acquisition (n.)

In the study of the growth of LANGUAGE in children, a term referring to the process or result of learning (acquiring) a particular aspect of a language, and ultimately the language as a whole. Child language acquisition (or first-language acquisition) is the label usually given to the field of studies involved. The subject has involved the postulation of ‘stages’ of acquisition, defined chronologically, or in relation to other aspects of behavior, which it is suggested apply generally to children; and there has been considerable discussion of the nature of the learning strategies which are used in the process of acquiring language, and of the criteria which can decide when a STRUCTURE has been acquired. Some theorists have made a distinction between ‘acquisition’ and development, the former referring to the learning of a linguistic RULE (of GRAMMAR, PHONOLOGY, SEMANTICS), the latter to the further use of this rule in an increasingly wide range of linguistic and social situations. Others see no clear distinction between these two facets of language learning, and use the terms interchangeably. The term child language development has also come to be used for DISCOURSE-based studies of child language.

In early GENERATIVE linguistics, the term language acquisition device (LAD) was introduced to refer to a model of language learning in which the infant is credited with an INNATE predisposition to acquire linguistic structure. This view is usually opposed to those where language acquisition is seen as a process of imitation-learning or as a reflex of cognitive development. See also BEHAVIOURISM, EMERGENTISM, INNATENESS.

Acquisition is also used in the context of learning a foreign language: ‘foreign-’ or ‘second-language’ acquisition is thus distinguished from ‘first-language’ or ‘mother-tongue’ acquisition. In this context, acquisition is sometimes opposed to learning: the former is viewed as an environmentally natural process, the primary force behind foreign-language fluency; the latter is seen as an instructional process which takes place in a teaching context, guiding the performance of the speaker.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

قسم الشؤون الطبية يقدم الخدمات الصحية والعلاجية لزائري مدينة سامراء

العتبة العباسية المقدسة تقدم خدماتها لزائري مرقد الإمامين العسكريين (عليهما السلام) في سامراء

المجمَع العلمي ووفد وزارة التربية يبحثان سبل التعاون المشترك

قسم الشؤون الفكرية يصدر العدد 192 من مجلة الرياحين للأطفال

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

كنز غذائي على طبقك.. ماذا تفعل السبانخ بجسمك؟

ما لا يتوقعه أحد.. "سر غذائي" في الجبن الدسم

لتحسين الهضم والنوم.. هذا أفضل وقت لتناول العشاء

10 طرق بسيطة وغير مألوفة لحرق المزيد من السعرات يوميا

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

سابقة بعالم الطيران.. طائرة تقرر الهبوط بنفسها بعد ظرف طارئ

"الإنفلونزا الخارقة" تكتسح دول العالم.. وتثير قلقا كبيرا

مرحلة ما قبل الأعراض.. دواء جديد يستهدف "شرارة" الزهايمر

إزالة ثاني أكسيد الكربون من الغلاف الجوي.. ما دور المحيطات والبحار؟

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Constituent structure

A typology of word structure

Analyzing position classes

Representing word structure

Different kinds of morphemes

Morphemes Definition of “morpheme”

Analyzing word structure

Mirror in nominal morphology

Appendix 2: Hapax legomena from the Cobuild corpus

Appendix 1: 20th century neologisms from the OED

Morphological Productivity Structural Constraints in English Derivation Conclusion

Verbal derivation and the separation hypothesis