, he said, “I am not concerned here with use of language that has true aesthetic value, with what we call true creativity, as in the work of a fine poet or novelist or an exceptional stylist. Rather,” he continued, “what I have in mind is something more mundane: the ordinary use of language in everyday life, with its distinctive properties of novelty, freedom from control by external stimuli and inner states, coherence and appropriateness to situations, and its capacity to evoke appropriate thoughts in the listener.”

Where we are today…

Language acquisition, in today’s thinking, is the process of determining the values of the parameters left unspecified by universal grammar, of setting the switches that make the network function. Beyond that, the individual acquiring language must discover the lexical items of the language and their properties. To a large extent this seems to be a problem of finding what labels are used for existing concepts, a conclusion that is so surprising as to seem outrageous, but that appears to be essentially correct nevertheless.

In view of this new concept of the acquisition of language, that there is a special faculty that is the central element of the human mind, such a concept makes it essential that any method of language acquisition must operate in complete harmony and in conjunction with the central faculty and in accordance with the principles and structures of that language faculty. It operates quickly, in a deterministic fashion, unconsciously and beyond the limits of awareness and in a manner that is common to the species, yielding a rich and complex system of knowledge, a particular language.

The evidence seems compelling, therefore, that fundamental aspects of our mental and social life, including language, are determined as part of our biological endowment, and are not acquired by learning, still less by training, in the course of our experience.

For the language teacher, this really means that you simply cannot teach a language to an adult in the way a child acquires a language. That’s why everyone finds out that it’s such a hard, even impossible, job.

The confrontation formally stated in 2002

Despite Chomsky’s clear statement of the findings of several decades of linguistic research, second language teachers continue to resist-by blaming the current lack of success in spoken proficiency by students in the classroom, to a lack of grammar rules training or a lack of reading and translating of original texts in the foreign language itself.

Typical of the outdated, negative and utterly unproductive position of these teachers is an article by Dr. Flore Zephir, published in the ACTFL journal entitled “Focus on Form and Meaning: Perspectives of Developing Teachers and Action-Based Research” in Foreign Language Annals-Vol.33, No.1. in 2002, which attacked scientific linguistics, and suggested language teaching should return to its original function of teaching with no more unwanted assistance from the linguists.

Dr. Zephir identified current Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory as the obstacle which prevents communicative language teaching in classrooms. Dr. Zephir‘s paper argues that current SLA theory is erroneously based on “how the mind works to acquire language in a native-speaking environment,” as opposed to being based on research on “how to teach languages in a classroom environment.” Dr. Zephir suggests that SLA research should focus not on “how the human mind acquires language,” but should concentrate on “action-based research generated in classroom settings by foreign language professionals (classroom teachers) who – unlike applied linguists – assume the bulk of language instruction, be it at the secondary or postsecondary levels.”

Her article argues against a unidirectional model of foreign language learning whereby only theories and hypotheses generated from second language acquisition (SLA) research influence language teaching and classroom practices. To the contrary, research generated only from classroom settings should help shape classroom practices and even SLA theories. By raising the “silent voices” of developing practitioners – and taking their views into account as empirical data –new light can be shone on the central question of focus on form versus focus on meaning. Furthermore, it is argued that action-based research, with practitioners involved in the data collection process, is a viable option for obtaining both the qualitative and quantitative information needed to make any kind of foreign language education model useful.

Summary Statement

It is interesting to contrast this point of view of the professional language teachers organization with the views of basic linguistic research community which indicates that foreign languages simply cannot be taught effectively because the human mind/brain cannot accept the “kind of knowledge input” professional foreign language teachers believe must be used in traditional language instruction. That they continue to insist on this even in light of the fact that their students fail to achieve significant spoken language proficiency as a result of their classroom activities is understandable -- but terribly

unsettling - in view of the fact of other demonstrations of successful, measurable, spoken language acquisition by non-academic adult-learners following non-traditional methods simulating the natural–spoken-language-immersion- way languages are acquired by human infants.

It will be important to keep an eye on developments, especially in view of the great surge in spoken-language acquisition successes in the non-scholastic, self instructional language materials in the general marketplace, as a result of frequency based essential structures through immersion-based spoken-language, memory-training programs in dozens of world languages.