PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

CRITICAL JURNAL REVIEW

A

BY

NAMA : RADE TRI P BANCIN

KELAS : EKSTENSI 16A

NIM : 2163321038

FACULTY OF LANGUAGES AND ART

STATE UNIVERSITY OF MEDAN
2019
 REVIEW JURNAL

Journal 1
THE INITIAL STAGES OF FIRST-LANGUAGE
ACQUISITION BEGUN IN ADOLESCENCE: WHEN
LATE LOOKS EARLY
TITTLE

Journal 2
FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: A CASE STUDY
OF A THREE-YEAR OLD LEBANESE CHILD
Journal 1
Journal Of Child Language

JOURNAL
Journal 2
Journal of Child Language Acquisition and Development –
JCLAD
Journal 1
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309642999_First_l
anguage_acquisition_A_case_study_of_a_three-
year_old_Lebanese_child/download
LINK
Journal 2
http://sites.bu.edu/lavalab/files/2016/09/Ferjan-Rarmirez-
Lieberman-Mayberry-2013.pdf

Journal 1
VOLUME AND Volume 40 / Issue 02 / March 2013, pp 391 – 414
PAGES Journal 2
Vol: 4 Issue: 3 98-112, 2016, September
Journal 1
YEAR 2013
 Journal 2
2016
Journal 1
NAJA FERJAN RAMI ´REZ, AMY M.
LIEBERMAN AND RACHEL I.
WRITER MAYBERRY

Journal 2
Joel C. Meniado1
REVIEWER RADE TRI P BANCIN
DATE 20 April 2019

Research Purpose Journal 1

The purpose of this study is to
The objectives of the research are to describe
1. involves experimental studies on language processing in
lifelong users of sign language. These studies consider
various aspects of language processing in adults whose
first-language acquisition began at a variety of ages past
infancy, but who have been using sign language for at
least twenty years.
2. to studying whether later language acquisition is similar
to early acquisition is to investigate cases of international
adoption (Pollock, Price & Fulmer, 2003; Roberts,
Pollock, Krakow & Price, 2005; Snedeker, Geren &
Shafto, 2007). Internationally adopted children typi-
cally begin acquiring a first language in their country of
origin, but then become monolingual speakers of another
language upon adoption in a new country. In a study of
two toddlers adopted from China, Pollock et al. (2003)
 found that age at adoption was negatively related to the
rate of phonological acquisition, vocabulary acquisition
and syntactic development during the first two years
following adoption.
Journal 2
1. This study, though with a unique feat to answer some
more specific questions on language acquisition in a
more specific situation, had a main purpose of validating
or testing the truthfulness of several language acquisition
theories and principles using a case of a 3 year-old
Lebanese Muslim child learning Arabic as his first
language. It tried to find out if nature outweighs nurture
(or vice versa) or if the two work complimentarily in this
child in his quest for language acquisition and learning.
Primarily.
SUBJECT OF Journal 1
RESEARCH The main objective of the current study was to describe the
initial stages of language acquisition begun in adolescence;
specifically, we asked whether adolescent first-language
acquisition is similar to child language acquisition. In order to
do this, we systematically analyzed the language skills of three
deaf adolescents with one to two years of experience with ASL
as their first language. In the first part of the study we used the
ASL-CDI (Anderson & Reilly, 2002) to gain insights into their
vocabulary acquisition. After one to two years of ASL exposure,
they knew and used between 47% and 78% of the words on the
CDI checklist. The most noteworthy finding was that the
adolescents, despite the differences in their vocabulary size,
exhibited highly consistent vocabulary compositions with a
preponderance of concrete vocabulary items, and few closed-
class words.
 Journal 2
The subject of this case study is named Al Barraa. He is a 3-year
old Muslim Lebanese born to a middle-class Arabic family in
Saudi Arabia. He is the first child of a couple who are both
educated up to Bachelor’s degrees in Lebanon. He has a brother
and a sister who are in their babyhood and infancy stages. His
father is a manager of a company headquartered in Lebanon
while his mother is just a plain housewife. A physically,
mentally, and socially healthy boy, he loves playing toy cars,
running inside the house, watching Youtube videos, and
touching every strange thing he sees. Still on his way of
acquiring his first language, he always tries to ask his mother or
father the names of things, actions, or ideas he observes inside
and outside the house. Though his father knows and speaks a
little bit of French, Arabic is the main language spoken at home.
He is mainly exposed to an environment where Arabic is spoken
and written. Having his father a manager of a book publishing
company, he is exposed to panoply of Arabic books which he
tries sometimes to open just to see the pictures or illustrations.
ASSESMENT DATA Journal 1
Utterance length and complexity. Analyses at the utterance level
included a calculation of mean length of utterance (MLU) and an
analysis of utter- ance types for each adolescent. MLU is one of
the most robust indices of young children’s language acquisition
(Brown, 1973). Because the adolescents’ morphological
productions were limited, making it difficult to determine which
grammatical morphemes were being used productively, MLU
was measured in words (signs) rather than morphemes, which is
also sensitive to syntactic development and widely used
(Hurtado, Marchman & Fernald, 2008; Huttenlocher et al.,
2002). All sign and non-sign units in each utterance were
considered in the MLU computation, including in- flected and
uninflected signs, classifiers, gestured descriptions, linguistic
and non-linguistic points, and fingerspelled words. Excluded
from the computation were within-utterance back-to-back
repetitions of lexical signs. Utterances were also classified by
type and were either declarative, wh-questions or yes/no
questions. As another estimate of the adolescents’ utterance
complexity, we counted the number of lexical items used to
indicate coordination, subordination, conditionals and all
instances of in- flected verbs produced in the sample. These
lexical items are typically acquired relatively late by young
children in English and ASL (Mayberry & Squires, 2006; Reilly,
McIntire & Bellugi, 1991; Vasilyeva, Waterfall & Huttenlocher,
2008), and can thus be regarded as markers of relatively
complex sentence structure.

