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Sure, it's somewhat rare but not that uncommon. The Swedish researchers Kenneth Hyltenstam and Niclas Abrahamsson have a series of studies looking at immigrant

by gryson 6y ago

Sure, it's somewhat rare but not that uncommon. The Swedish researchers Kenneth Hyltenstam and Niclas Abrahamsson have a series of studies looking at immigrants in Sweden who began learning Swedish as adults and who are judged to be native speakers by true native speakers who heard their speech. In one study, they gave a very thorough battery of linguistic tests to these adult learners, and for some of them, the only test they failed to perform equal to native speakers was on their knowledge of proverbs and idioms. The place you're most likely to find such near-native speakers is in immigrant communities.

svara 6y ago
Cool, that literature is pretty much exactly what I've been looking for. Without having looked at the precise methodological details, it seems to broadly support my point, though: "Our findings lead us to the conclusions that the rare nativelike adult learners sometimes observed would all turn out to be exceptionally talented language learners with an unusual ability to compensate for maturational effects and, consequently, that their nativelikeness per se does not constitute a reason to reject the critical period hypothesis." https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232004616_The_robustness_of_aptitude_effects_in_near-native_second_language_acquisition https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232004616_The_robus... (By critical period and maturational effect they refer to the hypothesis that age determines, or influences, whether you'll be able to attain a native-like level.)
- gryson 6y ago
  Setting aside their interpretation of the results, which is a bit heatedly contested (and I believe they were focused more on syntax rather than speech), there are really two questions to ask that I think are relevant to the discussion: 1) Is it POSSIBLE for the speech of an adult language learner to be indistinguishable from a native speaker? 2) If (1) is true, are such instances common? The reason (1) is important to ask is because a strict critical period hypothesis may rule this out by saying once the brain has matured beyond a certain point (age ~12, for example, or possibly younger for phonology), you can no longer acquire a language to the extent of a native speaker. But there is plenty of evidence that (1) is true. In the Hyltenstam and Abrahamsson literature, they are able to find quite a few learners whose speech is indistinguishable from that of native speakers. They then run a battery of more strict tests (syntax/knowledge tests IIRC) against these learners that reveal slight differences. However, (2) is certainly false. It's somewhat rare to find an adult learner who truly sounds like a native speaker. That, however, isn't evidence in favor of a strict critical period/maturational effects hypothesis, since there can be many reasons for failure. My intuition is that there is much less support for a strict critical period hypothesis these days. Most people now talk about a 'sensitive period', which reflects that there are a broad range of factors that favor successful acquisition in children but that adults have decreased sensitivity to.

by gryson 6y ago

svara 6y ago

Cool, that literature is pretty much exactly what I've been looking for. Without having looked at the precise methodological details, it seems to broadly support my point, though: "Our findings lead us to the conclusions that the rare nativelike adult learners sometimes observed would all turn out to be exceptionally talented language learners with an unusual ability to compensate for maturational effects and, consequently, that their nativelikeness per se does not constitute a reason to reject the critical period hypothesis." https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232004616_The_robustness_of_aptitude_effects_in_near-native_second_language_acquisition https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232004616_The_robus... (By critical period and maturational effect they refer to the hypothesis that age determines, or influences, whether you'll be able to attain a native-like level.)

gryson 6y ago
Setting aside their interpretation of the results, which is a bit heatedly contested (and I believe they were focused more on syntax rather than speech), there are really two questions to ask that I think are relevant to the discussion: 1) Is it POSSIBLE for the speech of an adult language learner to be indistinguishable from a native speaker? 2) If (1) is true, are such instances common? The reason (1) is important to ask is because a strict critical period hypothesis may rule this out by saying once the brain has matured beyond a certain point (age ~12, for example, or possibly younger for phonology), you can no longer acquire a language to the extent of a native speaker. But there is plenty of evidence that (1) is true. In the Hyltenstam and Abrahamsson literature, they are able to find quite a few learners whose speech is indistinguishable from that of native speakers. They then run a battery of more strict tests (syntax/knowledge tests IIRC) against these learners that reveal slight differences. However, (2) is certainly false. It's somewhat rare to find an adult learner who truly sounds like a native speaker. That, however, isn't evidence in favor of a strict critical period/maturational effects hypothesis, since there can be many reasons for failure. My intuition is that there is much less support for a strict critical period hypothesis these days. Most people now talk about a 'sensitive period', which reflects that there are a broad range of factors that favor successful acquisition in children but that adults have decreased sensitivity to.