Age constraints on first versus second language acquisition: Evidence for linguistic plasticity and epigenesis

Age constraints on first versus second language acquisition: evidence for linguistic plasticity and epigenesis.

Does age constrain the outcome of all language acquisition equally regardless of whether the language is a first or second one? To test this hypothesis, the English grammatical abilities of deaf and hearing adults who either did or did not have linguistic experience (spoken or signed) during early childhood were investigated with two tasks, timed grammatical judgement and untimed sentence to pi...

Age Constraints on Second-Language Acquisition

This study evaluated the critical period hypothesis for second language (L2) acquisition. The participants were 240 native speakers of Korean who differed according to age of arrival (AOA) in the United States (1 to 23 years), but were all experienced in English (mean length of residence 5 15 years). The native Korean participants’ pronunciation of English was evaluated by having listeners rate...

Plasticity, Variability and Age in Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism

Much of what is known about the outcome of second language acquisition and bilingualism can be summarized in terms of inter-individual variability, plasticity and age. The present review looks at variability and plasticity with respect to their underlying sources, and at age as a modulating factor in variability and plasticity. In this context we consider critical period effects vs. bilingualis...

effects of first language on second language writing-a preliminary contrastive rhetoric study of farsi and english

to explore the idea the investingation proposed, aimed at finding whether the performances of the population of iranians students studying english in an efl context are consistent in l1 and l2 writing taks and whether there is a cross-linguistic transfer in this respect. in this regard the subjects were instructed to write four compositions-two in english and two in farsi-which consisted of an ...

On the First and Second Language Acquisition of Spatial Language