Journal 2
This section tries to deal with the question “How is first
language (L1) learned or acquired?” Does an individual acquire
a language biologically or through input and reinforcement of
the environment? By reviewing previous theories and researches
in the field, the concept and process of first language acquisition
are explained. Brown (2007), Orillos (1998), Johnson (2004),
Tahriri (2013), and Heidar (2012) outlined several theories on
the nature of a language which indirectly imply how a language
(L1 & L2) is acquired. The Behaviorist / Empiricist Theory by
Leonard Bloomfield, B. F. Skinner, and Charles Fries postulates
that language is acquired behavior through conditioning and
reinforcement. Based on this theory, children learn language
from the conditioning and reinforcement of their environment
which involve family members, peers, teachers, and the society
as a whole. Further, it believes that language learning is the
result of imitation, practice, feedback on success, and habit
 formation (Brown, 2000).

Method of Research Journal 1

 The first approach involves experimental studies on
language processing in lifelong users of sign language.
These studies consider various aspects of language
processing in adults whose first-language acquisition
began at a variety of ages past infancy, but who have
been using sign language for at least twenty years.
 The second approach to studying whether later language
acquisition is similar to early acquisition is to investigate
cases of international adoption (Pollock, Price & Fulmer,
2003; Roberts, Pollock, Krakow & Price, 2005;
Snedeker, Geren & Shafto, 2007). Internationally
adopted children typi- cally begin acquiring a first
language in their country of origin, but then become
monolingual speakers of another language upon adoption
in a new country.
 The third way of studying language acquisition begun at
older ages is to consider cases of social isolation and/or
abuse. Case studies by Koluchova (1972) and Fujinaga,
Kasuga, Uchida and Saiga (1990) suggest that victims of
language deprivation who were exposed to linguistic
input before the age of seven years eventually overcome
their delays to develop a linguistic competence
comparable to their peers.
 The fourth source of information on language acquisition
begun at a later age is provided by case studies of deaf
individuals who were born to hearing parents and were
linguistically isolated because of their deafness. Due to a
variety of factors, these children were not exposed to
language input until adolescence or adulthood, when
 attempts to teach them a spoken or a signed language
were undertaken. Case studies of two deaf adolescents
acquiring a spoken language have found that they
produce variable word order and almost no inflectional
morphology (Curtiss, 1988; Grimshaw, Adelstein,
Bryden & MacKinnon, 1998). From these data,
researchers have argued that adolescents’ lexical
development is advanced compared to their syntactic
development (Curtiss, 1988; Grimshaw et al., 1998).
Journal 2
This study, though with a unique feat to answer some more
specific questions on language acquisition in a more specific
situation, had a main purpose of validating or testing the
truthfulness of several language acquisition theories and
principles using a case of a 3 year-old Lebanese Muslim child
learning Arabic as his first language. It tried to find out if nature
outweighs nurture (or vice versa) or if the two work
complimentarily in this child in his quest for language
acquisition and learning. Primarily, this study tried to answer the
following questions:
1. How does the subject of the study acquire his first
language? Does he acquire the language by himself, by
imitation, correction and reinforcement, analogy, or
structured input?
2. What are the factors affecting his language acquisition?
3. How does the subject exhibit progression in his
language acquisition?
4. What difficulties the subject encounters in language
acquisition?
Answers to these questions are expected to contribute to the
existing body of knowledge on language acquisition and
learning in a specific context. Further, results are also expected
 to help teachers, educators, and curriculum developers design
more comprehensive language teaching programs responsive to
broader needs and natures of language learners. Lastly, this
study can help parents develop more understanding and
awareness of their children’s needs and interests so they can lead
them towards better and more productive language learning.
Steps of Research Journal 1
Figure 1 shows the adolescents’ vocabulary size as measured by
the CDI plotted with the normative data for young deaf children.
