LANGUAGE AND COGNITION

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUSITION

A. LANGUAGE
1. The Nature of Language
When two or more people communicate with each other in speech, we can call the system
of communication that they employ as a code. In most cases that code will be something we
may also want to call as a language. It is because the code represent things that they need to
share to the other person and both of the people understand its meaning. In other words,
language is the method of human communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the
use of words in a structural and conventional way. It is to say that language is a set of
arbitrary symbols shared between members of a group in order to express feelings, thoughts
and ideas.
Language is also a phenomenon that exhibits apparent structure and regularity of
patterning while at the same time showing considerable variation at all levels: languages
differ from one another while still being patently shaped by the same principles; comparable
constructions in different languages serve similar functions and are based on similar
principles; yet differ from one another in specifiable ways; language change over time, but in
fairly regular ways. Thus it follows that a theory of language could reasonably be focused on
the dynamic processes that create languages and give them both their structure and their
variance.

Characteristics of Language
Most linguists would agree that all naturally occurring languages also share the following
characteristics:
 Language are systematic
They consist of recurrent elements which occur in regular patterns of relationship. All
languages have an infinite number of possible sentences, and vast majority of all
sentences which are used have not been memorized. They are created according to
rules or principles which speakers are usually unconscious of using – or even
knowing – if they acquired the language(s) as a young child.
 Language are symbolic
Sequences of sounds or letters do not inherently posses meaning. The meanings of
symbols in a language come through the tacit agreement of a group of speakers. For
 instance, English speakers agree that the hay-eating animal will be called a horse,
Spanish speakers caballo, German Pferd, Chinese ma, and Turkish at.
 Language are social
Each language reflects the social requirements of the society that uses it, and there is
no standard for judging whether one language is more effective for communication
than another, other than to estimate the success its users may have in achieving the
social tasks that are demanded of them. Although the capacity for first language
acquisition is inherent in the neurological makeup of every individual, no one can
develop that potential without interaction with others in the society he or she grows up
in. We use language to communicate, to categorize and catalogue the objects, events,
and processes of human experience. We might well define language at least in part as
“the expressive dimension of culture.” It follows that people who function in more
than one cultural context will communicate more effectively if they know more than
one language.
2. Aspects of Language
Language is a complex system that can be considered at multiple levels of analysis.
Every human language may be analyzed its aspects in the terms of:
 Phonology
Language does not only use in written text but also in an utterance. Therefore,
there is a sound which is produced by words of language. In Phonological area, we
can know the particular sound used in a language.
 Lexicon
Lexicon is an acceptable of a word used in every sentence of a language. How the
combination between a word and other words is an example of lexicon. Lexicon
includes the vocabularies of a language.
 Morphology
How a word can be formed and changed, it is Morphology. In addition, Prefix and
suffix are used to form a word.
 Syntax
Syntax area is a higher field to create a language than Lexicon and Morphology. In
this field, words are combined into grammatically acceptable sequences.
 Semantics
 The study of word and sentence meaning is semantics. It focuses on the way in
which words are related to another lexicon and also its grammar.
 Pragmatics
Language always relates to the context. Thus, Pragmatics focuses on the elements
outside the language such as rule for the appropriate social use and the interpretation
of language in context.

3. Kinds of Language
Mother Tongue
Mother tongue is one’s first language acquisition. It is commonly learnt at home
(usually from his parents). Someone earn their first vocabulary, creating a sentence,
and utter a speech which relate to their parents’ language habitual.
Second Language Acquisition
This term is used to refer to a language which is not a mother tongue but which is used
for certain communicative functions in a society. It is typically an official or societally
dominant language needed for education, employment, and other basic purposes.1
Furthermore, it is learned after the first language (L1 or mother tongue). For example,
English is a second language in Nigeria or French is a second language in Tahiti. This
term refers to non-native speakers who are learning, for instance, English language in
an English language environment.
A Foreign Language
It is one not widely used in the learners’ immediate social context which might be
used for future travel or other cross-cultural communication situations, or studied as a
curricular requirement or elective in school, but with no immediate or necessary
practical application.2 In other words, foreign language is a language which is not
normally used for communication in a particular society.

