Arabic-L:LING:More about bilingualism

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Wed 15 Jan 2003
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1) Subject:More about bilingualism

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1)
Date:  15 Jan 2003
From: dwilmsen <dwilmsen at aucegypt.edu>
Subject:More about bilingualism

Hello all,
This is a story posted to the evolutionary psychology list, originally
reported on the
discovery channel.  I can provide URLs on request.
It compels me to alter my own position on adult bilingualism.
Note that in the piece the term "fluency" is still left undefined.

David Wilmsen
Arabic and Translation Studies
American University in Cairo

Study: Children Make Better Bilinguals
By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

Jan. 9 — There is a "critical period" for learning a second language,  
according to a study by German and Italian scientists.

The research, published in the journal Neuron, confirms the common  
assumption
that childhood is the best time to learn language.

"The younger, the better. In our investigation, functional magnetic  
resonance
imaging has shown that our brain seems to have the need for additional  
resources when a
language is learned late. This doesn't happen when a language is  
acquired since birth or
at a very early stage," co-author Stefano Cappa, head of the psychology  
faculty at the
San Raffaele Vita-Salute University in Milan, told Discovery News.

"Obviously, this doesn't mean that one cannot learn a language in adult  
age
and be perfectly fluent. However, the effort and application are  
different — when
dealing with grammar, the brain will continue to treat the second  
language in a different
way compared to the mother tongue," he said.
The research involved 32 healthy, right-handed Italian-German  
bilinguals, who
learned the second language at different ages and had different  
proficiency levels.
All of the subjects were living in Germany at the time of the  
experiment. With
Italian defined as the first language, the individuals were divided  
into three groups.
One group had learned the second language as children; a second group  
acquired
it later in life but easily; a third group learned it late and not so  
well.
The subjects were tested with sentences containing grammatical  
mistakes, such
as "the cats likes hunting the mice," in both languages.
When grammatical judgement in the second language was compared to  
grammatical
judgement in first language, no difference in brain activation appeared  
in the
group of people who learned the second language as children.
But in the other two groups — the people who acquired the second  
language late
and with different proficiency levels — an MRI showed significantly  
more activity in
the Broca's region during second language grammatical processing.  
Broca's region is an
area in the front left side of the brain, at the temple, that is  
thought to be used in
producing speech.
"This finding suggests that at the level of brain activity, the parallel
learning of the two languages since birth or the early acquisition of a  
second language are
crucial in the setting of the neural substrate for grammar," wrote the  
researchers.
The study, which supports the biological theory of language development
American linguist Noam Chomsky formulated in the 1950s, would suggest a  
neurological
reason why people perfectly fluent in one language sometimes encounter  
when mastering a
second.
"This study confirms the importance of learning a second language in  
the first
years of life. It also confirms the validity of generative grammar and  
its applications
in biophysiological researches," Andrea Moro, professor of linguistics  
at the
University of
Bologna and at the University San Raffaele in Milan, said.

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End of Arabic-L:  15 Jan 2003