Talk:second language acquisition

RFD discussion: June–August 2016
Hi all, just added this, and don't believe it is SOP. Basically, SLA studies people learning a third language, or a fourth language, etc., as well as just a second language. There is no "third language acquisition" as a subject, etc. Taking a strictly SOP view of the word, it would only ever apply to the acquisition of a second language. But, as it was speedily deleted first time around I have RFD'd it. Voting open. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 09:44, 15 June 2016 (UTC)


 * It's second language + acquisition. Note that second language already covers things like a third or fourth language. Equinox ◑ 09:52, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete per Equinox. DCDuring TALK 10:25, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete per Equinox. --Daniel Carrero (talk) 10:27, 15 June 2016 (UTC)


 * Okay, point noted about second language. Nevertheless, second language acquisition in the def I have given it is not simply SOP second language + acquisition. There is nothing in the term itself that indicates that it is a field of study, thus it is not in the same class as first language acquisition, or foreign language acquisition, or mother tongue acquisition which are indeed SOP and are not fields of academic inquiry. I can't really see how it is not in the same class as discourse analysis (clearly the analysis of discourse), or physics or chemistry or environmental science or philosophy of science etc., all of which we have entries for the semantic field of academic discipline. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 11:46, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * First-language acquisition is a field of academic study, but it's usually simply called language acquisition. That said, I agree that this is a set phrase or term of art, so we should probably keep it. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 12:15, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete. We keep idioms, not terms of art (i.e. collocations that someone likes). —Μετάknowledge discuss/deeds 17:01, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * If it's SOP, we need to add a sense to acquisition and/or acquire, because at the moment none of the existing definitions of those words cover this sense. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 17:59, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * That we lack a definition that would be required to make an MWE SoP is not evidence of anything, except that we need to look at entries for the word at dictionaries we didn't copy from. Sometimes we omit a current sense, sometimes we deleted a sense that MW 1913 or Century 1911 had, sometimes our wording is excessively narrow. There are other possibilities. DCDuring TALK 19:04, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * The problem is, I don't know what other words besides "language" this sense of "acquire"/"acquisition" is used with. We could add a sense "experience" to and a sense "death" to  and then delete  as SOP too, but I wouldn't recommend it. —Aɴɢʀ (talk) 19:24, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * But it doesn't matter, because it is used with any language acquisition, not only with the phrase "second language". You can say "first language acquisition", "during the early period of acquisition", "acquisition of Chinese", etc. --WikiTiki89 20:15, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Skill/expertise/fluency/taste and hyponyms thereof can be acquired.
 * Some collocations in which acquisition follows an attributive modifier:
 * audio lingual acquisition
 * data acquisition
 * first language acquisition
 * infant language acquisition
 * knowledge acquisition
 * language acquisition
 * ontology acquisition
 * blood unit acquisition
 * sample data acquisition
 * source data acquisition
 * speech acquisition
 * talent acquisition
 * target acquisition
 * vocabulary acquisition
 * windows image acquisition
 * DCDuring TALK 23:12, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Some of those examples seem to be just SOP (e.g. talent acquisition, blood unit acquisition), which are well covered by the defs of those individual terms if they were to be looked up in isolation - however, if you look up second language and then look up acquisition you do not find out that second language acquisition is a field of study. Thus it is an idiom (in Wiktionary's sense of that word). As in this quote ...obviously the acquiring of a second language is not "concerned with hypotheses" - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 00:00, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Are you saying that the sense of acquisition in collocation with skill, fluency, vocabulary, speech, and knowledge is completely different from its sense with language? To me they seem virtually identical. DCDuring TALK 00:46, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
 * No, I'm not saying anything about the meaning of acquisition. What I am saying is that in some terms of which the word forms a part are idiomatic, not SOP, or rather, specifically in the compound noun second language acquisition - which means more than the acquisition of a second or other language. I can't really see why environmental science is not SOP while second language acquisition is. Can anyone explain the difference? - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 01:55, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm not the one to best defend having an entry for environmental science. I think the underlying logic is that there is an institutional reality to it, such as that underlying ESL. Perhaps it is also that one says "The science involved is environmental science." rather than "The science involved is environmental.". But just as we don't have entries for titles of books, we don't have entries for titles of courses or groups of courses or headings in course catalogs, which classes of uses would seem to be the best support for the entry.
 * I don't see what additional meaning there is to second language acquisition other than second language + acquisition or acquisition of a second language. (Note that the commonness of the latter alternate demonstrates that second language acquisition is not a set phrase.) DCDuring TALK 12:32, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for you comments DCDuring. What seems clear to me is that you cannot substitute acquisition of a second language into the sentence "Additionally, second language acquisition is concerned with the nature of the hypotheses" - it just wouldn't make any sense. However, you could substitute the name of another field of academic study, e.g. chemistry, environmental science, etc. Then the sentence would make perfect sense. Thus we can conclude acquisition of a second language is not equivalent to second language acquisition ... in this case (i.e. for this meaning). Originally, I wrote two defs, the first being "the acquisition of a language other than one's primary language or mother tongue" (or something along those lines) and the second being, "the field of study ..." - I don't deny the first is SOP, it most assuredly is, but I maintain that the second is not SOP. SLA is not just the name of a course (or book, or chapter), though there are many courses named SLA, since it is commonly studied. There are many courses named Philosophy of Science, Environmental Science, etc., but this doesn't preclude those words having a dictionary definition. Finally, a set phrase can have a synonym (that is either a set phrase or not) - so I don't agree that the existence of a synthetic synonym demonstrates that a lexical item is not a set phrase, as a general rule, that is. - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 01:25, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Delete per Equinox and Wikitiki89. - -sche (discuss) 01:31, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't argue to keep this, but either way we should have language acquisition. Ƿidsiþ 08:57, 1 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I would say keep - it is a term that crops up quite often, more so than language acquisition. DonnanZ (talk) 14:06, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Hi all. Umm, not looking good for keeping this (despite my entirely logical arguments, heigh ho). But, if the entry does get removed, then, what will become of this discussion? Where will it be archived? Also, if someone else tries to add the same entry in the future, will they be provided with the info amassed here? - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 01:38, 18 July 2016 (UTC)
 * It should be at Talk:second language acquisition. DCDuring TALK 02:42, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

Deleted. bd2412 T 21:54, 2 August 2016 (UTC)