Distributional Learning as a Theory of Language Acquisition

Different writers, linguists, and researchers present nuances in language acquisition theories. However, few studies explore in-service teachers’ voices in such discourses. It is, therefore, imperative to explore the voices of in-service teachers in such narratives as they teach emergent bilinguals (EBs) and culturally and linguistically diverse students. This paper examined how in-service teachers perceive First Language Acquisition (FLA) theories and how those perceptions influence teaching EBs and informing classroom practice. Centering on Freeman and Freeman’s discussion of five FLA theories (imitation, reinforcement, behaviorist, social interaction, active construction, connectionist), we argue that in-service teachers’ perceptions of first language acquisition theories impact how they teach and engage EBs in their classrooms. Findings show that in-service teachers consider the social interaction theory most beneficial to students’ language development. However, the precariousness of FLA theories makes it challenging for them to determine the best approach to teaching EBs. Additionally, teacher education programs and critical professional development (PD) courses are instrumental in fostering understanding and robust pedagogical mindsets and preparing teachers to meet the needs of emergent bilinguals.

We show that the class of string languages generated by linear context-free rewriting systems is equal to the class of output languages of deterministic tree-walking transducers. From equivalences that have previously been established we know that this class of languages is also equal to the string languages generated by context-free hypergraph grammars, multicomponent tree-adjoining grammars, and multiple context-free grammars and to the class of yields of images of the regular tree languages under finite-copying top-down tree transducers.

One of the goals of second language acquisition research is to contribute to the development of a theory that can answer intriguing issues related to the role of first language in development and the extent to which universal principles of linguistic organization (universal grammar) guide the development of second language learners’ mental grammars for the target language. This study homes in on contributing to this goal by investigating how speakers of Lattakian Syrian Arabic acquire English indefinite RRCs. Based on the well-known properties of restrictive relative clauses in English, the account that best fits the data of English is the traditional operator movement analysis, while for Lattakian Syrian Arabic a clitic left-dislocation account offers the best fit. In this study, learners of different proficiency levels (as measured by an independent proficiency test) completed a grammaticality judgement task, a guided gap-filling task and a translation task. Results show partial first language influence at early stages of learning and persistent influence in later stages of learning, but specifically on properties that involve uninterpretable features. The findings largely support the theoretical position that argues for fundamental differences in native speaker and L2 syntactic representations. The implications of these findings for theories of second language acquisition are considered.

Abstract: It is argued that there is a paradigm gap that has prevented research on second‐language acquisition (SLA) theory and indigenized varieties of English (IVEs) from making substantive contributions to each other. While it is true that studies of IVEs and their acquisition have been impressionistic (non‐empirical) and often atheoretical, the lack of rapprochement is also due to SLA theory's excessive reliance for its models on acquisition in native‐speaker environments and ignorance of the dynamics of language use in multilingual settings. This has resulted in the neglect and misunderstanding of IVEs. It is shown that IVEs represent a number of significant sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic variables, the investigation of which will put SLA theory on firmer theoretical ground and give it greater explanatory power.

This descriptive-correlational study used a sample of 100 students chosen through purposive selection to assess the English proficiency levels of college students at Sulu State University for the Academic Year 2025–2026. Weighted mean, standard deviation, one-way ANOVA, t-tests for independent samples, and Pearson's r were among the statistical techniques used in the investigation. Important conclusions include: 1) According to the respondents' demographic profile, the majority are female, between the ages of 21 and 31, have parents who only completed elementary school, and make an average of 10,000 pesos or less per month. 2) It was discovered that college students had a high level of overall English language competency. According to the study, a number of elements, including environmental influences, educational experiences, and individual motivation, are important in determining how well kids speak English. Students' proficiency levels are significantly influenced by factors like motivation, cognitive abilities, and emotional aspects like anxiety and self-confidence.3) However, factors like gender, age, parental education, and family income did not significantly mediate how students assessed their English proficiency levels. 4) The study found a significant relationship between students' competence in comparison to peers, the degree of influencing factors, and the significance of these elements with regard to English proficiency.5) The results also support Krashen's Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Theory (1982), with a focus on the Affective Filter Hypothesis, which holds that learners' emotions, including motivation and anxiety, can have a major impact on language acquisition. In conclusion, this study highlights the significance of diverse influences on English language proficiency among the college population while aligning with established language acquisition theories. The Input Hypothesis was also highlighted, indicating that language exposure slightly exceeding the student's current ability is crucial for effective learning.

