A Unified Model for L1 and L2

1. A Unified Model for L1 and L2 • Brian MacWhinney • HKIEd, Carnegie Mellon

2. Thanks to ... • Elizabeth Bates Michèle Kail Kerry Kilborn • Csaba Pléh Klaus Köpcke Maryellen MacDonald • Julia Evans Natasha Tokowicz Ovid Tzeng • Ping Li Igor Farkas Arturo Hernandez • Yoshinori Sasaki Richard Wong Antonella Devescovi • Reinhold Kliegl Jeff Sokolov Beverly Wulfeck • Vera Kempe Janet McDonald Hasan Taman • Elena Pizzuto Stan Smith Dan Slobin • Roman Taraban Patricia Brooks Zhou Jing • Yuki Yoshimura Melita Kovacevic Joe Stemberger • Chris Jones Jared Leinbach Christophe Parisse • Yvan Rose Kees De Bot Phil Pavlik • Nora Presson Yanping Dong Anat Prior • Yanhui Zhang Sue-mei Wu • NIMH (25 years) NSF (10 years) MacArthur (3 years)

3. Economic Assumptions • Competence in English is crucial for success in the global economy. • But most of the population of the world does not speak English as L1. So English is L2. Other L2s have parallel roles. • It is not enough to restrict L2 competence to the elite, since work is becoming increasingly based on language skills. • Different social and economic configurations will require differing levels of L2 competence.

4. Position 1: Early Immersion • There is a Critical Period for language learning. • There is a learning/acquisition dichotomy. Late bilinguals can never achieve full L2 competence. • Therefore, we must start immersion L2 programs at the pre-primary level. • And spend billions of dollars in exposure, but not really teaching.

5. Position 2: Focus on community • There is a Critical Period and a learning/acquisition dichotomy. • However, immersion will not work and can conflict with other goals in early childhood education. • Pre-college education should be in the native language. • Full bilingualism is only possible if the community becomes bilingual.

6. Position 3: Focus on quality • There is no critical period for second language learning, although there are important age effects. • Critical period effects are due to entrenchment and competition. • What is important is not the timing of learning, but the quality of exposure. • We may still need billions of dollars, but in teaching, not just exposure. • Languages can be learnt and taught. There is no real learning/acquisition dichotomy.

7. The Positions • Position 1 -- UG: Chomsky, Lenneberg, Krashen, Long, Hurford, Pinker, Newport, Meisel • Position 2 -- Sociolinguistics: Fishman, Swain, Ervin-Tripp, Gumperz • Position 3 -- Emergentism: Bates, Ellis, Bialystok, Snow, MacWhinney, Ringbom

8. 7 Pillars of UG • Critical Period -- today’s focus • Grammar Gene • Speech is Special • Modularity • Poverty of the Stimulus • Sudden Evolution of Language • Centrality of Recursion

9. 7 pillars of emergentism • L1-L2 competition and entrenchment • Gradual evolution • Modules are made not born • Polygenic emergent genome • Speech relies on mammalian abilities • Learning on input • Emergence of recursion

10. Which will stand?

11. Entrenchment vs. Critical Periods • Critical Periods are linked to infancy. • Observed drop is not precipitous. • Lateralization is not linked to CP. • Language is not a unitary ability. • Golf, ballet are also age-related. • No mechanism has been discovered. • UG-related syntactic patterns are not strongly fossilized - Birdsong

12. Critical Periods • Bee dance, cricket song • Does the ability need a trigger? • When does it start and end?

13. L1 CP≠ L2 CP L’enfant Sauvage by François Truffaut Truffaut as Dr. Jean Itard

14. How many CPs? • 6 mos -- deaf children • 2 -- Early bilingual impacts • 5 -- Output phonology Flege • 8 -- Korean adoptees, literacy, orthography • 13 -- Hemispherectomies, synaptic pruning • 15 -- Shift in learning, growth of strategies • 20 -- Beginning of decline • 40 -- Social difficulties

15. Where is the critical drop? • Newport & Johnson Hakuta actual

16. A real CP - Hubel & Weisel

17. What we know • Critical periods are basic to embryology. • Critical periods for binocular vision in cats; periods for exposure to song in birds; precocial bird attachment; • Animals have many instincts; but is language an instinct? • Kuhl and Werker: brain locks in on early sounds • Bosch, Juszyck: Auditory system builds early contrasts • Rosenzweig rats in rich environments get bigger brains.

18. A bridge too far • No evidence for early brain effects • Mozart for babies • Linda Acredolo and Baby Signs • Mobiles, language while you sleep • Suzuki method • There is nothing wrong with early L2 learning, but no evidence that it is indispensable • Early bilingualism ≠ Early L2 learning

19. CP for holding pens?

20. Chopsticks?

21. Multiple language abilities • Bulgarian grad student who wrote at the top of the class, but had a noticeable accent. • Hungarian diplomat with perfect English, but nothing to say. • Japanese grad student with perfect interaction and comprehension, but impossible definite articles and slow test-taking. • Fossilization for specific German nouns vs. fossilization for some past tenses.

