Second Language Acquisition and Second ... - Stephen Krashen

variation. Nelson, for example, distinguishes a "referential style" used by children who are
more oriented to things, objects, and actions on objects from an "expressive" style, used by
children who are personal-social oriented. Perhaps the latter is related to Peters' gestalt style
and the former to the analytic style.
Peters' analysis is strengthened by Dore's (1974) analysis of two child L1 acquirers, M (female)
and J (male). While M produced words during the period her speech was studies, J produced
more primitive speech acts, that is, he tended to make more use of language for
communication, often using intonation alone. J's language use also tended to involve other
people more than M's did; he used language more instrumentally than M, who was more prone
to "label, imitate, and practice words" (p. 628). Input for the two children was, to some extent,
different. M's mother "set up routines in which she would pick up an item, label it, and
encourage her daughter to imitate it" (p. 627). "J and his mother did not participate in wordlearning
routines" (p. 628). Dore suggests that "there may be two partly separate lines of
development--word development versus prosodic development" (p. 628). The diagram below
depicts parallels in terminology among Peters, Nelson, and Dore.
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Analytic language Gestalt language
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--"one word at a time" development --Whole utterances in conversational
--Referential, labeling functions contexts
at first --Rapid, conversational input
--Clear mother-ese
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"Analytic": Peters "Gestalt": Peters
"Referential": Nelson "Expressive": Nelson
"Word development": Dore "Prosodic development": Dore
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Peters suggest that gestalt users may "have to convert slowly and painfully to a more analytic
approach to language" (p. 13), holding that "creative language" (analytic language) eventually
predominates. This is most consistent with position 2: gestalt language, which involves the
heavy use of routines and patterns, may be a temporary strategy for the performer to
outperform his analytic competence, to solve certain communication problems that his creative
language has not evolved far enough to handle. Yet, since automatic speech appears
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