A RECONCEPTUALIZATION OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND

LEARNING WITH PRACTICE-RELATED CONSIDERATIONS

Abdurrahman Guelbeyaz
Osaka University (JAPAN)

Abstract
My paper introduces the present state of an on-going research project an earlier stage of which was
presented under the title “A New Approach to Language Acquisition and Learning: Beyond Skinner
and Chomsky” last year in Italy.
It offers, on the one hand a radical criticism of the entire edifice of language acquisition theories by
arguing that the shared basic assumptions and concepts which underlie the premises of all portions of
this edifice (including the patently antagonistic ones) are inappropriate for the task of articulating and
describing linguistic equipment and development of human individuals in general, and language
acquisition process in particular. On the other hand, it puts forward a new strategy for approaching the
said complex of phenomena for consideration.
In the first stage of the argument a concise and selective glance is cast at key positions in the
historical development of modern theories of language acquisition. Attention is drawn to the
differences and parallels among the various approaches – which could be subsumed under a small
number of cardinal categories such as ‘behaviourism / empiricism’, ‘nativism’, ‘cognitivism’, and finally
‘social-interactionism’ – and a new classification is ventured. In this first leg, the imperishable
‘Chomsky vs. Skinner dichotomy’ – which was present at the very dawning of the so-called ‘second
language’ acquisition studies and which still constitutes the explicit or implicit theoretical axis around
which the whole production sector spins – is also briefly dealt with.
In the following stage, concept-pairs which express themselves in dichotomies such as ‘native
language vs. foreign language’, ‘first language vs. second language’ etc. and exhibit a more
comprehensive and more popular social utility are touched upon, their weaknesses and limits
demonstrated and an alternative model of conceptualization proposed.
Subsequent to and in connection with this the phenomena of ‘monolingualism’, ‘bilingualism’ and
‘multilingualism’ are dealt with. The concepts indicating these phenomena are tested against the
concrete reality of the social individual – which is thus assigned the function of some sort of
touchstone – so demonstrating that monolingualism is not – as is explicitly or implicitly declared by the
linguistic theories of Western provenance – the ‘norm’, but, on the contrary, some kind of ‘anomaly’.
In the closing passage practical application of the proposed model is discussed and some elementary
considerations and concrete suggestions on how to implement the developed model in the process of
language learning and teaching are made.
Keywords: Language acquisition, language teaching, philosophy of language.

1 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
When viewed from outside the entire complex, i.e., from a standpoint which is remote enough to
enable the viewer to overlook the entire field, reflections on language acquisition and related
phenomena involve two clearly delineable domains of social space-time. The first one spans a
practically incalculable period from the little known beginnings of language up until the maturity of the
latest variation of human social organization. And the second one is the very modernity, that – ensuing
from the former – encompasses the present day stand of so-called human civilization.
The first phase can be understood in immediate connection with the human condition, with the
irreducible skeins and constituents of the process of emergence and development of human being.
The accessible regions of human text-continuum are, without exception, full of traces of the
unquestionably ubiquitous insight that the human being is, in the last instance, nothing other than his
faculty of language; that the process of the generation and development of that which calls itself
‘human’ correlates with the generation and development of the faculty of language; that both