1
Intro sla hal 4
2
Intro sla hal 4
A. COGNITION
The Nature of Language and Cognition
Language is learned implicitly denoting that cognition has a need for language.
Cognition, or thinking, involves mental activities such as understanding, problem solving and
decision making. A child acquires a sign system closely related to cognitive factors and social
aspects in the process of language acquisition (Hickmann, 1986). However, As Campbell
(1986) points out, exploring the relationship between language acquisition and cognitive
development is to enter a very dark forest and the best advice that one can offer to a person
who wants to do research about this is ' Danger, keep off.' It may result from its incoherent
theoretical framework and failure to allocate a distinct role to consciousness.
Harris (2002) considers two ways of conceptualizing human cognition developed out of
different philosophical traditions. The first way referred to as 'general-purposed' cognition
proposes that general processes can explain all varieties of human intelligence. The tradition
of artificial intelligence emphasized general-purpose problem solving abilities.
According to the second approach, referred to as the 'modularity of cognition' or 'mental
modules' approach, many different domains of cognition exist and must be learned separately
through different mental mechanisms. The tradition of linguistics and philosophy led to an
emphasis on distinct mental modules.

Cognitive Development
There are three aspects of development; language, thought and social interaction. Here
two developmental theories, Piaget’s and Vygotsky are considered in order to inspect
language acquisition either tied to its social-interactive context of using language or self
sufficient from it.
For both Piaget and Vygotsky, a gradually complex organization of means and ends in
sensorimotor activity characterizes child early development; however, Vygotskian research
does not provide very rich details about the sensorimotor period as Piagetian research does.
Robin N Campbel (1986) viewed a principal reason has been the failure all round to
square up to task allocating a distinct role to consciousness, as it is involved in speaking,
understanding, thinking and learning. Conscious mental process are typically not
distinguished from other cognitive process either structurally (e.g in terms of their temporal
properties or the information that they manipulate) or functionally (e.g in terms of what kinds
of purposes of the organism they serve).
 In 1934 Vygostsky wrote in opening paragraphs of his Tought and language (trans, edn,
1962):
All that is known about physic development indicates that its very essence lies in the
change of the interfunctional structure of consciousness. Psychology must make these
relationship and their developmental changes the main problem, the focus of study, instead of
merely postulating the general interrelation of all functions. This shift in emphasis is
imperative for the study of language and thought.
In Piaget’s system, cognitive structures and processes are identified with symbolic
structures and processes (often called information structures and processes), which mediate
the connection of outputs from sensory mechanisms with inputs to motor mechanisms.
Through this system, cognitive structures and processes are identified with representations
and operations upon representations that are tied in an intimate way to explicit knowledge
and awareness; thus, only certain functions in certain organisms are said to involve cognitive
processes.
Explicit here is close to Chomsky’s, who often speaks of ‘tacit’ knowledge. Tacit is
knowledge which the agent is prepared to assert and assent to, knowledge which the agent is
aware that he claims. This can function in explanations of behavior, claims of further
knowledge and so forth. It might be that the rules of languages are represented in the mind of
the speaker in a fairly direct way, but are inaccessible to consciousness.3 There are good
reasons for introducing terminology related to the consciousness. Briefly, (1) the proposed
terms have clear interpretations from the point of view of the experiencing subject – what is
evident to the subject is phenic, what is hidden is cryptic; (2) that distinction drawn should be
theoretical and potentially applicable to infant and to other organisms.4

Cognitive Style
Cognitive style is the preferred way in which individuals process information or approach
a task. A number of different cognitive styles have been identified in the psychological
literature, with a few of these being investigated for their SLA implications.
There is the question of the uniqueness of each cognitive style are distinct from general
intelligence. (Raoch 1985). Perhaps the cognitive style that has received the most attention in
the SLA literature, starting with Naeman et al, (1978), who did find a link between it and SL
achievement is field independence/dependence.

