Posted: Nov 30, 2010 12:52 pm
Mr.Samsa wrote:katja z wrote:
True, and I imagine those speakers would have similar activation rates as native speakers.
Wouldn't that mean that the "critical" period is not so critical after all and shouldn't be understood in absolute terms but rather as the optimal time window for learning?
It depends on what you mean by "late learners"? I thought you meant late learners, but still within the critical period time frame. It might be more accurate to view it as an "optimal time window" but I think it's been impossible for individuals to learn language after a certain age.
No, I was going by the distinction made in the article you linked, between people who acquired ASL before puberty (early/native learners), and after. All of them were bilingual, however:
The study involved 27 bilingual subjects. Sixteen were hearing persons born to deaf parents. They learned ASL and English from birth as native languages. The remaining 11 were the late learners who had English as their native language and learned ASL after puberty, in early adulthood.
So this study is about native vs. late acquisition, not about early vs. late acquisition of the first language. That's why I said this was only indirect evidence. We can't really acquire hard data about the effects of late (post-puberty) acquisition of the first language short of the kind of experiment you suggested above