Proceedings of ICERI2013 Conference ISBN: 978-84-616-3847-5

18th-20th November 2013, Seville, Spain 2922
processes mutually inseminate and generate each other simultaneously so that it is safe to say they
make up the two sides of the same coin.
To put it in a nutshell, the process of humanization could be rendered as the process of
denaturalization of human being, that is, the endeavour of the intelligent tellurians to free themselves
1
from nature by cutting the tough umbilical cord ontologically connecting both. This endeavour consists
2
in the specifically human – or rather humanizing – moment of premeditated intervention into nature.
The premeditated intervention both calls for and brings forth the faculty of language. It is ultimately
and necessarily a linguistic performance.
On the grounds of the space-time segment which is here referred to as the first phase, language
acquisition is to be conceived of as the basis, the matrix, the indispensable condition, of anything
human. It is the primary matter whereof the differential human is made. Provisionally assuming that
the conventional differentiation between ‘acquisition’ and ‘learning’ is sufficiently justified, to add to this
state of affairs that the need or urge to learn languages has accompanied the emergence and
development of human societies in its entirety undoubtedly smacks of tautological ludicrousness. It
would not be out of place to think – relying on available knowledge – that this need has been met
somehow or other for roughly the last ninety thousand years. Records from the dawn of written history
onward show that human societies for some reason or other get in touch with the languages of other
societies and that these contacts cause dramatic transformations in the social gait and texture of the
societies involved. Not unlike the present, from the beginning of written history onward, language
learning has had two principal functions which express themselves on the time axis of the space-time
3
continuum. The first could be called ‘the diachronic function’ and the second ‘the synchronic function’.
The institutionalization of guided language learning serving synchronous language-related needs is a
th
phenomenon peculiar to the modern capitalistic society. It first appeared towards the end of 19
th
century and it was not until the mid-20 century that it began to gain a stable foothold. This
development marks the commencement of the space-time expanse which I referred to as the second
phase above. If I try to jot down a few notes on the differential features of the first phase and the
transition therefrom to the second phase, the following points push their way to the fore:
1. Acting – seen with hindsight – as both the cause and effect, language acquisition marks the very
humanisation of the intelligent tellurian. This circumstance can be paraphrased as a relationship of
genetic interdependence between language faculty and human denaturalisation.
2. The text-continuum indicates clearly that the denaturalising human being has always had a
reasoned awareness – or at least an intuitive understanding – of this stunning state of affairs. That is,
th
the bundled emphasis on the faculty of language by the 18 -century German idealists on the one
th
hand, and the 19 -century Weltanschauung-philosophers on the other, is not a novelty, but simply a
local manifestation of this basal human condition. Owing to a historical constellation of social and
economic conditions and parameters, this very local manifestation works its way – indeed, at
th
breakneck speed – up to a 20 -century box-office hit which, pars pro toto, came to be called
‘Chomsky’.
3. In relation to the first phase, in principle, language acquisition means the acquisition of multiple
languages. This is still the case outside the territories of those countries which constitute the tripartite
ruling zone, where the success of the modernisation process and the rise to power the

1
Their efforts are fruitless because the instrument or the technology required for a successful severance is still waiting to be
developed / invented. Ontologically speaking, the intelligent earthling is still there where it stood in the so-called Neolithic Age.
2
This intervention occurs unavoidably as a hostile intrusion, a violent chirurgical intervention into the tissue of nature. But the
intelligent humanoid itself is also nature. It is nature in the process of denaturalisation. That is, the traumatic confrontation
between the denaturalising intelligent earthling and nature, its old ego, is at the same time a self-confrontation, a self-clash, a
self-denial. The process of humanization is nothing but a process of denaturalisation. The intelligent earthling grows all the more
human, the less it becomes natural.
3
The history of Sumerian language would reveal one of the earliest examples of the former. As in the last quarter of the third
millennium, before the Christian era, an Acadian speaking population began to rule almost the entire Mesopotamia; Sumerian
language began to gradually disappear from everyday social life ceding its position to Acadian, to the language of the new rulers
of the region. However, due to the fact that there was an extensive archive which Sumerian had generated up until then, and
that this archive was of indispensable importance for the organizational, scientific, religious, etc. life of the societies of the area,
the language had to be kept alive and maintained in certain spheres of social life. In order to meet this need Sumerian grammar
was written and thought in the schools of Mesopotamian countries until almost the beginning of the Christian era. Panini’s
th th
Ashtadhyayi, written sometimes between 5 or 6 centuries B.C., also emerged in a similar manner, as both the expression and
the solution of the human necessity for diachronic communication. This text was essential for the preservation of intelligibility
and learnability of Sanskrit that had lost its privilege of being the common parlance of the society but still occupied a vital place
in the social life – particularly in that it ruled the immaterial texture of the society.