This paper has three goals: (i) to present a partial description of the intricate semantic selectional restrictions on the noun phrases in what we call here the Causal Have Construction (CHC), (ii) to show that four- and five-year old children are sensitive to these selectional restrictions without much exposure to CHCs, and (iii) to discuss some implications of these findings for theories of language and language acquisition. Our interest in this topic derives from the possibilities it opens up for a deeper understanding of the organization of the mental structures that give rise to these semantic selectional facts, an understanding which we believe implicates an intricate and nontrivial interaction between grammatical and conceptual knowledge.

The complexity and importance of learning programming fundamentals (i.e., sequences of sentences that express actions, conditions, and repetitions in computing) for undergraduate students has motivated the development of an intense educational research area. One frequently studied problem is the difficulty in the learning of traditional context-free grammars which are present, for example, in programming languages such as Pascal and C. This study experimentally investigates the use of natural language in the learning of programming fundamentals by two groups of undergraduate students without prior knowledge of programming and compares its use with that of a traditional grammar language. Results suggest that the use of natural language is a good alternative, despite the small differences, to the use of traditional programming languages defined by context-free grammars. This alternative is attractive and promising because the student does not need to learn a formal grammar to learn the fundamentals of programming.

There are discrepancies between matrix and subordinate clauses that call for explanation, particularly the apparent fact that computational operations may affect matrix but not subordinate clauses, and not vice versa. Explanations were offered in the 1970’s through principles of Universal Grammar but those principles became unstatable as theories of UG developed and the explanations were lost. This volume and other venues present descriptive work on such discrepancies, often exploiting the multiplicity of functional categories made available by cartographic approaches to syntax. But little is said about how to explain the discrepancies. This paper develops an explanatory approach through theories of language acquisition under which children seek cues only in simple domains, defined in terms of Binding Domains and not clauses. The fact that some cues are not expressed in embedded Binding Domains must then follow from independent properties of embedded Domains.

The methods by which English as a Second Language can be taught and learnt in a Virtual World (VW) are explored in this study of an online community of language learners from around the world. Theories of language acquisition are invoked and the affordances required for current methods of teaching and learning a second language in the physical world (PW) and online in Skype and VWs are compared and discussed. There are descriptions of the resources created and used by the ELIP~Homewood (E~H) group in their OpenSim world and accounts of their activities there and in Second Life (SL). The E~H Grid has been running since July 2010 and in some ways the project is just beginning as the students themselves design and create new places, buildings, objects and resources for their own enjoyment and learning and as their world evolves in a Language Learning project which meets many of the principles of immersion and of naturalistic, acquisition oriented and task-based language learning.

Much of Lieven’s pioneering work has helped move the study of individual differences to the centre of child language research. The goal of the present chapter is to illustrate how the study of individual differences provides crucial insights into the language acquisition process. In part one, we summarise some of the evidence showing how pervasive individual differences are across the whole of the language system; from gestures to morphosyntax. In part two, we describe three causal factors implicated in explaining individual differences, which, we argue, must be built into any theory of language acquisition (intrinsic differences in the neurocognitive learning mechanisms, the child’s communicative environment, and developmental cascades in which each new linguistic skill that the child has to acquire depends critically on the prior acquisition of foundational abilities). In part three, we present an example study on the role of the speed of linguistic processing on vocabulary development, which illustrates our approach to individual differences. The results show evidence of a changing relationship between lexical processing speed and vocabulary over developmental time, perhaps as a result of the changing nature of the structure of the lexicon. The study thus highlights the benefits of an individual differences approach in building, testing, and constraining theories of language acquisition.

