Nov 18 ====== MuellerGathercole/Hoff:2008 --------------------------- "Take, for example, the acquisition of the third person singular form of verbs. In Spanish, this is the first finite form that becomes productive; in English, it is a relatively late development" (Gathercole/Hoff, pg 119) - can bilingual Spanish/English speaking children utilize third person singular in English earlier than children who only speak English? Or, more generally, for bilingual children is there evidence of the child mastering a feature of one language and then being able to utilize it in the second, even if that feature is considered more difficult in the second language? Input is also communication, probably one of the basic forms of communication right after contact for an infant. If there are other forms of communication, e.g. sign language (official or sign language specific for babies), does this interfere with the child's language acquisition? Does it make a difference in language acquisition whether adults talk to the child vs talk while the child is there? Does overstepping the critical mass of input just slow the language acquisition process or could it also permanently hinder the acquisition of certain language aspects? Is input the most important factor in children's language acquisition? We know that children's cognitive understanding can also influence the acquisition of language structures, and what kind of input is conducive to children's cognitive understanding? When discussing how frequency of input may impact the sequence of acquisition of linguistic structures, the paper argues that for more transparent structures, the frequency of input (or critical mass required) appears to be lower than for more opaque structures. How can the transparency/opacity of a structure and the critical mass be quantified/measured? - Chomsky's theory states that children have innate linguistic knowledge. If so, what about bilingual kids - in their case, do they have an innate knowledge of two languages? This is a little bit confusing. - It's common to say that some languages are harder to learn than others. Can it be applied to children's language acquisition? What factors facilitate the acquisition of function words? 1. The parameter setting model of acquisition suggests that acquisition is a process of determining specific parameters. How does this model account for contradicting patterns within a language? For example, the article mentions the omission of the subject. While English is mostly a non-pro drop language, sometimes the subject is dropped (e.g. in imperative such as "Just do it! Go", or in sentences such as " I went to Paris and loved it!"). How will the child determine correct parameter setting when the input contradicts a strict binary representation? Does this approach account for such cases? Have there been test on what the maximum number of languages is, that a willing Infant/child is able to comprehend? If the input can determine the sequence of what is acquired at which point in time (as in the example of the passive voice in English), is there some sort of complexity threshold which hinders certain linguistic concepts from being learned earlier despite them being in the input? The passive voice also seems like an arbitrary choice for this experiment, so that could mean that this also might work for other concepts? When comparing the source of simplification of input, the authors mention that either adults simplify inputs for children or that children are unable to process more complex inputs due to limited memory/processing abilities. I do not see these two as differing sources, because in either case it is the adults who assume what children can process. So my question is, how too these two sources differ exactly?