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We assume that a word form has an abstract surface type. This type may
be realized in different modalities as tokens, mainly in spoken or written lan-
guage. 3 In the modality of spoken language, the surfaces are sounds which
are recognized by the agent's ears and produced by the agent's mouth. In the
modality of written language, the surfaces are letter sequences which are rec-
ognized by the agent's eyes and produced by the agent's hands.
It follows from the basic structure of words that first language acquisition
requires the child to learn (i) the meanings, (ii) the (acoustic) surfaces, and
(iii) the conventions which connect the surfaces to the correct meanings. 4 This
process is embedded in child development, takes several years, and normally
does not cause any special difficulties. However, when learning the words of a
foreign language as an adult, the following difficulties stand out:
2.1.2 T ASKS OF LEARNING THE WORDS OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
learning to recognize and produce the foreign surfaces in the modal-
ities of spoken and written language, and
learning the conventional connections between the foreign surfaces
and meanings familiar from one's first language.
Learning to recognize the acoustic surfaces of a foreign language is difficult
and to pronounce them without accent is often nearly impossible, while learn-
ing to read and to write may come easier. There are languages like Japanese,
however, for which a Westerner is considered more likely to learn to speak
fairly fluently than to acquire a near-native ability to read and write.
Connecting the foreign surfaces to familiar meanings presupposes that the
notions of the foreign language are identical or at least similar to those of
one's own. This holds easily for basic notions such as father, mother, 5 child,
son, and daughter ,aswellas sun, moon, water, fire, stone, meat, fish, bird,
and tree . When it comes to more culturally dependent notions, however, what
is represented by a single word (root) in one language may have to be para-
phrased by complex constructions in the other.
3 A third modality is signed language for the hearing impaired and, as a form of written language, there
is Braille for the blind. For the type-token distinction see NLC'06, Sect. 4.2; FoCL'99, Sect. 3.3.
4 In addition, the child has to learn the syntactic-semantic composition of words into complex expres-
sions (sentences) with complex meanings and their use conditions.
5 Kemmer (2003, p. 93), claims that “in some languages” the word meaning of mother would include
maternal aunts. It seems doubtful, however, that the distinction between a mother's own children and
those of her sisters could ever be lost. A more plausible explanation is a nonliteral use. In German,
for example, a child may call any female friend of the parents Tante (aunt). If needed, this use may
be specified more precisely as Nenn-Tante (aunt by name or by courtesy). Similarly in Korean,
where the term “older brother” may be bestowed on any respected older male (Kiyong Lee, personal
communication).
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