Multiple Language Upbringings

Undergod

It's been said, with a lot of evidence, that there is a capability for language innate in the normal human brain.
When children are raised bi- and multilingually, they rarely confuse their different langages. Is this a learned thing, or does the innate language capability for language also involve distinction between languages.

I apologise for having no references or if my English isn't the best. It's late and I haven't got any books handy...

John

Undergod wrote:

It's been said, with a lot of evidence, that there is a capability for language innate in the normal human brain.

Humans are very social and to be social you need to be able to communicate so an innate ability to learn language is in my opinion definitely the case.

When children are raised bi- and multilingually, they rarely confuse their different langages. Is this a learned thing, or does the innate language capability for language also involve distinction between languages.

I'm no developmental psychologist nor a linguist but I'd say the innate language learning ability would most likely allow a child once it gets to a more verbal age (at around three years of age) to distinguish between languages easily and know in what contexts to use them.

snorlax

at a young age children certainly have an ability to learn many laungages as their brain has more plasticity and is constantly learning from the environment around them (eg modelling/ copying their parents/ siblings), this high degree of flexiblity makes it is easier for them to learn language.

however as they get older this ability declines, that is why it is hard for some children to learn a secound laungage once they reach secoundary school and why kids should learn secound laungage from as early an age as possible.

an interesting point of note is that often in families with more then one child the youngest one often learn to speak faster then the older one/s. this could be down to modelling of it's sibling but is more likey a survival/ instinctal thing whereby the youngest won't get left out by it's siblings and can compete better amongst it's siblings for rewards such as chocolate/ staying up latter.

here's a good link on it http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/oral_language_development.shtml

Playboy

The controversy about the innate language theory arises not becuase people are arguing whether the ability is innate or not but how we developed this innate ability. Chomsky who came up with the theory maintains that it is not explainable by evolution but Steven Pinker the havard professor and friend of Richard Dawkins puts foward a good case for the evolution explanation in his book The Language Instinct. Its a very good read

John

I haven't read that particular book of Pinker's but I believe it is easily an evolutionary trait. Whilst we are the only species with a language per se, all organisms communicate in some way and stranger things have been produced by evolution. I haven't read Chomsky either so maybe I should hear his point of view first.

p.pete

I've read something recently (should really try find the source) that talked about learning in terms of schemas - say you have a schema for maths, when you're learning new maths your mind refers to the schema with information you've already built up for math. You relate it to things you've already learnt and it's not totally alien to you.

The same would be true for English (and any other language obviously), you learn new words or grammer rules and your mind slots them neatly into a place on the schema and if you've already been learning it for some time your schema will have developed (or grown if you imagine it like a tree that's bigger depending on how much knowledge you have in the area - an English professor would have a very large and developed schema for English whereas someone learning the alphabet would only be starting out).

Anyway, the point to all this is that when you're younger you're able to develop new schema a lot more easily - so if you start learning the languages earlier you'll start off with a seperate schema to relate each language to. As you get older this ability declines, so when you start learning French at the age of 40 you relate everything to what you know about English (on your English schema) as opposed to maybe starting a new schema.

I'll try track down a reference, I think it relates closely to what snorlax's post was about

John

I've just remembered another thing about learning languages. Language is broken down into sounds called phonemes and you lose the ability to recognise new phonemes as you grow older. When you are learning a foreign language as a teenager or adult you can't actually hear the subtleties of the language when a native speaker is talking. For example, Japanese people when they try to learn English have great difficulty distinguishing between an L sound and an R sound as they are not part of the Japanese language's group of phonemes.

snorlax

i'd say the ability to develop lanuage probably is an essential survival charachteristic and is very innate in all humans probably as a result of the fact we are all social beings and rely heavily on communicating in everyday life to do just about everything.
i wonder if the same is the case for deaf children? does anybody know of any studies along those lines?

i'd say the environment also has a pivotal role in language development, eg the first word is often mom or dad as these people are often in close proximity to the baby in it's early life. Piaget's cognitive development theory is also an interesting read especially around the whole symbolic use of language.