2923
uncompromising eradication of multilingualism was a precondition. There has always been, and still is,
on one side, a spontaneous, not to say ‘natural’, multilingualism, and on the other, a forced one which
manifests itself in various forms, depending on the respective socio-historical parameters.
4. The naturally bestowed faculty of language – which had most certainly been an astounding marvel
to the intelligent earthlings of the first phase but still, and in the first place, is a useful device, a
multipurpose tool serving the production and reproduction of daily material and immaterial life and a
multitude of different objectives in the life of the social human entity – becomes in the second phase
an objective in its own right. The dazzlement and astonishment at one’s own linguistic capacity which
had, in the first phase, induced religions, inspired poets and prophets and enkindled pious self-
effacement, disenchanted nonchalance or conceited industriousness, grew in the second phase to a
practically all-encompassing project of ‘human civilisation’ on the one hand, and to the core sector of
the knowledge production industry of the modern Western societies on the other.

2 CHOMSKY vs. SKINNER

From the early German Idealists through to the philosophers of the Weltanschauung to Chomsky, the
basic configuration of the question concerning the faculty of language and the proposed solutions
show no changes worth mentioning. Already, from the very beginning of the second phase the die was
cast and the course charted with Hamann, Herder and Humboldt. Certainly, the question changed its
looks in connection with, and parallel to, the changes in the modernising Western society wherein it
was embedded, but its actual core, and the pivotal features and constituents, remained unchanged.
th
The 18 -century version of the question was whether the origin of the language faculty was divine or
4 th
human , and the 20 century version asks if the source of the human faculty of language is to be
sought in some innate gadgetry of the species homo sapiens, or in the physical environment of the
socio-historically given speaker. That is, the Chomsky-vs.-Skinner-clash is the updated version of the
old battle of the German Idealists whereby the old accidents of the field are merely replaced by their
5
contemporary equivalents, but the essential layout remains unchanged.
The Chomskyan dichotomy of ‘internal language’ or ‘universal grammar’ versus ‘external language’
etc. is also to be found in an almost identical layout in German Idealists. Humboldt contrives the same
dichotomy as the ‘faculty of language in general’ versus ‘its various revelations’ or ‘the language in
6
general’ versus ‘individual languages’ .
As far as the ‘historical’ and ‘trailblazing’ dissension between Chomsky and Skinner is concerned, I
believe to have observed enough evidence to claim that in the final analysis both Skinner and
Chomsky do the same thing from opposite directions. To begin with, the Chomskyan ‘innate
infrastructure’, which allegedly constitutes the hard core of the controversy, does not necessarily
contradict Skinner’s position. Skinner can theoretically account for it with the help of the conceptual
gadget ‘operant stimulus’ and integrate it into his own theoretical edifice.
Talking about innate gifts or genetic preconfiguration in connection with language acquisition can
legitimately be declared to be absolutely empty or pointless, for such a discourse could at best hold its
ground as a mere tautology. It is nothing more or less than to expound the circumstance that a bird
twitters on the basis of the fact that it is biologically a bird. I find that every attempt to explain the
differential human in the light of inborn biological features is to be rejected vehemently and opposed
radically. The hylic constituent of the human entity and the features and specifications thereof belong
to the domain of the basal. The inborn basal shouldn’t be allowed to play any part in the constitution of
the differential human. What constitutes the human being is what goes beyond the given basal.
The Chomskyan argument of ‘poverty of stimulus’ feigns at least two things. First it gives the
appearance that one knows exactly what (what type of stimuli and what quantity) is adequate for a
4
Herder asks in his Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache “Haben die Menschen, ihren Naturfähigkeiten überlassen, sich
selbst Sprache erfinden können?” (Müller, Peter. 1978: Bd. 1, P. 127) “Could mankind, left to its own natural devices, have
developed language alone?”
5
E.g., the obsolete concept of ‘God’ is replaced by its state-of-the-art equivalents such as biological pre-configuration, genetic
code, etc.
6
“Das Studium der Sprachen muss sich aber ausserdem immer an das des Menschen anschliessen, und es ist für die Kenntniss
seiner Sprachfähigkeit, die also die Sprachfähigkeit im Allgemeinen ist, wichtig zu wissen, wie ihre verschiedenen
Offenbarungen (denn dafür muss man die verschiedenen Sprachen ansehn) auch in ihrem Entstehen durch oder unabhängig
von einander sich gegenseitig verhalten. Die Untersuchung kann daher nicht zurückgewiesen werden, da ohne sie die Sprache
im Allgemeinen nicht gehörig durchschaut wird, und auch in den einzelnen Sprachen vieles dunkel bleibt.“ (von Humboldt,
Wilhelm 1963: Bd. 3, P. 296-297)

