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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 5 page paper discusses the Italian-American dialect used on the TV show "The Sopranos." Bibliography lists 6 sources.
Page Count:
5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVDialTV.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
or that they grew up in households that speak Italian; their English is accented. This also tends to add to the realism of the series, which portrays the life of
a Mafia boss, Tony Soprano. This paper discusses the way in which adults learn second languages and how that relates to the dialects heard on television. Discussion Evidence is mounting
within the linguistic community to suggest that "adult learners of second languages rarely, if ever, achieve full native-like proficiency in their second language (L2)" (Tanner). However, it is also "becoming
accepted ... that normal L2 learners never seem to produce wildly agrammatic speech" (Tanner). In other words, despite the fact that these learners are acquiring a second language in which
they are not as proficient as they are in their native tongue, their "utterances and grammatical intuitions" are well within the "range of attested human grammars and are thus thought
to be constrained by principles of Universal Grammar (UG). "Universal grammar" refers to a theory propounded by Noam Chomsky in the late 1950s-early 1960s, to explain the development of human
languages. Chomsky said Let us define Universal Grammar (UG) as the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements or properties of all human languages not merely by
accident but by necessity-of course, I mean biological, not logical, necessity. Thus UG can be taken as expressing the essence of human language. UG will be invariant among humans. UG
will specify what language learning must achieve, if it takes place successfully. ... Each human language will conform to UG; ... UG will specify properties of sound, meaning, and structural
organization (Johnson). Universal grammar thus is characterized as "a system of rules, principles, and conditions for generating and understanding (learning) language" (Johnson). UG covers "all aspects of language: sound,
...