Introduction

The topic of this book is not only one of the few truly perennial issues in discussion of language acquisition, it is also one of the few truly popular issues. On the former point, the age factor has been a constantly recurring theme of language acquisition. Moreover, the connection between age and language development is not something which has only recently been commented on. It has cropped up in writings about language over many centuries. Two examples must stand for many. St Augustine, in his Confessions, uses language development as virtually a defining criterion of maturation:

Passing hence from infancy I came to boyhood, or rather it came to me, displacing infancy. For I was no longer a speechless infant but a speaking boy. (Confessions: 1.13)

Somewhat closer to our own times Montaigne, writing of the learning of classical languages, tells of 'a method by which they may be acquired more cheaply than they usually are and which was tried on myself' (Essays, 1.26). The method in question consisted in exposing him during the first few years of his life to no language other than Latin. The results, according to Montaigne, were excellent as far as his command of Latin went. The results of attempts to teach him Greek formally at a subsequent stage, on the other hand, are depicted as considerably less successful.

With regard to popular interest, everyday conversations about child language continually refer to implicit age norms. How often does one hear remarks like 'Talks very well for her age doesn't she?' or 'Nearly three and he can hardly put two words together!'? Folk wisdom also abounds when it comes to the role of age in second language (henceforth L2) acquisition, as is evidenced by observations of the type: 'I could never learn German at my age' or 'Beginning French at secondary school is no good; kids need to get started when they're young and fresh'. As far as beliefs about the emergence of the first language (henceforth L1) are concerned, these are obviously based on the pooled experience of child-rearing. As for the age factor in L2 learning, to the casual observer the differences between younger and older L2 learners appear perfectly clear:

... young children in suitable environments pick up a second language with little trouble, whereas adults seem to struggle ineffectively with a new language and to impose the phonology of their mother tongue on the new language. (Macnamara, 1973a: 63)

Scholarly attention to the part age plays in language acquisition has mainly focused on precisely the assumptions which underlie comments such as those cited above, namely (a) the idea that there are age ranges within which certain things should happen in normal L1 development, and (b) the idea that one's age is a major factor in how efficient one is as a language learner, and in particular as an L2 learner. Approaches to these assumptions have varied from sceptical scrutiny to more or less uncritical acceptance. In the first case the assumptions in question have been the subject of rigorous observation and experimentation; in the second case they have been treated as self-evidently accurate accounts of phenomena to be explained.

Scientific interest in this area has, as one would expect, both a theoretical and a practical dimension. Each of these is explored more fully in the chapters that follow. However, briefly, on the one hand, arguments relating to the age factor have been tied in to arguments for or against particular models of language acquisition and hence for or against particular conceptions of language. On the other hand, they have been deployed in the debate about language in education.

Probably the best known example of the theoretical use of age-related arguments is the linkage of the notion of such arguments to the 'innateness hypothesis', the idea that language acquisition is only possible because of an inborn 'language faculty'. The connection between the age question and this hypothesis is fairly straightforward. If there is an innate language faculty and language develops in a way similar to, say, a physical organ or bipedal locomotion (cf. e.g. Chomsky, 1978, 1988), one can expect to be able to identify age-related stages in such development and periods of particular readiness for such development. To the extent that such age-related phases are discoverable, they can be represented as supportive of the innateness hypothesis.

Nor does the matter rest there. The innateness hypothesis has further ramifications. If there is a faculty concerned specifically with language which is inborn, this not only sets language apart from behaviours which are acquired purely from the nurturing environment, but also suggests that language is an essential, perhaps defining, part of the human make-up, and renders very plausible the notion that language is peculiar to our species. On a slightly different tack, if there is an innate language faculty, it must be constituted in such a way as to be able to cope with any human language to which it is exposed, and, conversely, all human languages must be amenable to its operations. This implies that human languages have or draw on a common core of properties – universals – which are at bottom biologically determined. Accordingly, evidence of an age factor in language acquisition can be seen as appertaining not only to the innateness hypothesis but also to the idea that the language faculty is unique, both within the range of human capacities and across species, and to the universalist conception of language (cf. e.g. Harris, 1980: 179; Smith & Wilson, 1979: 33).

To turn now to the more applied dimension of scholarly interest in the age question – the relating of the age question to language educational issues – the obvious example of this is the debate about L2s in the elementary curriculum. It is not so long since the wide supposition was that this debate was over, having been lost by the advocates of early L2 instruction some time in the 1970s. Stern (1983: 105) reports, for example, that American interest in foreign languages in the elementary school (FLES) had begun to wane by this time, while in Britain the evaluation of a largescale primary school French project by Burstall et al. (1974) was widely construed as refuting the notion that an early start in a L2 conferred an advantage. However, the idea that the case was closed was premature. There were always researchers who did not accept the way in which Burstall et al.'s findings had been interpreted (see e.g. Buckby, 1976; Potter et al., 1977), and the question continued to receive attention. For example, in 1978, Ekstrand was reporting on a revival of the discussion about English at grade 1 or 2 in Sweden, and ongoing controversy in Finland and Sweden about when to begin teaching the language of the host country to immigrants (Ekstrand, 1978; reprint: 136f; see also Ekstrand, 1985); in the 1980s the Italian government set in motion a national experiment in the early teaching of foreign languages (see...