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language-constructing mind. In addition, it has the overtones of a more fundamental delusion, namely
that the socialised individual is capable of knowing or understanding what takes place in the mind of a
child. Secondly, assuming that what is meant with the argument ‘poverty of stimulus’ is that the
quantity of stimuli a child is exposed to is markedly low in comparison with another known quantity (of
linguistic stimuli in the social environment of adults), it would mean that it is taken for granted that the
stimuli of adult linguistic life and the stimuli of child’s world belong to the same category and are made
of identical matter, which, I think, could be ruled out categorically.
In spite of the fact that his criticism of the behaviouristic approach is not unjustifiable, Chomsky’s so-
called linguistic rationalism amounts in the last analysis to a decent, well-bred biologism which is to be
rejected. The form and articulation of this rejection does not even need to be linguistic, but already
permeates a deeper level at which the fundamental axiomatic or quasi-axiomatic thinking of the
differential human takes place.

3 A CRITICAL LOOK AT THE CONCEPTUAL GROUNDS OF LANGUAGE

ACQUISITION PROCESSES
In almost all of the currently prevailing theory-models the phrase ‘language acquisition’ is understood
to mean all phenomena related directly or indirectly to the learning process of a natural language. On
the grounds of this fundamental assumption, and in accordance with the answer to the question
whether the language to be acquired is the ‘native language’ – in other words: ‘first language’ – or
foreign language – in other words ‘second language’ – language acquisition is divided into two basic
7
categories: ‘native language acquisition’ and ‘second language acquisition’. It is general practice to
employ the concept of ‘second language’ even if the language to be acquired is the third or fourth one.
That is, in this dichotomy, the determining threshold is whether or not the language to be acquired is
the ‘native language’.
The process of ‘foreign language – or second language – acquisition’ is also divided into two. The
dividing line of this dichotomy is constituted by the question whether an educator – either an
educational event or institution – is involved in the educational process or not. It is common practice
to call language acquisition realised under the guidance of an educator / educational institution
8
‘instructed second language acquisition’. Analogously, language acquisition that does not resort to
9
the mediation of an educator – or respectively an educational institution – is called ‘uninstructed
second language acquisition’.
When a critical look is taken at the problems and shortcomings intrinsic to this conceptual system
which constitutes the foundation of the production and the activity in the relevant subfield of
contemporary Western-made and Western-ruled linguistic theory, there appears before everything
else the urgent necessity of pointing out the following circumstances:
1. The concept which is referred to as ‘native language’ or ‘mother tongue’ in English is, on account of
its very nature, not equipped with the capacity to represent or to communicate the phenomenon at
which it is pointing. This concept, which is constructed on the basis of the popular belief that the
language first acquired by a child is under – statistically – normal conditions, the language of the
mother, is to be refused because it harbours the irreducible and inextricable potential for the
biologisation of the human. This refusal does not have anything to do with the question as to whether
the assumption underlying the conception of ‘mother tongue’ – that is, the circumstance that the
10
language initially acquired by the child is that of their mother – is true or not. It is rather connected to
the stance that the differential features of the human should never be searched for in the biological
constituents of human existence.
In this connection I want to call attention to the fact that my urgent plea for the repudiation of the
concept of ‘native language’ has, in the first place, a theoretical significance. In my opinion, the
concept ‘native language’ belongs to those conceptual monstrosities which are constructed on the

7
Alternative: ‘first language acquisition’ or ‘mother tongue acquisition’. In German similarly: Erstspracherwerb or
Muttersprachenerwerb.
8
Or ‘guided’ etc.
9
Or ‘unguided’ etc.
10
In this connection, whether or not the mother is child’s ‘biological mother’ does not have any significance at all. What’s more, in
my opinion it is, at any rate, one of those fundamental and fatal fallacies of the modern age to define the institution of
motherhood on the basis of biological parameters.

