http://www.labspaces.net/100496/Babies__...m_the_womb

"From their very first days, newborns' cries already bear the mark of the language their parents speak, reveals a new study published online on November 5th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication. The findings suggest that infants begin picking up elements of what will be their first language in the womb, and certainly long before their first babble or coo."

Those are the same studies that convince mothers that reading to their children will make them smarter. Guess what? All false.

No, those aren't the same studies at all. Why are people so dismissive of scientific studies they haven't even read?

le waaaa, le waaaaaa

It makes sense as a bonding tool. Not sure why it would be a surprise an infant can hear in the womb.

Thought sound would be distorted by liquid.

I wonder what difference there would be between tonal language baby crying and non-tonal one.

Only the low frequencies get through. They've shown this is how kids acquire a basic cultural sense of timing and rhythm and some scales in music.

lol magamo

Maybe I just think this because I'm fluent in both Korean and English despite hearing very little (probably no) English while in my mother's womb what with us living in Korea mid-1980s, but I think this article is a bunch of bunk.

Even if it isn't all bunk I at least do believe that one's ability to learn a new language never ceases to exist. It is simply that adults learn language in a way much different than that of a toddler or a elementary-school aged kid.

Kids have no choice but to learn by making a lot of embarrassing mistakes and to mimic their more verbal peers (which I did a great deal for learning both Korean and English). Adults who already know a language have the option of acquiring the language not only intuitively (repeated trial and error) but also intellectually by analyzing their target language logically through a language they already know.

They aren't saying the child learns a language while in the womb.
Mimicking is a natural instinct. It seems plausible the newborn child would begin to practice reproducing subtle pitches heard while in the womb.

My interest is similar to what Magamo mused upon--the acoustic/psychoacoustic aspects. BTW, I read that tone-deaf folks don't have any problems with tonal languages, because the pitch intervals are distinct enough for them to differentiate.

Here's the abstract if it helps make what the article was saying any clearer:

"Human fetuses are able to memorize auditory stimuli from the external world by the last trimester of pregnancy, with a particular sensitivity to melody contour in both music and language [1,2,3]. Newborns prefer their mother's voice over other voices [4,5,6,7,8] and perceive the emotional content of messages conveyed via intonation contours in maternal speech (“motherese”) [9]. Their perceptual preference for the surrounding language [10,11,12] and their ability to distinguish between prosodically different languages [13,14,15] and pitch changes [16] are based on prosodic information, primarily melody. Adult-like processing of pitch intervals allows newborns to appreciate musical melodies and emotional and linguistic prosody [17]. Although prenatal exposure to native-language prosody influences newborns' perception, the surrounding language affects sound production apparently much later [18]. Here, we analyzed the crying patterns of 30 French and 30 German newborns with respect to their melody and intensity contours. The French group preferentially produced cries with a rising melody contour, whereas the German group preferentially produced falling contours. The data show an influence of the surrounding speech prosody on newborns' cry melody, possibly via vocal learning based on biological predispositions."

- http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abst...09)01824-7

Tangents: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...8#pid64588 ; http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...7#pid66247 ; http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...4#pid68464 ; http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...1#pid66571

By the way, for the less scrupulous amongst us--I mentioned http://a.aaaarg.org in that 'religion' thread, and that's for 'Theory'-related work, but I read that there's also a site for medical/science papers? Anyone know the URL? ^_^

ocircle Wrote:Kids have no choice but to learn by making a lot of embarrassing mistakes and to mimic their more verbal peers

Neither mimicking nor making mistakes has anything to do with language acquisition, just language development after the acquisition phase.

But this article is just talking about sound acclimation, not anything beyond that.

ruiner, aarg: wow...thanks

Thora Wrote:ruiner, aarg: wow...thanks

No problem... Keep it secret, keep it safe.

Mimicking in language acquisition is one of the biggest myths that countless fundamental linguistic theory shows to be completely wrong.

I'm confused as to what you mean by 'acquisition' and 'mimicry' for the purposes of the points being made here, can you clarify what you mean in this context? I ask because for me 'mimicry' is just a generalized term that can be used very loosely, and also because I strongly disagree with the Krashenic models in the sense that I think they're based on false, neurologically inaccurate divisions (ie learning vs. 'acquisition') that are too rigidly enforced at the expense of teaching/study methods.

Apologies if you find the last bit of the above to be contentious and wish to argue the point with me, I don't intend to do so, I just wanted to make my perspective (established through previous research/arguments) known in order to stress that they're loaded words and others might be similarly confused, so you can proceed with clearer purpose (of course, this comment has grown so long and yet I think I missed the boat and the thread's tangents, minor to begin with, have been forgotten).

Language Acquisition usually refers to the period where the child is automatically acquiring the grammatical structures and vocab of the language without being taught; a period everyone goes through. It is necessary for a (non-deaf) child to hear language in order to learn to speak it, but it is not necessary for a child to speak or mimic anything.

Mimicry may not be necessary to learn listening and reading, but how much can it help improve these skills? Common sense tells me that it can facilitate learning to listen to some extent and that it's necessary to learn speaking and writing.

Ahh, I want a "ruiner" app on my desktop. I type this on it, and it gives a bunch of intriguing relevant articles. I can settle for RSS (Ruiner Site Summary) too.

Unfortunately language acquisition isn't really common sense based -- it defies common sense and even explanation at many levels.

An Introduction to Language says: "Children who are unable to speak for neurological or physiological reasons learn the language spoken to them and understand what is said. When they overcome their speech impairment they immediately use the language for speaking."

I think part of the problem here comes from a lack of clear distinction between language acquisition and development of language skills after the acquisition phase. Of course speaking is useful for the latter.

