Through communication, some elements of culture A enter culture B and become part of culture B, thus creating cultural diffusion, which has been shaped gradually but unceasingly.
Cultural diffusion leads to the creation of loan words Borrowing reflects the routes of cultural imports. Although many languages of the world have borrowed, through cultural diffusion, their vocabularies from other languages, they maintain their identity by preserving their onw grammatical structures.
8.    Conclusion 结束语
Full understanding of the several kinds of meaning that are encoded in the grammar and vocabulary of a language comes only with a full understanding of the culture, or cultures, in which it operates. Language must be learnt as an integral part of learning about the target culture in order to gain a deeper insight into the target language. Cultural learning, on the other hand, will help promote language learning.


                                Exercise
I.    Explain each of the following terms in no more than 50 words:
1. Culture                2. Language and meaning        3. Cultural overlap
4. cultural diffusion        5. Greeting
II. Develop each of the following topics into a 200-word essay:
1.    Comment with examples the following statement “Differences across culture can be great barriers to communication.
2.    What is the significance for cultural teaching and learning?
3.    Explain with example the difference between culture and Culture.

X. Language Acquisition 语言习得

本章学习目的要求

本章学习的中心内容是人类语言能力的获得及其发展过程。全章含第一语言习得的原则、第一语言习得的阶段、语法知识的形成及第二语言习得等部分。本章的学习目的是让学生深刻认识语言的本质，了解人类习得本族语与外族语的过程和规律。本章要求学生通过对语言习得的学习，理解儿童习得母语的天赋能力以及这种能力的生物基础，弄清语言习得的内部机制与外部环境的关系，明白语言习得即语法规则习得的涵义，了解儿童语言习得的自然路径及发展阶段，并对成人习得第二语言所涉及的一些主要问题有一清楚的认识。
语言习得基本知识

1. Introduction 引言
1.1    Language Acquisition 语言习得
Language acquisition refers to the child’s acquisition of his mother tongue. Human children everywhere develop a language without instruction, unless they are isolated during the critical acquisition years or unless they suffer from extreme mental deficiency. Some child do not have parents to instruct them but they learn to speak.
1.2    The Beginning of Language 语言的起始
The basic essentials of the first language are acquired in the short period between the age of one and a half years and 4 years. This is called the critical period for first language acquisition.
1.3    Stages in First Language Acquisition 第一语言习得阶段
a)    Between birth and around six months --- children produce a series of sounds and this called the “babbling period”.
b)    Around eight months --- babbling is replaced by syllables.
c)    One year --- the child attempts to carry out simple commands and can speak a few words.
d)    Eighteen months --- this age is cited as onset of speech. His vocabulary consists of between three and fifty words.
e)    Two years --- two years --- the child can name most things which are familiar to him in his surroundings. He often utters two-word phrases.
f)    Two and a half years --- the child seems to understand almost everything said to him.
g)    Three years --- the child now has a vocabulary of about a thousand words. The grammatical complexity of the utterance is about equal to that of colloquial adult speech.
h)    About four years --- the child has now mastered the essentials of his mother tongue.
1.4    Age and Native Language Acquisition 年龄与本族语习得
Whether or not a child will speak a foreign language with an accent depends largely upon the age at which he learns the second language. A child who enters a foreign language speech community by the age of three or four learns the new language rapidly and without the trace of an accent. Around the age of puberty (10---13), the child loses his ability to learn a second language without an accent. Thus, there is a critical period for first language acquisition, and for acquiring a language with native-like control.
1.5    Common Order in the Development of Language 语言发展的一般顺序
In English, as in all languages, the sound (phonology) and the structures (grammar) develop in regular stages for all children.
In phonology, certain sounds will be produced before others ([m] or [d] before [s] or [z]).
In grammar, all children begin with simple one word utterances and proceed in regular stages to more complex sentences.
1.6    Different Rate of Language Development 语言发展的不同速度
Although there is a common order in first language acquisition, this does not mean that all children learn at the same rate.
So whenever an age guide is given (e.g. at 14 months children produce their first word), a variation of +6months is quite normal.
2.    Phonological Development 语音发展
2.1    Regular Sound Development 正常的语音发展
The sequence in which the sounds are acquired works like a system of pre-requisites, or like a mastery system. That is to say, the child must pass each stage before he can proceed to the next one. Thus, for example, the presence of palatal and velar sounds presupposes the presence of labials and dentals. But the presence of labials and dentals does not imply the presence of palatal and velar sounds.
2.2    Grammatical Development 语法发展
Around the time of their second birthday, children begin to produce two-word utterances. During this stage there are no syntactic or morphological markers.
About 6 months after the two-word utterances begin, sentences are developed which contain three main elements (daddy kick ball). These sentences are examples of telegraphic speech. They contain content words and lack the functor elements.
The child’s utterances are not simply randomly-strung-together words but, from a very early stage, reveal his or her grasp of the principles of sentence formation.
2.3    Vocabulary Development 词汇发展
When a child learns a word, he does not just learn how to pronounce the word. He must learn the meaning of each form, that is, the features of meaning associated with each word.
a)    Over-extension 扩展过头
In the early stages, child only knows one or two features of meaning, he will use the word much more widely than an adult would use it. This incorrect wide use of a word is called over-extension. For example, if the child calls all men “Daddy”, he “over-extend” the meaning of the word.
b)    Overgeneralization过度概括
An important point is that child speech is systematically different from the structure of adult speech. This means that the child is developing his own structures of speech, and that as he advances the structures develop until they are similar to those of an adult. That is to say, children talk according to their own rules rather than by producing the utterances of their parents.
2.4    Sociolinguistic Development 社会语言的发展
At the same time as the child is acquiring grammatical rules, he is also learning rules of the appropriate social use of the language. These include the greetings, the taboo words, the polite forms of address, the various styles appropriate to different speech situations of his community.
2.5    A Behaviorist View of Language Acquisition 语言习得的行为主义观
The behaviorist or empiricist answer holds that language is learnt in much the same way as anything else is learnt and that the essential similarities among environments in which general laws of learning operate accounts for observed sameness.
The chief exponent of the behaviorist view is Skinner. He argues that language is of special interest because language behavior is behavior which human beings alone can reinforce and which reinforces only its effect on others. He believes that reinforcement of selected responses is the key to understanding language development.
According to “reinforcement” theory, children learn to produce correct sentences because they are positively reinforced when they say something wrong.
However, a number of studies have revealed that all attempts to “correct” a child’s language are doomed to failure. Neither can “imitation” theory explain how children manage to acquire the adult language.
3.3    A Nativist View of Language Acquisition 语言习得的天赋观
The nativist, rationalist or mentalist answer holds that children are born with an innate ability to acquire languages of a specific type, and that they go about that learning using principles unique to language learning.
Chomsky sides with the rationalists. He explains the ability to acquire language in the following way:
a)    Language serves for the expression of thought.