2925
workbenches of social sciences in general and, in the present case, on those of linguistics, and
imposed on the social structure; it severely distorts the phenomenon it intends and pretends to
indicate and transmit. Still, the very fact that, on the one hand, this concept enjoys an extremely high
popularity at present, particularly in contemporary Western countries, and on the other hand it is, to
my regret, inextricably linked to the search-processes for solutions to a whole string of social problems
– such as majority-minority relations, the right to education in the ‘mother-tongue’, assimilation etc. –
which call for urgent solutions, requires us to be sensitive to the sufferings of the oppressed, and to
use and to corroborate this concept on the concrete socio-political plane despite its decidedly
problematic nature on the theoretical plane.
2. Furthermore, I consider that the replacement of the term ‘native language’ by the seemingly
innocent term of ‘first language’ is also inacceptable. Although, admittedly, the suggestion of ‘first
language’ succeeds in evading the danger of biologising the process of language-acquisition by the
human individual, we cannot gloss over the fact that there are obvious potential complications in
defining language acquisition processes and related phenomena along ordinal numbers such as ‘first’
‘second’ etc. The uppermost complication is the problem-complex which has its origins in the two
basic associations intrinsic to the adjective ‘first’. Notwithstanding the fact that certain attentive
theoreticians state that the concept of ‘first language’ does not exclude the probability of a child
acquiring more than one language, that is, that there could be more than one ‘first language’, the term
‘first language’ – in a similar way to ‘native language’ – is, directly or implicitly, based on the
assumption of the monolingualism of the human individual – that is, that it is the norm that the human
individual acquires in the first stage of their lives subsequent to their birth only one language and that
this first-acquired language is their principal – and practically fated – language. As the second
association intrinsic to the concept of ‘first language’, an implication of chronological sequentiality joins
this implication of monolingualism. Certainly, it is possible that one or more of the languages acquired
by a human individual are acquired before or after the others. But, first of all, this is not necessarily the
case, and secondly it is not acceptable that such an accident is pronounced to be the governing
parameter for the phenomenon at issue.
3. I assume that monolingualism is not the norm. On the contrary, I am of the opinion that the
phenomenon and the concept of multilingualism articulate and describe language acquisition process,
linguistic equipment and development of human individuals much more appropriately. I believe that
the common mistake in this connection is underlain and motivated by the following circumstance: the
societies in which the contemporary social sciences in general, and modern linguistic theories in
particular, historically emerged and developed are capitalist Western countries which became the
th th
rulers of the globe during a period of time between the 16 and 20 centuries. It has been observed
that, along an intricate process which could be described in the light of a set of keywords as,
mercantilization, rationalisation, industrialisation, marketization, nationalisation, unification,
homogenisation, uniformization, etc., these societies experienced in congruity with the general
tendency on the other plains of the social structure (on the linguistic plane as well) a homogenisation,
a radical monolingualisation. Nationalisation and the process of establishing nation states made it –
the creation of a national language – almost compulsory. Accordingly, monolingualism is not the
norm, it is, on the contrary, a pretty recent phenomenon peculiar to modern society which,
furthermore, is in view of the socio-political conditions from which it springs, still a quite limited
phenomenon. Globally speaking, the new masters of the earth and, on the level of individual countries,
the majority societies of sovereign countries are monolingual.
When we look at the reverse side of the coin, we see that both the peoples of subjugated countries
and minority societies who are forced to live under the oppression / discrimination of majority societies
in sovereign countries are multilingual irrespective of whether they are literate or not or whether they
received an institutional education or not. Language exists in these social space-times in its primordial,
oldest and most essential function, that is, as the most crucial instrument for the organisation of social
life and the preservation and maintenance of biological life. This circumstance makes one almost
involuntarily think that the anomaly of monolingualism and monolingualisation is a privilege or –
depending on the viewpoint – a curse conjured as a spontaneous by-product of the efforts of the rulers
towards the seizure and defence of political power, towards the subjugation of their own society or
11
other societies, and towards perpetuation of these conditions . The average member of the ruling

