#3

WILD CHILD
#5: I think Victor's case supports the Critical Period Hypothesis because it supports the idea that "children have only a limited number of years during which normal acquisition is possible" (Saville 82). Although Victor was able to understand the form of words based on his ability to correctly match household items with their corresponding representations, I don't think he would have had the ability to use those words to project different meanings or be able to use them in any syntactic context. However, although he wasn't able to acquire a spoken language, he was able to communicate to other people using gestures--gestures that he had to learn in the new context he found himself in.



One of the models that Chapter Four tackles in trying to explain how languages are acquired is the Competition Model. Researched by Brian MacWhinney (1945), the Competition Model assumes that "all linguistic performance involves 'mapping' between external form and internal function" (Saville 78). In short, we view words as items that have both form and function. The form of a word is represented by the sounds we make in trying to pronounce the word while the function involves the meaning of the word.
This model further stipulates that L1 learning requires an understanding of this form-function mapping. However, once you've internalized this mapping system, you can then be able to modify it to suit your target language.

I found this interesting because I realized that this is what I've mostly been doing in trying to learn Japanese. I'm using my knowledge of English (how it is grammatically, semantically) in hope of understanding the grammar of Japanese. Just like Saville states, one of the similarities that both Japanese and English have is their reliance on inflections in conveying a meaning. In knowing this, I could just easily modify my mapping system of English to cater to my Japanese. I've also found interesting is the fact that I'm now using my knowledge in L2 in order to acquire another language instead of my L1.