Acquisition and development

[This comment was initially inspired by the video - Unpacking (SLA) articles - Episode 14: "Acquisition vs. Development" produced by Florencia Henshaw.]

Larsen-Freeman (2014) argues that the acquisition in second language acquisition should be changed to development. The paper is a plenary speech and as such it is a piece of writing adapted to a conference theme rather then a fully worked out position:

"Finally, and most appropriately for AILA 2011, the term Second Language Development fits well with the theme of the congress - harmony in diversity - because it recognises that there is no common endpoint at which all learners arrive" (Larsen-Freeman, 2014: 13)

We can clearly differentiate an adult's first language from a child's first language hence in this sense there is a common endpoint (similarly for an expert user and a novice user of a second language). In contrast to the acquisition-development distinction, linguistic research has looked at the property- transition distinction (Gregg 1998), character-function distinction (Chomsky, 1965 as cited in Schwartz, 1986) or What-How questions in general.

Taylor & Shanker (2003) point out that the What question is logically prior to the How question and that:

"...we should resist the commonsense view that the WHAT question is really very simple and that it is the HOW question that poses all the difficulties.

Q: 'What does the child learn?'

A: 'Why the language of her community, of course.'

Q: 'How does she learn this language?'

A: 'Well different theorists have different ideas about that...'. (Taylor & Shankar, 2003: 151)

By contrast Larsen-Freeman emphasizes How questions:

"How do the moment-to-moment aspects of language learning map onto the longer timescales of development[...]; Where do novel language behaviors come from [...]; What are the motors of change? [...]"(Larsen-Freeman, 2014: 12)

Further many different How theories may subscribe to the same What theory e.g. generativists, cognitivists or social interactionists share a common view of what is learned:

"WHAT a child acquires in acquiring a language is a grammar, conceived as internally-realised knowledge of a complex system of units (morphemes, words, signs, lexical entries etc.) and the combinatorial relations between them" (Taylor & Shankar 2003: 159)

Earlier in her plenary speech Larsen-Freeman mentions Krashen's acquisition-learning distinction as part of an informal genealogy of the term acquisition but does not consider it any further:

"Later, of course, Krashen (1982) contrasted ‘second language acquisition’ with ‘second language learning’, but that was for a different purpose." (Larsen-Freeman, 2014: 2)

I wonder if this is because in using development instead of learning Larsen-Freeman is tacitly accepting the generativist account that language grows or develops in the mind? According to Gregg (1998) generativist theory:

"...is the only well-developed theory of language competence" (Gregg, 1998: 2)

Further it is not as if the generative tradition ignores development as Chomksy, 1965 as cited in Schwartz, 1986 writes:

"A neutral scientist... should approach cognitive structures such as human language more or less as he would an organ such as the eye or heart, seeking to determine: (1) its character in a particular individual; (2) its general properties, invariant across species apart from gross defect; (3) its place in a system of such structures; (4) the course of its development in the individual; (5) the genetically determined basis for this development; (6) the factors that gave rise to this mental organ in the course of evolution. (1980a:37)" (Schwartz 1986: 123)

Larsen-Freeman points out:

"that establishing when something is acquired (i.e. defined as available for use another time) is complicated, due to the commonly observed fluctuations in performance" (Larsen-Freeman 2014: 4).

Certainly how to define when a learner has acquired some aspect of language is tricky if we only consider behaviour such as:

"...first of three consecutive two-week samples in which the morpheme is supplied in over 90% of obligatory contexts’" (Larson-Freeman 2014: 4)

But if the child who has acquired such morphemes can't respond to meta-linguistic questions about her use of such morphemes e.g. "What was that word you said?" then on what grounds can we say she has produced an instance of that morpheme?

Taylor and Shankar (2003) write:

"Language has an inherently reflexive character, the implication of which is that language is more than just a natural form of human behaviour - it is a cultural practice. Language acquisition involves both increasingly sophisticated and normalised forms of behaviour and initiation into the reflexive practices by which the speaker's culture determines WHAT particular behavioural complexes count as instances of, including what they mean." (Taylor & Shanker 2004: 167, original emphasis)

A couple of final points - another sense of acquisition to consider is that it is a property or trait of the person "in the sense of it being a part of their socialized nature" (O'Regan, 2021: 187) which contrasts with Larsen-Freeman's sense of property in a legal/commercial sense; and a system whether as a complex or simple system is already to objectify language.

References

Gregg, K. (1998). Access to what? Access by what? In Presentation at the Second Language Research Forum. (http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/NetWorks/NW09/gregg.pdf)

Larsen-Freeman, D. (2015). Saying what we mean: Making a case for ‘language acquisition’to become ‘language development’. Language Teaching, 48(4), 491-505.

O’Regan, J. P. (2021). Global English and political economy: An immanent critique. Routledge.

Schwartz, B. D. (1986). The epistemological status of second language acquisition. Interlanguage studies bulletin (Utrecht), 2(2), 120-159.

Taylor, T.J., Shanker, S.G., 2003. Rethinking language acquisition: what children learn. In: Davis, H., Taylor, T.J. (Eds.), Rethinking Linguistics. (pp. 151–170). Routledge,London.