11
In a context which is not directly related to the point in question here, Bernard Lewis refers to this state of affairs thus: “Why
does anyone set out to learn a foreign language, to learn the language of another people and learn it well enough to understand
and interpret what are often very complex statements? The commonest and most widespread reason for learning a language is
that it is the language of your masters, and it is wise, expedient, useful, or necessary to know the language of your masters. I
am using the word ‘master’ in three different senses: a slave learns the language of his master, that is his owner, needing it in

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 12
Western society is monolingual, and it is this monolingual human individual who constitutes the
prototype and the binding criterion for the definition of human being which occupies the centre of the
scientific thought of Western origin. For this reason, the phenomenon of monolingualism, which on the
basis of an abundance of facts could and should be considered an anomaly, was made the norm by
the lords of the definition-rings, on the workbenches of modern social sciences.
4. The act of learning is for reasons – which cannot be discussed in the scope of this paper but appear
sufficiently obvious to me – requires as prerequisite a certain level of socialisation. Consequently, the
acts of learning and teaching could be employed only in connection with socialised individuals. I opine
that the scientific discourse is far from knowing the nature and the differential features of the relation
and interaction between babies and young children and their physical and social environment. Even
more seriously, I am of the opinion that it is legitimate to consider it categorically impossible for a
socialised mind – or a thinking mode / equipment – to cogitate adequately about a pre-social mind.
After thus redefining it, I don’t see any problem in realizing the act of ‘learning’ as the determining and
differentiating criterion of the above mentioned dichotomy. Consequently, I consider it to be
appropriate, and propose to designate the phenomenon which is referred to as ‘native language’ or
‘first language’ in the language acquisition theories of Western provenance as ‘not-learned languages’,
and to designate the phenomena referred to as ‘foreign language’ or ‘second language’ as ‘learned
languages’
5. Furthermore, the category of ‘learned languages’ could, without any complication, be divided into
two subcategories as e.g. ‘guided vs. unguided’, ‘instructed vs. uninstructed’, ‘coordinated vs.
uncoordinated’ etc. But still, one shouldn’t succumb to the temptation to assume that these two fields
could be demarcated cleanly from each other. On the contrary, it is reasonable to presume that the
dichotomization of ‘learned languages’, on the basis of the criterion whether there is an instructor or
not has, in the first place, an abstract theoretical significance. However, on the concrete plain of
practice, one would observe that the borders of the two fields are largely turbid, that the parameters
which control and regulate both fields are, to a significant degree, identical.

4 A SELECTIVE GLANCE AT THE KEY STATIONS OF THE HISTORICAL

DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN THEORIES OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
The theories which are of interest to me – with reference to the present thematic framework – in the
first place are those concerning the acquisition of ‘learned languages’ under guidance. But due to the
fact that there are close and crucial links between these and those referring to the acquisition of what I
termed ‘not-learned languages’, it makes sense to take a look at the theories relating to the acquisition
of ‘not-learned languages’. The central objective of these theories was to account for the structure and
the character of the acquisition process. There were in the period from 1950s until 1980s four basic
approaches in this respect. These were behaviourist / empiricist, innatist, cognitivist and social-
interactionist approaches. As was touched upon above the fundament of the behaviourist / empiricist
approach was woven from processes such as experience, imitation, selective conditioning etc. The
innatist approach that was constructed on the Chomskyan criticism of Skinner’s radical behaviourist
theory assumes that human being is endowed with a congenital ‘language acquisition device’. The
cognitivist approach, on the other hand departs from the assumption that the human language
acquisition process does not differ from other mental / cognitive acts, processes and activities and
ought to be dealt with in the same context and by the same methods.
From 1980s onwards, it was observed that there was a rearrangement / reconfiguration in the
classification of theories of ‘learned languages’. With the fresh impetus from the results attained by
the research activities in general linguistics and language acquisition throughout the seventies,
language acquisition theories began to divide or rather to pull together in two big camps. The first one
of these two camps was again the continuation of Chomskyan tradition and based upon what could be