3
Robin N Campbel, Language acquisition and cognition, Language Acquisition, p.32, 1986, Cambridge
University Press
4
Ibid, pp. 36.
 (1) Field independence/dependence
In cognitive style, the field dependent learners are those learners who are most affected
by their environment. They are termed field dependent if they are unable to abstract an
element from the contexts in which it is presented, or background field.
Saracho’s (1981) identified that field dependent individuals as being strongly interested in
people; they get closer to the person with whom they are interacting and have a sensitivity to
others.5
Field independence individuals, on the other hand, are oriented toward active striving,
appear to be colder and more distant, have strong analytic skills.
(2) Category Width.
The cognitive style of category width refers to certain people’s tendency to include many
items in one category, even some that may not be appropriate (broad categorizers), or to other
people’s tendency to exclude items from categories even when they may belong (narrow
categorizers). Category width is often measured by Pettigrew’s Width Scale (1958) which
consists of twnty multiple-choice items for which subjects are asked to estimate some
variable based on the information given.
(3) Reflectivity/Impulsivity.
Individuals who have a reflective cognitive style tend to mull things over when making a
decisions. Conversely, an impulsive person tends to make a quick guess when faced with
uncertainty. Subjects who take longer, but make fewer errors, are considered reflective; those
with the opposite pattern are considered impulsive.
(4) Aural/Visual.
This cognitive style refers to a person’s preferred mode of presentation: aural or visual. A
useful tool for diagnosing this cognitive style is Edmond’s Learning Style Identification
Exercise (ELSIE) developed by Reinert (1976,1977). ELSIE is designed for native English
speakers studying a foreign language. Fifty words are read to each subject, who then
classifies each word as to whether upon hearing the word he or she (a) has a mental image of
the concept represented by the word, (b) has a mental image of the word spell out, (c)
receives meaning of the word from the sound without accompanying image, or (d) has a
fleeting kinesthetic reaction.
(5) Analytic/gestalt.

5
Diane Larsen, An Introduction to Second Language Acquisition Research, p.194, 1992, Longman
 The Gestalt theory hypothesizes that an individual’s perception of stimuli has an affect on
their response. It hypothesizes that individuals use insight when solving problem or
determining their response to stimuli. Peters (1977) has demonstrated that children approach
the SL learning task i different way. Some children seem to take language word by word,
analysing it into component; others approach language in a more holistic or Gestalt-like
manner. Peter’s subject Min, a young Vietnamese boy, was an example of learner with
Gestalt style. Minh learned characteristic intonation contours for TL phrase before he learned
to reader all the segmental. To be sure, Minh would articulate certain words in phrases or
sentence, but he also used ‘filler syllables’ between those words as place-holders so that he
could preserve the correct intonation contour. Peters portrays his performance as Minh’s
learning the tune before the words. Ventriglia (1982) makes a three way distinction among
beaders, brainders and orchestrators. Beaders are he analytic learners who learn the meaning
of each word and then string them together to making meaning. Braiders are more holistic in
their approach in that they assimilate language in chunks and more daring about using the in
social context than thair more cautious counterpart, the beaders. Orchestrators, like beaders,
are likely to be slow to start producing the language but use sounds rather than words as the
building blocks.

Learning Strategies
To acquire knowledge a learner may use the learning strategies. In 1985, O’Malley et al.
(1985) designed a study to identify the range, type and frequency of learning strategies used
by beginning and intermediate ESL students.
___________________________________________________________________________
Learning Strategy Description
A. Metacognitive strategies
Advance organizer

