LAZ Listening Exam 1 – Level B1
Prof. Peter Cullen
supplemental
Spring 2014
Text
Elisa Newport was one of the first to suggest that we should not think of children’s learning
proficiency in terms of the function of special language learning system. She suggests
that the relationship might be reversed. Language structures may have preferentially
adapted to children’s learning limitations because languages that are more easily acquired
at an early age will tend to replicate more rapidly and with greater fidelity from generation
to generation than those that take more time or neurological maturity to be mastered. As
anyone who has tried to learn a second language for the first time as an adult can confirm,
a person’s first language tends to monopolize neural-cognitive resources in ways that
make it more difficult for other languages to be remembered. So they will never be quite
as efficient. Consequently, strong social selection forces will act on language norms to
reduce the age at which they can begin to be learned. Under constant selection pressure
that pushes them to be learned at younger and younger ages, the world’s surviving
languages have evolved to permit learning at the earliest possible age. Languages may
therefore be more difficult to learn later in life only because they have evolved to be easier
to learn during the immature period of brain development. The critical period for language
learning may not be critical or time limited at all, but may really be an incidental feature of
maturity that just happened to be coopted in languages’ race to colonize younger and
younger brains.
So immaturity itself may provide part of the answer to the advantage for language learning
that Kanzi the bonobo monkey demonstrates. Kanzi’s immaturity made it easier to make
the shift from and index to a symbol reference system and made it easier to learn the
global grammatical logic hidden beneath the surface structure of spoken English. Equally
important is the fact that both the training paradigms used with Kanzi’s mother and the
structure of English syntax itself had evolved in response to the difficulties that this
learning imposes. They both spontaneously adapted to the learning patterns of immature
minds. The implications of Kanzi’s advantages are relevant to human language
acquisition because if Kanzi’s abilities are not the result of engaging some special timelimited language acquisition device in his non-human brain, then this mechanism is not
likely to provide the explanations for the language ability of human children either.
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LAZ Listening Exam 1 – Level B1
supplemental
Spring 2014
______/30
Prof. Peter Cullen
___________________________________________
Name, Date, and Registration Number
Questions: You do not have to use complete sentences! This is a listening exam.
SIMPLE AND CORRECT IS BETTER THAN COMPLICATED AND WRONG.
1. Who was Elisa Newport?
2. What do languages that can be easily acquired at an early age tend to do?
3. How do strong social selection forces act on language norms?
4. Why may languages be more difficult to learn later in life?
5. What made it easier for Kanzi the monkey to make the shift from and index to a
symbol reference system?
______/20
True or False: Write “True” or “False” in the space next to each statement
1. Newport suggests that languages may have evolved to adapt to children’s learning
limitations.
________________
2. As an adult, a person’s first language tends to monopolize neurological resources so it
is more difficult to learn another language.
________________
3. the world’s surviving languages have evolved to permit learning at the earliest possible
age.
________________
4. Kanzi is a mature Rhesus monkey.
________________
5. The implications of Kanzi’s learning advantages are not relevant to our understanding
of human language learning.
________________
______/10
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LAZ Listening Exam 1 – Level B1
Prof. Peter Cullen
supplemental
Spring 2014
Answer Sheet
1. Who was Elisa Newport?
one of the first to suggest that we should not think of children’s learning
proficiency in terms of the function of special language learning system
2. What do languages that can be easily acquired at an early age tend to do?
to replicate more rapidly and with greater fidelity from generation to generation than
those that take more time or neurological maturity to be mastered
3. How do strong social selection forces act on language?
Act on language norms to reduce the age at which they can begin to be learned
4. Why may languages be more difficult to learn later in life?
they have evolved to be easier to learn during the immature period of brain
development
5. What made it easier for Kanzi the monkey to make the shift from and index to a
symbol reference system?
Her immaturity
True or False: Write “True” or “False” in the space next to each statement
1
2
3
4
5
T
T
T
F
F
3