英语四级阅读200篇:Unit 49 passage 1_大学英语阅读

英语四级阅读200篇:Unit 49 passage 1

　　from the environment.

　　But lets be fair: most reputable linguists would define native language , as Leonard Bloomfield did in his book Language, as the first language a person learns, the language of his childhood home, or words to that effect, Nevertheless, Bloomfield went on to say that a persons adult language is not necessarily the same as his native language, of which he may have forgotten all but a smattering . Bloomfield was thinking in particular of children of immigrants to America, but similar cases occur in Britain and elsewhere. Yet almost in the same breath Bloomfield defined a bilingual as one who has native-like control of two languages , and I am quite sure he did not mean to suggest that a bilingual person may only remember a smattering of his two languages which would indeed disqualify him as a bilingual.

　　This curious contradiction or confusion is a fallacy to which most linguists seem prone. They choose to indicate a high degree of proficiency in the use of a language by referring to what a so-called native speaker of that language is thought to know, well aware though they are that some adults remember little or nothing of their native language , having for one reason or another abandoned it at an early age in favour of another language. Moreover, those same ex- native speakers of one language will most often have attained a degree of proficiency in their second-learnt language which equals that of native speakers .