John

snorlax wrote:

i wonder if the same is the case for deaf children? does anybody know of any studies along those lines?

I'm sure they learn sign language a lot easier when they're younger. I haven't seen any studies though.

MrPudding

I have 2 children that are being brought up in a French / English environment.

My oldest child is now 7. She is fully fluent in English & French. Her speach developed quite early though it was mostly English until we moved to Dublin when she was 3. She never mixes words up. She has always "known" which word belongs to which language.

My son is now 3. His speach is at a lower level than my Daughters was at when she was 2. He is really only now begining to use sentences and his French is very weak. I think part of the reason for his underdevelopment may be due to the fact that his big sister has had a habit of talking for him. She would translate his grunts thereby reducing his need to actually talk. When Seraphine, my daughter, went to France for three weeks his speach improved dramatically.

I suppose from my experience I think that there does seem to be an inate ability to differentiate between languages. I have a habit of using French words in English sentences. Seraphine has alway told me off about this, knowing the word was not right. The only time she will use a word from the other language is when she does not know the word in the language she is speaking. In these cases she will say she does not know it.

I am looking forward to see how my son develops and whether the experience will be the same. So far he does not seem to mix words up but he currently does not speak much French at home.

Chris

Cake Fiend

Having learnt (to one extent or another) several languages at various stages of my life, I've noticed a couple of things relevant to this discussion:

As a child, I was brought up fluent in English and Irish. The idea of mixing up words between English and Irish during my childhood is as alien to me as the idea of mixing up walking and swimming. Irish was never something I had to concentrate on; it was completely transparent, unlike languages I have learnt as an adult. Despite the fact that a phrase heard in Irish would be translated directly to thought, exactly as with English, there was a clearly felt distinction between the two languages.

As a teenager, I learnt French and German in school, particularly sticking with German later. These languages of course never had the transparency of English (nor does Irish anymore, as I haven't used it since school). Naturally, I would never mix German words into English, although in constructing a German sentence, English words might come to mind. When I started to learn Japanese, I had become so accustomed to the German way of speaking (and grammar, syntax, etc) that German words would automatically come to mind when trying to construct basic Japanese sentences, as though German had now become my 'default' foreign language.

Oddly enough, this has now reversed itself (as I haven't used German in quite a while), meaning that if I try to speak German, I stumble over Japanese before I can get the German vocab together. So now, I think the only way for me to be sure I could have more than one 'default' foreign language is to go back and relearn German, while keeping my Japanese fresh!

Thought this might give a prod to someone's theories...

simu

?

Shouldn't this be in the languages forum? (It also covers linguistics).

Playboy

simu wrote:

?

Shouldn't this be in the languages forum? (It also covers linguistics).

No it's perfect right here. It's a current topic of debate in developmental Psychology.

simu

Harumpf!

Playboy

simu wrote:

Harumpf!

simu

snorlax wrote:

i'd say the ability to develop lanuage probably is an essential survival charachteristic and is very innate in all humans probably as a result of the fact we are all social beings and rely heavily on communicating in everyday life to do just about everything.
i wonder if the same is the case for deaf children? does anybody know of any studies along those lines?

This might be of interest.

nesf

Playboy wrote:

No it's perfect right here. It's a current topic of debate in developmental Psychology.

It's been a long running debate in philosophy too. That doesn't mean it's not linguistics though

snorlax

i could copy the thread and send it down to English if you want Simu?

Playboy

nesf wrote:

It's been a long running debate in philosophy too. That doesn't mean it's not linguistics though

I didnt say it shouldnt be anywhere else ... just that the topic is perfectly at home here

snorlax

it could be both places

Alun

Although I have no children myself, prior to moving to Ireland, I spent 21 years in Holland and Germany, and got to know a good few mixed-nationality families with children growing up in those countries. In virtually every case the children were able to neatly compartmentalise their two languages, using either one or the other when they deemed it appropriate. The ones who were best at it seemed to be those whose parents were strictly consistent with the language they used with their children, i.e. in a situation with one English and one Dutch parent, the English parent speaks only English to them, and the Dutch one only Dutch. Those that dithered between the two often seemed to result in children who did less well in both languages.

