The prerequisites of language acquisition are cognitive and pragmatic. The child's conceptual development and social needs direct his attention to particular linguistic forms. These provide an efficient selection device enabling the child to match his language learning task with his abilities. The second language learner who is cognitively and…

This report contains 23 papers dealing with various aspects of bilingualism: E. Haugen, "Linguistics and Dialinguistics"; R.J. DiPietro, "The Discovery of Universals in Multilingualism"; J. Macnamara, "Bilingualism and Thought"; J. A. Fishman, "The Politics of Bilingual Education"; V. John, "Cognitive Development in the Bilingual Child"; D. Hymes,…

"How does a child come to be able to relate his own experience to the formal means of communicating about that experience in the language to which he is exposed?" The author maintains that the innate predispositions that underlie the development of the cognitive ability to organize and structure experience also underlie the acquisition of the…

Certain proposed theories on second language acquisition, their justifications, and their predictions about English are examined in this paper. The first section discusses the process of second language acquisition; the stages and strategies learners use and progress through on their way to mastery are described. The second section discusses the…

This book brings together the contributions of individual language scholars, linguists, anthropologists, psychologists, and neurophysicians. Each chapter focuses on the human cognitive processes involved in language activity and the impact of language diversity on them. The basic issue is how to correlate language diversity with the universality…