Making a general but comprehensive

preview of the organizing concept or
principle in an anticipated learning
activity.
 Directed attention Deciding in advance to attend in general to a
learning task and ignore to irrelevant
distracters.
Selective attention Deciding in advance to attend to specific
aspects of language inpur or situational
details that will cue the retention of
language input.
Self-management Understanding the condition that help one
learn and arranging for the presence of those
conditions.
Advance preparation Planning for and rehearsing linguistic
components necessary to carry out an
upcoming language task.
Self-monitoring Correcting one’s speech for accuracy in
pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, or for
appropriateness related to the setting or to
the people who are present.
Delayed production Consciously deciding to postpone speaking
to learn initially through listening
comprehension.
Self-evaluation Checking the outcomes of one’s own
language learning against an internal
measure of completeness and accuracy.
Self-reinforcement Arranging rewards for oneself when a
language learning activity has been
accomplished successfully.
B. Cognitive Strategies
Repetition Imitating a language model, including overt
practice and silent rehearsal.
Resourcing Using target language reference materials.
Directed physical response Relating new information to physical
actions, as with directives.
Translation Using the first language as a base for
understanding and/or producing the second
language.
Grouping Reordering or reclassifying and perhaps
labeling the material to be learned based on
common attributes.
Note-taking Writing down the main idea, important
points, outline or summary of informationa
presented orally or in writing.
Deduction Consciously applying rules to produce or
understand the second language.
Recombination Constructing a meaningful sentence or
larger language sequence by combining
known elements in a new way.
Imagery Relating new information to visual concepts
in memory via familiar. Easily retrievable
visualizations, phrases, or locations.
Auditory representation Retention of the sound or similar sound for a
word, phrase, or longer language sequence.
Key word Remembering a new word in the second
language by (1) identifying a familiar word
in the first language that sounds like or
otherwise resembles the new word, and (2)
generating easily recalled images of some
relationship between the new word.
Contextualization Placing a word or phrase in a meaningful
language sequence.
Elaboration Relating new information to other concepts
in memory.
 Transfer Using previously acquired linguistic and/or
conceptual knowledge to facilitate a new
language learning task.
Inferencing Using available information to guess
meanings of new items, predict outcomes, or
fill in missing information.
Question for clarification Asking a teacher or other native speaker for
repetition, paraphrasing, explanation and/or
examples.
C. Social mediation
Cooperation Working with one or more peers to obtain
feedback, pool information, or model a
language activity.

C. LANGUAGE AND COGNITION IN SLA

The Relationship of Language and Cognition in Second Language Acquisition

In the early twentieth century, the relationship between language and cognition has become
interest of the thinkers. A hallmark of modern cognitive science is the goal of developing a
theory of cognition powerful enough to encompass all human mental abilities, including
language abilities. There are two ways of conceptualizing the architecture (or basic design) of
cognition. One approach proposes that general-purpose processes and mechanisms provide a
foundation for all varieties of human intelligence. The second way of conceptualizing human
cognition emphasizes the differences between language and other abilities which is referred to as
the ‘modularity of cognition’ or ‘mental modules’ approach. These two approaches to the
architecture of cognition developed out of different philosophical traditions, and have evolved
considerably during the half-century history of cognitive science. (cited in Harris, p.1)

Concepts of Language and Cognition

There are two different views and idea on the relationship between language and cognition.
The first is the view of linguist Noam Chomsky and the second is the view of psychologist Jean
Piaget.
 1. Noam Chomsky’s View
Chomsky's major innovation was to conceive of language abilities to a mental organ.
According to this view, children are born with a language acquisition device and with specific
linguistic knowledge, accounts for the order in which children learn structures, and the mistakes
they make as they learn. This knowledge is thought to include the concepts of noun, verb,
grammatical subject, and structures that constrain possible grammatical rules. Based on Diane
states that Chomsky and those working in a broadly Chomskyan framework note various factors
which they claim support the idea that humans are innately (i.e. genetically) endowed with
universal language-specific knowledge, or what Chomsky calls Universal Grammar (UG). In
contrast to the views of the dominant psychological theory of the 1950s, behaviorism, Chomsky
argued that children do not learn to speak by imitating adults. His key evidence was that children
spontaneously use incorrect forms they could not have heard, like `goed' and `breaked'. In this
case, children are extracting rules from the language they hear, not merely imitating and parents
do not generally tell children that their utterances are ungrammatical. Because the language input
to children is full of mistakes, stops and restarts. (cited in Harris, p.2)
In addition, Chomsky felt that children could not learn language using general purpose
problem-solving or regularity-extraction skills. They needed to come to the task with a rich set of
expectations about the nature of language. These expectations were believed to be specific to
language, and thus did not share commonalities with other aspects of cognition. This set of
language specific abilities has been variously called the `language acquisition device' (the
historically early term) and `universal grammar' (a more recent term). Chomsky's approach to
linguistics is called `generative linguistics' because its early goal was to describe mental
structures that can generate all the grammatically valid sentences of a language (Larsen Freeman,
Diane and H. Long, Michael, 1991).

