The critical period hypothesis as ‘a biologically determined period of life when language can be acquired more easily and beyond which time language is increasingly difficult to acquire’ (Brown, 2000 p, 53). Generally, it is understood that the critical period hypothesis is a virtual window of learning a language. If by any chance a child is unable to get input from their parents or society in which s/he lives during that period of their lives, s/he will remain unable to speak, or faces many challenges in later life. After puberty this window is closed and the learning of the language becomes more difficult. Moreover, CPH in Linguistics is known as a time period of the first thirteen years of a child’s life, during which s/he acquires language
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The first reason is that the plasticity of the brain is lost and various functions of the parts of the brain cannot be reorganized. The second reason is the lateralization of language functions in the left hemisphere which is regarded to be perfect after puberty. So the learning of L1 and L2 becomes difficult. Another observation is interesting to quote here is by, Lenneberg, (1967) who asserts that the children who suffered a brain damage before the age of 9 to 12 recover language learning. While those children who suffered brain damage after puberty faced difficulty in language acquisition. Another researcher, Genesee, (1988) describes that after the critical period is complete, native-like competence of languages L1 or L2 is difficult and …show more content…
All these studies establish the idea that young language learners perform far better than older learners. To investigate whether during the critical period a child remains able to acquire language or not, one needs to do some experiments on actual children. This means that they should not be given any linguistic input at all. Such experiments are forbidden, therefore never conducted. There are some case studies, where few unfortunate children remained unable to receive proper linguistic input during the critical period. As a result their language ability was highly affected, or even they remain unable to produce a single
The first reason is that the plasticity of the brain is lost and various functions of the parts of the brain cannot be reorganized. The second reason is the lateralization of language functions in the left hemisphere which is regarded to be perfect after puberty. So the learning of L1 and L2 becomes difficult. Another observation is interesting to quote here is by, Lenneberg, (1967) who asserts that the children who suffered a brain damage before the age of 9 to 12 recover language learning. While those children who suffered brain damage after puberty faced difficulty in language acquisition. Another researcher, Genesee, (1988) describes that after the critical period is complete, native-like competence of languages L1 or L2 is difficult and …show more content…
All these studies establish the idea that young language learners perform far better than older learners. To investigate whether during the critical period a child remains able to acquire language or not, one needs to do some experiments on actual children. This means that they should not be given any linguistic input at all. Such experiments are forbidden, therefore never conducted. There are some case studies, where few unfortunate children remained unable to receive proper linguistic input during the critical period. As a result their language ability was highly affected, or even they remain unable to produce a single