First Language Acquisition is a complex phenomenon and it has been debated for decades by theorists and researchers. The biological foundations of language such as Chomsky’s LAD and the obvious influence of external stimuli have resulted in many different schools of thought for language acquisition. This paper explores different theories of language acquisition and presents their features as well as their criticisms. It also outlines the differences between acquisition and learning, and presents the stages of language acquisition. This study’s primary aim is to explore what role nurture plays in the early stages of development of language. The researcher would explore this question by conducting a survey based on the time of onset of speech in the siblings’ first language. This survey is being conducted because siblings get the same kind of environment but the younger siblings have a comparatively more favorable language environment as they get the stimulus from the parents as well as their elder siblings. The researcher has done a comparative survey on the onset of speech between the siblings and analyzed the results to draw the conclusion of this paper. The researcher has systematically collected data from language learning schools in China and Pakistan. Data is gathered from 100 parents of the children who have more than one child and are learning second language in an institution. Out of the 100 participants, 52 were Chinese and 48 were Pakistanis. Quantitative method of research is adopted for analyzing the data collected in the survey. Questionnaire is used as a data collection tool which consists of open-ended and close-ended questions. Later in analysis section, data is comprehensively examined and investigated. Earlier onset of speech in first child and second child was analyzed in which the ratio is 31% and 69% respectively and out of 100 participants only 8% of the siblings had same time of onset of speech. Research shows that earlier onset of speech results comprised of 56% of girls as compared to 44% of boys. Research on language learners through their parents’ feedback concludes that both nature and nurture play an important role in the development of language acquisition. This is because we need our genes and brain to build a language acquisition device (LAD), and then, after we have the ability to learn a language and interact with people around us, we gradually acquire words and grammar, and our language system is then complete.

The English “good and” intensifier is discussed as an example of a form that is acceptable even though ungrammatical, both synchronically and diachronically. The construction is analyzed as a case of creative analogy: the extension of a grammatically generated form to a new function, one for which it has no direct grammatical justification. From the perspective of a “dynamic” theory of language acquisition and evolution, it is argued that such forms constitute a new sort of evidence regarding the nature of language universals.

This paper might have been subtitled : "prolegomenon to an exploration of meaning interpretation in the textuallymediated, activity-oriented, L2 jigsaw paradigm". An original jigsaw reading activity for foreign language learners is described; the exercise is made up from young people's L1 books. This forms a basis for a discussion on a wide range of issues which may be raised concerning two interdépendant aspects : the practical considerations of its use in the classroom and the more theoretical implications of the jigsaw reading technique for foreign language learning. The issues include : the rationale and nature of jigsaw reading; ethnomethodological and applied linguistics perspectives on reading and on jigsaw reading; the pedagogic use of text; the type of language used in the exercise described and its congruence with theories of language acquisition and of reading activity in a foreign language.

Bruce L. Derwing: Transformational grammar as a theory of language acquisition: a study in the empirical, conceptual and methodological foundations of contemporary linguistics. (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 10.) xii, 346 pp. Cambridge: University Press, 1973. £6.60. - Volume 37 Issue 3

This chapter explores the author’s attempts to engage in problematização when using a colleague’s syllabus to teach a semester-long course titled Study of English, a sociolinguistic course focused on the history of English; the relationship between English and social and political contexts in which it is spoken, heard, read, and written; as well as theories of language acquisition. The essay focuses on the author’s use of guiding questions as a way to generate problematização. The essay identifies three influences on the development of these questions: Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Sandro Barros’s re-translation of Freirean concepts, and the ongoing conversation about Critical Language Awareness (CLA) occurring in the fields of literacy education and English education. After establishing the theoretical underpinnings of the essential questions, the essay shows how these essential questions impacted daily routines, small and large group activities, and the projects students created. The essay ends by arguing that students and teachers in the class made three things through problematização: sense, mess, and—hopefully—nothing.