Teacher Discussion Forums

Anybody aware of connectionist theory in relation to SLA?

I recall seeing it mentioned in Mitchell and Myles's Second Language Learning Theories (Second Edition), for a start.

I'll try to get back to you with more, if I have the time (won't be much more than these types of general SLA introductions/surveys, though).

In "linguistics proper", Rumlehart and McClelland seem to be the big names (you might know this already!). Neil Smith "discusses" connectionist approaches (you can do searches inside his book on Amazon and get concordances/sentences containing search keywords): http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/reader/06312 ... eader-link

Edit: Trevor Harley seems pretty convinced of the potential of connectionist research, if his opening comments in his The Psychology of Language: From Data to Theory are anything to go by. In the book itself he provides at least an Appendix on certain technical aspects of connectionism. (Obviously I haven't read the book, this is just what I am recalling from a quick browse).

So far, no SLA researchers have really committed to it. Generally, it's offered side-by-side with Universal Grammar as its opposite, but only in theory, not in research.

I did hear of one study where they tried to get a computer model to learn relative clauses, but I have had no luck tracking it down. What I remember (from a lecture) is that they taught the computer the language in blocks, and if the computer was forced to remember everything, it could not spontaneously create relative clauses, but when they forced it to selectively forget earlier instruction, it did.

Many thanks for the useful leads. It seems, from the little, I have garnered an incredibly theoretical area but for that reason one worth following. Language acquisition I find an amazingly interesting area not least because so much of it is bound up in scienctific research rather than subjective opinion.

Anymore leads you can get pass them on as shall I.