So mimicry is useful only for developing muscles and such used when speaking when it comes to oral skills? It doesn't seem the argument in the excerpt excludes the possibility that mimicry can "help" acquire language.

My common sense also says I need a certain kind of mimicry to learn to write kanji because writing proper kanji is probably part of development rather than acquisition. It seems to me that writing practice can help learners learn to read new kanji too, thought it might be faster if you keep reading and only reading.

hehe, I have like 500 RSS feeds (that's after narrowing it down over the years) that I skim through regularly, looking for stuff that grabs me.

This Wikipedia article looks like a lot of mutual effort went into it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition - I think the sections like 'empiricism' and 'criticisms' highlight a lot of my doubts (about treating acquisition as an isolated domain).

But really unless the conversation turns to second-language learning, I don't guess it matters much. ;p

And ya Magamo, that goes back to why my pet theory of SRSing is based on multisensory learning--I've bastardized it for my own personal use and half-hearted forum arguments, so I won't claim, say, writing kanji is absolutely superior to just reading it, but I've convinced that it is.

Actually, even though it's 'nativist', this looks like it could inspire some interesting thoughts, I'll have to look into this fellow's article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_ac...cerebellum

You narrowed it to..., 500?

Anyway, thanks for bringing up the interesting topic. I found the journal in my university's library. I'll take a look at it.

magamo Wrote:So mimicry is useful only for developing muscles and such used when speaking when it comes to oral skills? It doesn't seem the argument in the excerpt excludes the possibility that mimicry can "help" acquire language.

The available research and evidence suggests very strongly that language acquisition is automatic for all humans as long as they are exposed to speech, and that there is nothing that needs to be done, or even that can be done, to help them acquire language.

Quote:My common sense also says I need a certain kind of mimicry to learn to write kanji because writing proper kanji is probably part of development rather than acquisition. It seems to me that writing practice can help learners learn to read new kanji too, thought it might be faster if you keep reading and only reading.

Writing systems aren't acquired naturally, they have to be learned, so the "no mimicry" thing doesn't apply at all. Reading is something that is learned by a totally different process than the acquisition of one's native language as a child.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

magamo Wrote:So mimicry is useful only for developing muscles and such used when speaking when it comes to oral skills? It doesn't seem the argument in the excerpt excludes the possibility that mimicry can "help" acquire language.

The available research and evidence suggests very strongly that language acquisition is automatic for all humans as long as they are exposed to speech, and that there is nothing that needs to be done, or even that can be done, to help them acquire language.

Quote:My common sense also says I need a certain kind of mimicry to learn to write kanji because writing proper kanji is probably part of development rather than acquisition. It seems to me that writing practice can help learners learn to read new kanji too, thought it might be faster if you keep reading and only reading.

Writing systems aren't acquired naturally, they have to be learned, so the "no mimicry" thing doesn't apply at all. Reading is something that is learned by a totally different process than the acquisition of one's native language as a child.

hehe, Sorry to keep harping on about it, but... I still don't see why these separations of 'acquisition' vs. 'learning' and the idea that there's no mimicry or means to make learning a language more efficient. It's clear there's this process of the brain interacting with the linguistic ecology, and even if one accepts there's relatively rare differences in brains that would substantively affect learning ability (which doesn't mean there's a LAD black box thingy, just means the brain allows us to learn the language in myriad ways, IMO), the mutable aspect is the language as environment, and this can be helped or hindered in many ways. Just because it's simpler than say, the advanced tools, pre-existing structures, and higher awareness (w/ less plasticity, perhaps) than an adult second-language learner, for example, this doesn't mean there's an isolated acquisition domain that's unaffected by mimicry.

The majority opinion is that the way children acquire language has nothing to do with the way one should learn a second language. That is, the fact that children do not require mimicry to acquire language says nothing about whether second-language learners should use mimicry (or how much they should use it).

The reason acquisition gets separated from learning is that it really is fundamentally different. When you think about it, it's amazing -- children who can't even tie their shoes or dress themselves are acquiring complicated grammatical patterns that stump adult second language learners, without anyone teaching them. And every single native speaker who does not have a disability does this, irrespective of intelligence, dedication, etc. You don't find people who failed to acquire the passive voice in their native language, for instance, because they didn't repeat it often enough.

So a child will not need explicit teaching, practice, or mimicking to know that you can use "less" to make comparisons (i.e. "This glass has less water than that one"). Every native speaker learns that no matter what. However, a child will possibly (depending on dialect) need teaching, practice, or mimicking to learn how to distinguish "less" and "fewer" in the prescriptive manner.

yudantaiteki Wrote:The available research and evidence suggests very strongly that language acquisition is automatic for all humans as long as they are exposed to speech, and that there is nothing that needs to be done, or even that can be done, to help them acquire language.

Interesting. I wonder how researchers know whether children are simply mimicking or actually speaking what they learned. Maybe it's neurological evidence? If that's just empirical evidence, I think those researchers had a very difficult time conducting reliable experiments that can give strong evidence. Actually kids always mimic adults, and when context matches what kids said, mimicry and actual language are indistinguishable unless they employ brain imaging or something.

Also, if the evidence is purely empirical, there is a possibility that mimicking a phrase can also be related to acquisition of seemingly unrelated phrases or even different ability such as body language. In this case, the effect of mimicry can be easily masked.

If there is a distinction between "acquisition" and "learning," I wonder if body language is "acquired" or "learned." It must be a vital part of human language, and it sure is hard to lose or acquire/learn like pronunciation. If body language is on the "acquisition" side, I wonder how researchers got the evidence that mimicry doesn't contribute to acquisition.

About writing/reading, yeah, I thought so too, hence the "development rather than acquisition" line. But what I was wondering was how much mimicry can assist development.