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From: feit@sunybcs.uucp (Elissa Feit)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Language Learning
Message-ID: <6554@sunybcs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 15-Nov-87 18:47:34 EST
Article-I.D.: sunybcs.6554
Posted: Sun Nov 15 18:47:34 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 16-Nov-87 06:55:13 EST
References: <1966@uwmacc.UUCP> <12400009@iuvax>
Sender: nobody@sunybcs.UUCP
Reply-To: feit@gort.UUCP (Elissa Feit)
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Computer Science
Lines: 31

In article <12400009@iuvax> merrill@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu writes:
>
>The best data along these lines come from Japanese adults trying to
>learn English as a second language.  Japanese, like related Asian
>languages, does not contain the [r]/[l] pair; thus, speakers of
>Japanese do not learn to discriminate between these two phonemes very
>well.  Even if adults are taught artificially to make the distinction in
>speech, no matter how patiently---thus getting around the "see doggie
>run" kind of argument---they *do not* acquire any statistically
>significant skill in recognizing these two phones.  It seems to me
>that this fact indicates that there is a real crystalization effect.

  I have read that the "crystalization" here occurs at about
  1 or 1 1/2  years of age and has to do primarily with audio 
  perception. Supposedly, we form our audio pathways
  early and they DON'T develop further.

	[An interesting sideline : supposedly, there is a phoneme in
	 (eastern) Indian languages not found in English. Then people who
	 were not exposed to Hindu at an early age cannot recognize
	 this sound. (I can't verify this - I've never heard it  8-)
	 Perhaps an Indian on the net would be so kind?) ]

  The argument to support this claim comes from the fact that
  adults who were exposed to the *sound* of a language as babies,
  but who were removed from that environment and did not learn
  the language, learnt it as adults with "native" pronunciations.
  In fact, these adults had little or no difficulty with those
  phonemes in question!
	
  					- Elissa