TY - JOUR
T1 - Different speakers, different grammars: Individual differences in native language attainment
AU - Dabrowska, Ewa
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - This article reviews several recent studies suggesting that – contrary to a widespread belief – adult monolingual native speakers of the same language do not share the same mental grammar. The studies examined various aspects of linguistic knowledge, including inflectional morphology, passives, quantifiers, and more complex constructions with subordinate clauses. The findings suggest that in some cases, language learners attend to different cues in the input and end up with different grammars; in others, some speakers extract only fairly specific, ‘local’ generalizations which apply to particular subclasses of items while others acquire more abstract rules which apply ‘across the board’. At least some of these differences are education-related: more educated speakers appear to acquire more general rules, possibly as a result of more varied linguistic experience. These findings have interesting consequences for research on bilingualism, particularly for research on ultimate attainment in second language acquisition, as well as important methodological implications for all language sciences.
AB - This article reviews several recent studies suggesting that – contrary to a widespread belief – adult monolingual native speakers of the same language do not share the same mental grammar. The studies examined various aspects of linguistic knowledge, including inflectional morphology, passives, quantifiers, and more complex constructions with subordinate clauses. The findings suggest that in some cases, language learners attend to different cues in the input and end up with different grammars; in others, some speakers extract only fairly specific, ‘local’ generalizations which apply to particular subclasses of items while others acquire more abstract rules which apply ‘across the board’. At least some of these differences are education-related: more educated speakers appear to acquire more general rules, possibly as a result of more varied linguistic experience. These findings have interesting consequences for research on bilingualism, particularly for research on ultimate attainment in second language acquisition, as well as important methodological implications for all language sciences.
KW - individual differences
KW - ultimate attainment
KW - second language acquisition
KW - first language acquisition
KW - passive
KW - academic achievement
KW - subordination
KW - quantifier
KW - inflectional morphology
U2 - 10.1075/lab.2.3.01dab
DO - 10.1075/lab.2.3.01dab
M3 - Article
VL - 2
SP - 219
EP - 253
JO - Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
JF - Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
SN - 1879-9264
IS - 3
ER -