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

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.

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

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.

Last edited by ocircle (2009 November 05, 8:22 pm)

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/abs … 09)01824-7

Tangents: http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=67584#p67584 ; http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=69235#p69235 ; http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=71542 ; http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?pid=69590#p69590

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? ^_^

Last edited by ruiner (2009 November 05, 9:17 pm)

ruiner,   aarg:  wow...thanks

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

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.

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.

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_a … cerebellum

Last edited by ruiner (2009 November 06, 4:06 pm)

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.

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.

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.

Last edited by yudantaiteki (2009 November 06, 7:44 pm)