The exception seems to be when children in such a family speak between themselves, when I've often heard entire conversations that were literally 50/50 between the two languages, and completely unintelligible to outsiders!

My own experiences learning languages have been quite different. I speak 3 or 4 languages reasonably well, but nowhere near fluently, and after a period of non-use I have to really think hard to get a sentence out. My Dutch, which I spoke for the best part of 13 years, is different though. I did have limited formal lessons in the beginning, but learnt most of it as I went along, learning in much the same way as a child might, picking up new words and phrases as I went along by putting them into context rather than looking up everything immediately in a dictionary. This meant that although in the end I could speak the language fluently, there were many phrases and words I couldn't translate, much to the confusion of many of my Dutch colleagues who were always asking me to "just translate this, will you?.

As an example of how deeply rooted the language had become, I was shocked after being taken into hospital there for an emergency appendix operation, that in my hazy post anasthetic period, when I was hardly conscious myself, I was apparently talking away to the nurses (complete rubbish, though!) in fluent Dutch. I also found myself thinking aloud in Dutch, having dreams in Dutch, etc.

Shortly after that episode, I saw a TV program that was exploring brain activity (using some kind of scanner IIRC) in people who were bilingual, and they discovered that those that truly were, as opposed to those that had just a basic knowledge of a language, had actually developed separate speech centres in their brains for each language. Those that weren't used the same one for all their languages.

So I wonder whether even when we're a little older (I was about 23 at the time) whether this same kind of bilingualism is possible? Even now, after nearly 5 years of hardly using the language, if I need to speak it, it just comes as naturally as if it was yesterday.

abercrombie

MrPudding wrote:

I have 2 children that are being brought up in a French / English environment.....

I was brought up in a french/english enviroment too! I never once mixed up any words...as one poster said, it's like swimming and cycling, too completely different things like! At 6, I started Dutch as my grandmother is from the Netherlands. Now at 17 i'm fluent in English, French and Dutch! I'm taking French, Spanish and German for the leaving cert! I love languages!

I also think that a language other than Irish should be taught to students in primary school from junior infants. My 10 year old cousin goes to school in england and has been learning french since she started school. She can hold a conversation with me in the language! I think i makes the mind become more logical and it enhances it's ability!

apparently if you're good at maths you are good at languages, but i find that languages have a musical quality to them. It's all about listening and fine tuning what you hear. after all, children learn how to speak through listening and repeating what they hear.

Alun

abercrombie wrote:

I was brought up in a french/english enviroment too! I never once mixed up any words...as one poster said, it's like swimming and cycling, too completely different things like!

Was that me? Anyway, what I had noticed was when you have a child that has been brought up bilingually, they are, as you say, very strict about segregating their two languages when speaking to outsiders. They have a very clear idea of who ought to be speaking English (English family members, relatives etc.) and who should be speaking French, Dutch, German or whatever (basically everyone else). We had an English/Dutch couple living opposite us in Holland for a while, and their two young daughters were very confused that when we spoke with their mother (who was English) that we spoke English too. To them we belonged to the group that in their eyes should be speaking Dutch.

The muddling of the two languages I mentioned only seemed to occur between siblings, where to them there obviously wasn't any 100% clear indication of which language they should be speaking. Basically they just used terms and constructs from whichever language either felt right, was more compact or was just plain easier. To this day, I still use the occasional Dutch phrase when speaking to my wife, even though I left there nearly 5 years ago.

abercrombie

Alun wrote:

Was that me?

g sais pas!!

Alun

abercrombie wrote:

g sais pas!!

Ik ook niet