order to do his job, to receive his orders, to survive. The owner does not learn the language of the slave. The same is true of the
master in the sense of ruler: the subject needs to learn the language of his ruler. In British India, Indians learned English; very
few Englishmen learned the languages of India and when they did, for the most part they didn’t learn them very well. One finds
much the same thing in French North Africa and in the various other empires that have flourished. Many Central Asians know
Russian, very few Russians, even in Central Asia, knew the languages of Central Asia.” (Lewis 2004: 22)
12
In my usage the phrase ‘the ruling West’ includes – as expected, I assume – Japan as well, ‘the West in the East’. As a matter
of fact, the average member of the Japanese society is chronically monolingual. This is the case in spite of the fact that it
possesses one of the biggest language-education-markets in the world. It goes without saying that in Japan the members of
minority societies are spontaneously polyglot.

2927
called an ‘extended innatism’, an innatist principle which was enriched with the new insights into
language and linguistic phenomena which materialized in the course of the development of new
grammar models in the 1970s. The second one, on the other hand, was some sort of extended
cognitivism, a cognitivism that was enriched with methods and modules from functionalist grammar
models and theories of discourse analysis so that it came to be called ‘functionalist / cognitive
approach’.
Research activities on acquisition of ‘learned languages’ emerged subsequent to the research
activities on acquisition of ‘not-learned languages’ and followed to a significant extent in the wake of
the latter. Consequently, they manifested in respect to their emergence, development and main
theoretical trajectories dynamics similar to those of ‘not-learned languages’ and they were nurtured by
the same intellectual and socio-historical phenomena and processes as the latter.
It is a common tendency to posit that contemporary research activities on the acquisition processes of
‘learned languages’ (cf. SLA) began with two research papers: Pit Corder’s 1967-published paper
which was entitled The Significance of Learners’ Errors, and Larry Selinker’s 1972-pulished research
Interlanguage (cf. VanPatten & Benati 2010: 2). When we take a quick chronological look at the
development of learned-language-research from its beginnings to this day, the emerging picture looks
like as follows: During the 1970s the centre of gravity of the research activities (the said centre of
gravity is above all else things a statistical product) consisted in a general attempt at the rejection and
refutation of language acquisition models which had been developed on the basic suggestions of
behaviourism. Efforts toward applying the methods and findings of research activities relating to
acquisition processes of ‘not-learned languages’ to the field of ‘learned languages’ were formative for
this period (cf. VanPatten & Benati 2010: 3).
The leading ones of the themes and key concepts which underlay the discussions in the 1980s were
13 14
the ‘monitor theory’ , the ‘acquisition vs. learning’ opposition, the ‘input hypothesis’ , the ‘artificial
environment vs. natural environment’ opposition. What characterize the research activities in 1990s
was the tendency to intensify and diversify the approaches and research trajectories of the 1980s.
There was nothing novel on the methodological / theoretical level, but numerous unbound particular
hypotheses were advanced.
This state of affairs went on unchanged until the end of the first decade of the new millennium. Many
an isolated hypothesis was put forward along the same theoretical paths opened up during the 1970s
and 1980s. In global theoretical terms the two principal intellectual camps which date back to the
1950s have hitherto stood their grounds.

