Review, Practice, and Explore – Chapter 2 • 19
Review, Practice, and Explore – Chapter 2
2.1
Children’s Rules
Children often produce forms that they don’t hear in adult speech—forms that nevertheless follow
a systematic rule. In the following examples of children’s language, what systematic rule is evident
here? How do these data support the human capacity for language? Do children learn by imitation?
a. I buyed a fire dog for a grillion dollars.
b. Hey, Horton heared a Who.
c. My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.
d. Daddy, I stealed some of the people out of the boat.
e. Once upon a time, a alligator was eating a dinosaur and the dinosaur was eating the alliga-
tor and the dinosaur was eaten by the alligator and the alligator goed kerplunk.
Answers:
What do the following examples of conversations with children tell us about how children acquire
language, and how do they provide evidence for our linguistic “hardwiring”?
Child: I taked a cookie.
Adult: Oh, you mean you took a cookie.
Child: Yes, that’s right, I taked it.
Adult: Adam, say what I say: Where can I put them?
Child: Where I can put them?
2.2
Two-Year-Olds Have No Words
Even though children seem limited in the number of words they can string together in the early
stages of acquisition, their utterances can express a range of complex meanings. For example, nega-
tive utterances at this stage can express denial, rejection, or non-existence. Study the following sets
of negative utterances of children in the early multiword stage. What kind of negation is being ex-
pressed in each set? (Adapted from Foss and Hakes 1978.)
Review, Practice, and Explore – Chapter 2 • 21
c. In Japanese, pronouns don’t have to match the noun they refer to, so a singular pronoun
can refer to a plural noun and vice versa. What kind of sentence might a Japanese speaker
learning English utter?
d. In Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean, there are no plural forms of nouns (plurality is
marked in other ways). What sentence might a speaker of one of these languages who is
learning English produce?
2.5
Acquiring or Teaching a Second Language
Explore one of the following questions about second language acquisition in more detail in a short
research paper.
• What are some of the leading theories about how we acquire a second language, and how do
these theories differ from one another?
• What are some of the theories about how to teach a second “foreign” language (now more
frequently called world language) in school?
• Investigate English as a Second Language (ESL), Teaching English as a Second Language
Answers will vary.
2.6
Bilingual Education
Bilingualism is a fascinating linguistic phenomenon, a behavior that is of interest not only to lin-
guists but also to educators. Bilingual education is both much studied and controversial. Many states
and organizations want to limit bilingual education, and other organizations and states promote it.
Do some research on the pros and cons of bilingual education. What are the arguments in favor of it,
and what methods and approaches seem to be most effective? Where has bilingual education been
argued to be ineffective, and why?
Answers will vary.
2.7
Creole Grammar
Some tourist guidebooks describe pidgins and creoles as baby talk, broken English, improper, or
grammarless. But as we’ve seen, creole languages have systematic rules and are fully developed
22 • PART 2 Answer Key
linguistic systems. Below is a set of data that illustrates the rule of plural formation in Nicaraguan
Creole English (from Honda and O’Neil 2008).
Nicaraguan Creole English Standard English
a. The boat-dem de in the river. The boats are in the river.
b. Ronald send to me two turtledove. Ronald sent me two turtledoves.
c. Is many dog in Bluefields? Are there many dogs in Bluefields?
d. These dog-dem in the street. These dogs are in the street.
e. He want seven case of beer. He wants seven cases of beer.
f. He did see the case of beer-dem. He saw the cases of beer.
The word dem is borrowed from the English word them; however, it has a different meaning and use
in Nicaraguan Creole English. When do you use –dem in Creole?
Is the following sentence grammatical in this language?
g. Di man-dem a plaant kann. The men are planting corn.
2.8
Linguistic Savants
The Linguistic Society of America maintains an archive of language-related short videos at the
University of Georgia. At the website http://www.uga.edu/lsava/Smith/Smith.htm are several clips
about Christopher taken from the movie Het Talenwonder. Watch the clips and write a one-to-two-
paragraph response. Consider what Christopher’s language ability tells us about the following:
• the human capacity for language
• our language “intelligence” and its relation to other cognitive abilities
• Universal Grammar
Answers will vary but students may observe: Christopher appears to be able to learn
languages very quickly without explicit instruction, which provides striking evidence
24 • PART 2 Answer Key
reliance on content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives) allows her to communicate, even
in the absence of rule-governed syntax. (In this way Genie’s language is similar to that
of Broca’s aphasics, who also lack function words and whose syntax is labored and
disrupted.) Reliance on semantic relationships to express meaning (content words) is
similar to early child language (two-word stage, though Genie’s utterances are longer).
Man motorcycle have.
Subject – Object – Verb (SOV) order (not basic English word order)
Genie full stomach.
Subject – predicate order; missing verb, but otherwise conforms to
basic English word order
Genie bad cold live father house.
2.10
Broca’s and Wernicke’s Aphasias
2.11
Sign Language Aphasia
Conduct some research on sign language aphasia. How does it differ from oral language aphasia,
and how it is similar? What does sign language aphasia tell us about the brain and how it is lateral-
ized for language?