22. How can we decide? • Neurological evidence for a Critical Period • Immigrant studies • Proof of success in native acquisition for age of arrival well past the Critical Period. • Proof of failure after some early age of arrival. • L2 Classroom studies • Big correlational analyses (questionable method) • Randomized clinical trials (if we could get funding) • Microgenetic method studies (my current preference) • experiments -- can we teach r/l? • online methods • TalkBank video methods

23. Mechanisms of UG • Genes • Modules • Principles, Parameters, Rules

24. Mechanisms of Emergence • Entrainment, physical and social • Adaptation, selection • Competition, strength, reinforcement • Maps, topology, short connections • Self-organized criticality • Resonance • Homeostasis, homeorhesis, feedback

25. Why the shift to emergentism? • Without advanced methods, emergentist cognitive science was not possible • We didn’t have CHILDES, TalkBank • Audio, video analysis was primitive • We couldn’t simulate - PDP, SOM, ART • We couldn’t image the brain - ERP, fMRI • We couldn’t study learning in vivo - PSLC. • With these advances, emergentism is becoming the default stance.

26. Unified Competition Model competition chunking maps buffers resonance transfer codes mental models

27. L1 and L2 • The learning goals are the same. • The available mental processes are the same. • However, the specific challenges are different.

28. L1 Learning Challenges • Segmenting out words • Organizing phonological gestures • Bootstrapping syntax • Conversational sequencing

29. L2 Challenges • Maximizing positive transfer • Avoiding negative transfer • Overcoming age effects • Using resonance to overcome entrenchment • Proceduralizing declarative structures - Ullman/Paradis

30. Component Theories • Competition interactive activation, Bayes • Maps SOM, entrenchment • Transfer A relation between maps • Chunking chunking theory, fluency • Buffers processing load, CAPS • Resonance memory theory, Pimsleur, coding • Mental model perspective, embodiment • Codes sociolinguistics, identification

31. 1. Cue Competition • Whodunit? • The tiger pushes the bear. • The bear the tiger pushes. • Pushes the tiger the bear. • The dogs the eraser push. • The dogs the eraser pushes. • The cat push the dogs. • Il gatto spingono i cani.

32. Cues vary across languages • English: The pig loves the farmer • SV > VO > Agreement • German: Das Schwein liebt den Bauer. • Den Bauer liebt das Schwein • Case > Agreement > Animacy>Word Order • Spanish: El cerdo quiere al campesino. • Al campesino le quiere el cerdo. • "Case" > Agreement > Clitic > Animacy > Word Order

33. Device Example Cues Word Order the dog chases the cat Function words der - die - das Affixes was tak-en Clitics nous, le, ba Constructions the more -- the merrier

34. Central Claim • Cue validity predicts cue strength • (Bayesian statistics) • [p(function)|form] - comprehension • [p(form)|function] - production • Cue validity measured in corpora • Cue strength measured in experiments

35. Cues Compete The bear the tigers chases. “Tigers”-as-Agent “Bear”-as-Agent competes preverbal position SV agreement Initial Position

36. L1/L2 Competition I often go ... / Je vais souvent ... V + Adv Adv + V competes speaking English: speaking French: ADV 1st ADV 2nd Heavy Adv

37. Strength measured in experiments

38. English Children

39. Hungarian Children

40. Italian Children

41. English L1, Dutch L2 Dissertations by Janet McDonald and Kerry Kilborn

42. Dutch L1, English L2

43. Findings - 22 studies • Validity predicts Strength. • Children and L2 learners pick up frequent cues first, then they settle on reliable cues. • For timed tasks, strong fast cues dominate. • L2 learners attempt transfer, but then learn cues, as in L1. They gradually reach L1 levels of cue strength.

44. 2. Maps • Maps are central to the processing theory. They control transfer, entrenchment, and embodied encoding. • Maps are emergent: • Neural systems: Jacobs & Jordan 1992 • Children: Karmiloff-Smith 1997 • Robots: Nolfi 1996, Tani 2002

45. Self-organizing lexical maps Li, Farkas, MacWhinney - Neural network - computer simulation - L1 lexical learning - CHILDES input - no initial organization - short connections

46. Gradual Emergence 50, 150, 250, 500 words

47. Refining competition

48. Word Form Phonological Bilingual self-organization Phonological Map ENGLISH PHONOLOGY Self-organization CHINESE PHONOLOGY ASSOCIATIVE CONNECTIONS (Hebbian learning) Word Meaning Co-occurrence-based representation (derived from separate component exposed to bilingual corpus) Self-organization CHCHINESE SEMANTICS ENGLISH SEMANTICS Semantic Map Chinese Phonology Chinese Semantics

49. Maps implement entrenchment • Strong items dominate over weak. • Late L2 items are parasitic on pre-existing L1 forms and maps

50. Module Entrenchment Simultaneous Bilingualism LX LY balanced Successive Bilingualism L1 L2 dominates