2. Jean Piaget’s View

According to Harris, Piaget also emphasized the commonalities between language and
cognition, and proposed that language emerged out of the same broad cognitive changes that
transform the sensorimotor processing of infants into the formal and logical mind of adults.
For understanding the sensorimotor period, Piaget uses his observations of the behavior of
children as the basis for his inferences regarding development of structures. Behavior was
analyzed in terms of epistemological categories such as objects, space, causality, time, etc. In
other words, this sensorimotor organization specifies the movements in relation to the
information given by the sensory receptors. It is not an abstract formal structure, detached or in
determined from contents. Rather, it is a specific organization where the way the object will be
handled, i.e., gathering information, is already specifically defined. This organization contains a
formal structure involving central processing and coordination. It is in the sense of a
programmed processing and coordination that we consider the formal structure of the
sensorimotor period preformed (Mounoud,1981).

Table 1. The researcher’s point of view on interdisciplinary field of cognitive science

In the 1970s and 1980s Linguists emphasizes the specialness of
language and cognition; psychologists
emphasizes commonalities between language
and cognition
During the 1980s and the 1990s The theories of the language cognition
relationship are connectionism, cognitive
linguistics, and the cognitive neuroscience
movement.

Table 2. Theoretical perspectives on the language-cognition relationship

Timeline movement Main source of Language/cognition
constraints
1957-present Chomskyan Innate Language unique,
linguistics unlike cognition
1960s-1990 Artificial intelligence Learned Subject to same
principles
1980s-1990 Connectionism Learned Subject to same
principles
1980s-present Modularity of mind Innate Language unique,
unlike cognition
1990s-present Cognitive Dynamical Complex similarities
neuroscience interaction and differences
Connectionism
Based on Saville (2006), Connectionism is another cognitive framework for the focus on
learning processes, beginning in the 1980s and becoming increasingly influential. It differs from
most other current frameworks for the study of SLA in not considering language learning to
involve either innate knowledge or abstraction of rules and principles, but rather to result from
increasing strength of associations (connections) between stimuli and responses. Because this
framework considers frequency of input an important causative factor in learning, it is also
providing a theoretical base for research on language teaching.

Cognitive Lingusitics
A subset of linguists disagreed with Chomsky's emphasis on the uniqueness and specialness
of language, then generally accepted. The field of cognitive linguistics emerged in the late 1980s
and helped initiate a flood of work connecting language and cognition. One source for the
cognitive linguistics movement was an older tradition within linguistics called `functionalist'
linguistics. This held that constraints on the form of language (where `form' means the range of
allowable grammatical rules) derive from the function of language. The most important aspect of
language was a mechanical device for generating only legitimate grammatical sentences, and
understand language in all its diversity, including narrative, discourse, dialects, sociocultural
influences on language use, and metaphor. This approach to linguistics came to be called
`cognitive' linguistics because aspects of general cognition such as how we construe the meaning
of a grammatical construction were proposed to be important for describing linguistic structure.
(cited in Harris, p.3)

The Cognitive Neuroscience Movement

The field of cognitive neuroscience emerged from work in neuroscience and cognitive
science. Cognitive neuroscience differs from basic neuroscience by having the goal of explaining
complex cognitive abilities, but rejects the tradition of artificial intelligence (and much of
cognitive science) that one can understand cognition abstractly, without reference to its neural
underpinnings. In the 1990s some cognitive neuroscientists argued that basic aspects of the
language cognition relationship, such as the autonomy of syntax hypothesis and the innateness
and modularity of language, could be evaluated from the neuroscientific point of view.
 Functional specialization of brain areas most probably emerges because some brain areas are
near to the site of sensory input, such as sensory systems for vision and audition. The researchers
argue that language has an `epigenetic' not a `genetic' origin. Epigenetic development is the
proposal that behaviour results from a complex dynamic evolution of genes and environmental
forces during prenatal and postnatal development. Like other brain regions, the language areas in
the adult brain are the end product of complex chains of interactions with internal and external
environments. (cited in Harris, p.4)

B. LANGUAGE AND COGNITION