Seven Trivia of Language Acquisition
Wolfgang Klein · Language acquisition & language disorders · 1991
You know that much," said the wise man to the explorer, "but your knowledge is not really forceful.You know all these things about the sun, when it rises and when it sets, how far away it is and how hot.But I know a formula, and when I spell it, the sun begins to shine.Do you know such a formula?" -"No," said the explorer, "I am impressed.And this formula really works?" -"On occasion, at least," said the wise man, "but you don't even have a formula, do you ?"The first aim of scientific research cannot be the mere accumulation of knowledge.It must try to uncover the general principles behind the masses of particular findings: It must eventually come up with a "theory."There is surely no disagreement among researchers of any orientation or discipline on this general point although opinions substantially vary on how such a theory should look, both in general and in the particular case, what might constitute a sufficient factual base for it (Newton's hypotheses non fingo seems no longer trendy), or how to evaluate the relative merits of more theoretical versus more descriptive contributions.Language acquisition research is no exception.Indeed, be it due 1.This paper is based on the first part of a talk given at the Stanford conference "Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory," July 1987.A fuller version will appear under the title "Theory of Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory" in Ferguson and Huebner (1989).I wish to thank several colleagues, especially W. Levelt, for critical and helpful comments on drafts of this paper.This statement is obviously true for second-language (L2) acquisition, where full mastery is rare, anyway.It is not always realized, however, that the statement holds for first-language (L1) acquisition as well.We are sometimes surprised and pleased how rapidly children grasp certain features of the language to be learned, especially if they are our own children.However, this impression must not lead us to premature conclusions.Clearly, a normal child rarely shows