Читать книгу Introducing Second Language Acquisition - Kirsten M. Hummel - Страница 25

There is a long history of interest in examining animal communication systems to see whether they resemble human language and whether certain animal species (such as chimpanzees) can be taught language. Hockett (1960) assembled a list of design features that he considered necessary for a system to be considered a true “language.” In general, animal communication systems lack important features included in that list such as:

 “semanticity” (having a fixed relationship between a signal and its meaning);

 “arbitrariness” (a signal has no intrinsic relationship with the meaning it conveys, i.e. the relationship is related by convention – for example, the word “sun” is completely arbitrary to represent the object “the sun” in English);

 “discreteness” (language consists of discrete, distinct units, such as phonemes, the sound units of language, and words);

 “displacement” (ability to refer to things or events that have occurred at another time or place, as in reference to past events); and

 “productivity” (a potentially infinite number of different utterances can be produced).

As for attempts to teach language to various species, there has been limited success, whether the studies involve apes (Patterson 1978) or chimps (Savage‐Rumbaugh et al. 1993) learning sign language, or bottlenosed dolphins trained to respond to sound patterns (Herman et al. 1984).

There is considerable evidence for the biological basis for language that the UG approach emphasizes. As pointed out earlier in this chapter, children manifest an early sound perception discrimination ability that appears to fade away if the sound contrasts are not used in the language of the child's environment. We have also noted the developmental similarities in stages and the fact that certain milestones are attained in a similar sequence and at generally similar times (babbling, first word, two‐word sequences, etc.). Such evidence has been used to support the notion that children are indeed “prewired” to acquire language.

On the other hand, others point out that the linguistic view gives too little attention to the role of the environment and the crucial role played by interaction between the child and his or her social network, as discussed in the following section.