Shawna used 250 signs on the CDI checklist, which is 47% of
the list total. Cody and Carlos, on the other hand, used 419 and
401 CDI signs, respectively, which is 78% and 75% of the list
total. Importantly, the adolescents’ CDI vocabulary sizes were
larger than those of young deaf children with comparable
lengths of exposure to ASL (Figure 1). This is particularly true
for Shawna and Cody, and less so for Carlos, suggesting that
adolescent L1 learners may have an advantage over children by
learning vocabulary more quickly at the first stages of word
learning. Next we analyzed the composition of the adolescents’
vocabulary. Their vocabularies showed a preponderance of
nouns (between 51% and 54% of total CDI vocabulary),
followed by predicates (between 32% and 33% of total CDI
vocabulary), and relatively few closed-class signs (between 5%
and 8% of total CDI vocabulary). A direct comparison between
the vocabulary composition of the adolescents and that of young
deaf children is shown in Figure 2. The average vocabulary of a
two-year-old deaf child acquiring ASL from birth exhibits a
strong noun bias (51% of total vocabulary). Nouns are followed
by predicates (34%), words classified as ‘other’ (8%) with
closed-class words representing only 7% of the total CDI
vocabulary. As shown in Figure 2, the three adolescents
exhibited remarkably similar composition patterns to one
 another and in comparison to typical deaf two-year-olds.
Journal 2
1. How does the subject of the study acquire / learn his first
language?
2. The Role of Imitation, Correction and Reinforcement,
Analogy, and Structured Input
3. What are the factors affecting the subject’s first language
acquisition?
4. How does the subject exhibit progression in his language
acquisition?
5. What difficulties the subject encounters in language
learning / acquisition?
Result Research Journal 1
Having acquired the initial set of base vocabulary items and
beginning sentences, the question is whether the adolescent L1
learners we studied here will continue to develop ASL in a
child-like manner and eventually develop linguistic competence
close to that of native ASL signers. Given that previous studies
have shown that significant delays in the onset of language
acquisition leads to processing deficits across all domains of
linguistic structure, this outcome is unlikely. We hypothesize
that subsequent language learning stages that require inducing a
system of complex relations are age-sensitive. That is, it may be
that adolescent L1 learners are slower then children when it
comes to further expanding their lexicon and grammatical
system by means of learning its internal contingencies.
Journal 2
First language acquisition is shaped and influenced mainly by
two factors: biological and environmental factors. As manifested
in the case of the subject in this study, he basically acquired his
first language with the presence and aid of his Language
Acquisition Device (LAD). Without such brain facility, it would
 have been impossible for him to acquire his first language – the
Arabic language. Several considerations also played in the
natural acquisition of his language – neurological, psychomotor,
cognitive, and affective. The maturation of his brain parts
responsible in discharging linguistic functions, the development
of his muscles responsible in the production of speech sounds,
and the elimination of his emotional filters that hinder his
language acquisition contributed to the natural evolution of his
first language. Though his ability to acquire his first language
seemed innate, its development and enhancement were further
shaped by the environment. These environmental forces came in
the form of imitation, correction and reinforcement, analogy,
and structured input.
STENGHTNESS The strengthness of the both of this research journal is in the
abstract of the journal has been given the purpose of research,
research methods, sujbek research, research results and
conclusions. This is included in the complete and good journal
because there is already ISSN and is the official journal. The
language used also uses the correct EYD so it is easy to
understand, understandable and very helpers readers. The
material and discussion contained in the journal is complete and
very good.

WEAKNESS 1. There are some errors in the writing of the words in this
research journal, so it must dipebaikin again his words.
2. In this both journal there is no clear research purpose, so
we should read this journal if you want to know the
purpose of this journal, this is very inconvenient readers.
3. In this both journal all combined into one, there are no
sub-chapters on this material that troubles the reader.