5 LANGUAGE TEACHING PRACTICE RECONSIDERED

The probably most critical consequence of both my critique of the established theories of language
acquisition and my own approach presented here in a condensed, or rather truncated manner is that
the phenomena which are commonly subsumed under the concepts such as ‘second language’,
‘foreign language’, etc. but termed here ‘learned language’ constitute a qualitatively different category
from those which are, in contrast to the prevailing routine to label them as ‘native language’, ‘mother
tongue’, ‘first language’, etc., designated as ‘not-learned languages’ within the framework of the
theoretical model developed here. That is, it is not only inappropriate, but also false and contra-
productive to try to conceptualise, to theorise, resp. to organise and to perform language teaching in
connection with the phenomenon and process of ‘not-learned’ language acquisition of the pre-social
child.
People who believe or say that they teach language – or anything at all – to the babies or infants are
under a complacent illusion. It is simply the case that words / concepts equipped with the semiotic
capacity to express those phenomena and processes which the adult, due to their own acquired
ineptitude and limitedness, refer to with verbs such as ‘to learn / to teach’ do not exist in the language
of the adult; and they will – for reasons briefly touched upon above – never exist.

13
“Monitor Theory hypothesizes that adults have two independent systems for developing ability in second languages,
subconscious language acquisition and conscious language learning, and that these systems are interrelated in a definite way:
subconscious acquisition appears to be far more important.” (Krashen 1981: 1)
14
That ‘comprehensible input’ constitutes the most crucial and most essential component of language acquisition process (cf.
Krashen 1981: 9).

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Notwithstanding this inescapable, quasi-ontological circumstance, vast amounts of textbooks
purportedly based on the language acquisition process of pre-social children began at the end of the
seventies / beginning of the eighties shooting up from the ground like mushrooms. Within a very short
time, this type of textbooks has become the sole ruler of the language teaching industry and market,
expelling those with which the still highly revered polymaths of the human civilisation who had paved
the way for everything that constitutes what has come to be called ‘modernity’ had learned their many
languages.
In connection with the teaching practice the approach propounded here argues that adults, i.e., fully
socialised human individuals, should be treated as adults and not – as is the case in the prevailing
mode of language teaching – as children. To avoid any possible misunderstanding I want to point out
that there are no ethical or moral concerns behind this demand. The idea that these two modes of
existence could somehow be comparable or related with regard to their signal processing mode, resp.
to their interactional behaviour mode in the social and natural environment is preposterous. It is simply
that the total absence of what differentially constitutes the mode of being ‘infant’ constitutes
differentially the mode of being ‘adult’.
Language teaching, that is the process of fitting out socialised sentient beings with languages and
comparable semiotic systems should be conceived, and constructed without any reference to or
connection with the acquisition process of ‘not-learned languages’.

REFERENCES
[1] Brown, H. Douglas, (2000). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching, Longman, New
York.
[2] Pinker, Steven. (1999). Words and Rules the İngredients of Language, Basic Books, a Member
of the Perseus Books Group, New York.
[3] Gülbeyaz, Abdurrahman. (2010). Küresel-Toplumsal Dönüşüm Süreçleri ve Dillerin Devinimi
(pp. 343-353) İn V. Uluslararası Büyük Türk Dili Kurultayı Bildirileri by Zülfikar, Hamza; Özyürek,
Rasim (Eds.), Bilkent Üniversitesi Yayınları, Ankara.
[4] Krashen, Stephen D. (1981). Second Language Acquisition and Second Language Learning,
Pergamon Press Inc.
[5] Lewis, Bernard. (2004). From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East, Oxford
University Press, New York.
[6] Mitchell, Rosamond & Myles, Florence. (2004). Second Language Learning Theories, Second
Edition, Hodder Arnold, London.
[7] Pinker, Steven. (1998). The Language Instinct: How the Mind Works, Penguin Books, London.
[8] Simpson, James W. (2011). The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics, Routledge, New
York.
[9] Vanpatten, Bill & G, Benati, Alessandro. (2010). Key Terms in Second Language Acquisition,
Continuum International Publishing Group, London / New York.
[10] Müller, Peter (Ed.). (1978). Sturm und Drang. Weltanschauliche und Ästhetische Schriften.
Herausgegeben von Peter Müller, Bd. 1 Und 2. Aufbau, Berlin und Weimar.
[11] Von Humboldt, Wilhelm. (1963). Werke in Fünf Bänden. Herausgegeben Von Andreas Flitner
und Klaus Giel, Wissenschaftliche Buchgemeinschaft, Darmstadt.

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