Frequency Effects in Language Processing: A Review with Implications for Theories of Implicit and Explicit Language Acquisition.
TLDR
For instance, the authors shows how language processing is intimately tuned to input frequency and the implications of these effects for the representations and developmental sequence of SLA, and concludes by considering the history of frequency as an explanatory concept in theoretical and applied linguistics, its 40 years of exile, and its necessary reinstatement as a bridging variable that binds the different schools of language acquisition research.Abstract:
This article shows how language processing is intimately tuned to input frequency. Examples are given of frequency effects in the processing of phonology, phonotactics, reading, spelling, lexis, morphosyntax, formulaic language, language comprehension, grammaticality, sentence production, and syntax. The implications of these effects for the representations and developmental sequence of SLA are discussed. Usage-based theories hold that the acquisition of language is exemplar based. It is the piecemeal learning of many thousands of constructions and the frequency-biased abstraction of regularities within them. Determinants of pattern productivity include the power law of practice, cue competition and constraint satisfaction, connectionist learning, and effects of type and token frequency. The regularities of language emerge from experience as categories and prototypical patterns. The typical route of emergence of constructions is from formula, through low-scope pattern, to construction. Frequency plays a large part in explaining sociolinguistic variation and language change. Learners' sensitivity to frequency in all these domains has implications for theories of implicit and explicit learning and their interactions. The review concludes by considering the history of frequency as an explanatory concept in theoretical and applied linguistics, its 40 years of exile, and its necessary reinstatement as a bridging variable that binds the different schools of language acquisition research.read more
Citations
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Measuring Implicit and Explicit Knowledge of a Second Language: A Psychometric Study.
TL;DR: This paper conducted a psychometric study of a battery of tests designed to provide relatively independent measures of implicit and explicit knowledge, including an oral imitation test involving grammatical and ungrammatical sentences, an oral narration test, a timed grammaticality judgment test (GJT), an untimed GJT with the same content, and a metalinguistic knowledge test.
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At the interface: dynamic interactions of explicit and implicit language knowledge
TL;DR: The authors reviewed various psychological and neurobiological processes by which explicit knowledge of form-meaning associations impacts upon implicit language learning and found that implicit and explicit knowledge are dissociable but cooperative.
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TL;DR: 1. introducing second language acquisition and 2. acquiring knowledge for L2 use and 3. L2 learning and teaching.
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Language as shaped by the brain
TL;DR: This work concludes that a biologically determined UG is not evolutionarily viable, and suggests that apparently arbitrary aspects of linguistic structure may result from general learning and processing biases deriving from the structure of thought processes, perceptuo-motor factors, cognitive limitations, and pragmatics.
Journal ArticleDOI
Language Is a Complex Adaptive System: Position Paper
Clay Beckner,Richard A. Blythe,Joan L. Bybee,Morten H. Christiansen,William Croft,Nick C. Ellis,John H. Holland,Jinyun Ke,Diane Larsen-Freeman,Tom Schoenemann +9 more
TL;DR: The Language as a Complex Adaptive System (LAS) approach as discussed by the authors is a model for language acquisition that is based on a complex adaptive system consisting of multiple agents (the speakers in the speech community) interacting with one another.
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