The Prohibition essays

The Prohibition essays Prohibition began on midnight of January 16, 1920. After decades of crusade by prohibitionists touting the calamities of 'demon rum' many people got the idea that most of what was wrong with America was caused by booze. They saw prohibition as the silver hammer that would decimate all of their alcohol-related woes. Instead, it turned out to be the lodestone that led America into thirteen years of chaos. The Eighteenth Amendment was put into effect to prohibit the manufacture, sale and transportation of all intoxicating liquors. Shortly afterward, the Volstead Act, named for author Andrew J. Volstead, was put into effect. This complimentary law determined intoxicating liquor as anything having an alcohol content of more than 0.5 percent, omitting alcohol used for medicinal and sacramental purposes; this act set up guidelines for enforcement as well (Altman 15). After the Volstead Act was put into place to determine precise laws and methods of enforcement, the Federal Prohibition Bureau was developed in order to see that the Volstead Act was enforced. Nevertheless, bootleggers and commoners alike frequently violated these laws. Bootleggers smuggled liquor from overseas and Canada, stole it from government warehouses, or simply produced their own. In a chapter of his book The Fabulous Century, Ezra Bowen points out that people hid their liquor in hip flasks, false books, hollow canes, and anything else they could find. Bowen Also notes that there were numerous illegal speakeasies that replaced saloons soon after the start of prohibition. Bowen notes that by 1925, there were thousands of speakeasies in New York City alone. One serious problem created by the criminal aspect of liquor was that as an illegal product, it had no standards. Deaths from drinking denatured and poisoned alcohol rose from 1,064 in 1920 to 4,154 in 1925. Although it may have worked in theory, prohibition was far easier to proclaim than to enforce. With o...

Language Acquisition in Children

Language Acquisition in Children The term language acquisition refers to the development of language in children. By age 6, children have usually mastered most of the basic vocabulary and grammar of their first language. Second language acquisition (also known as second language learning or sequential language acquisition) refers to the process by which a person learns a foreign language- that is, a language other than their mother tongue. Examples and Observations For children, acquiring a language is an effortless achievement that occurs: Without explicit teaching,On the basis of positive evidence (i.e., what they hear),Under varying circumstances, and in a limited amount of time,In identical ways across different languages. ... Children achieve linguistic milestones in parallel fashion, regardless of the specific language they are exposed to. For example, at about 6-8 months, all children start to babble ... that is, to produce repetitive syllables like bababa. At about 10-12 months they speak their first words, and between 20 and 24 months they begin to put words together. It has been shown that children between 2 and 3 years speaking a wide variety of languages use infinitive verbs in main clauses ... or omit sentential subjects ... although the language they are exposed to may not have this option. Across languages young children also over-regularize the past tense or other tenses of irregular verbs. Interestingly, similarities in language acquisition are observed not only across spoken languages, but also between spoken and signed languages. (Marà ­a Teresa Guasti, Language Acquisition: The Growth of Grammar. MIT Press, 2002) Typical Speech Timetable for English-Speaking Child Week 0 - CryingWeek 6 - Cooing (goo-goo)Week 6 - Babbling (ma-ma)Week 8 - Intonation patternsWeek 12: Single wordsWeek 18 - Two-word utterancesYear 2: Word endingsYear 2 ½: NegativesYear 2 ¼: QuestionsYear 5: Complex constructionsYear 10: Mature speech patterns (Jean Aitchison, The Language Web: The Power and Problem of Words. Cambridge University Press, 1997) The Rhythms  of Language At around nine months of age, then, babies start to give their utterances a bit of a beat, reflecting the rhythm of the language theyre learning. The utterances of English babies start to sound like te-tum-te-tum. The utterances of French babies start to sound like rat-a-tat-a-tat. And the utterances of Chinese babies start to sound like sing-song. ... We get the feeling that language is just around the corner.This feeling is reinforced by [an]other feature of language..: intonation. Intonation is the melody or music of language. It refers to the way the voice rises and falls as we speak. (David Crystal, A Little Book of Language. Yale University Press, 2010) Vocabulary Vocabulary and grammar grow hand in hand; as toddlers learn more words, they use them in combination to express more complex ideas. The kinds of objects and relationships that are central to daily life influence the content and complexity of a childs early language. (Barbara M. Newman and Philip R. Newman, Development Through Life: A Psychosocial Approach, 10th ed. Wadsworth, 2009)Humans mop up words like sponges. By the age of five, most English-speaking children can actively use around 3,000 words, and more are added fast, often quite long and complex ones. This total rises to 20,000 around the age of thirteen, and to 50,000 or more by the age of about twenty. (Jean Aitchison, The Language Web: The Power and Problem of Words. Cambridge University Press, 1997) The Lighter Side of Language Acquisition Child: Want other one spoon, Daddy.Father: You mean, you want the other spoon.Child: Yes, I want other one spoon, please, Daddy.Father: Can you say the other spoon?Child: Other ... one ... spoon.Father: Say other.Child: Other.Father: Spoon.Child: Spoon.Father: Other spoon.Child: Other ... spoon. Now give me other one spoon. (Martin Braine, 1971; quoted by George Yule in The Study of Language, 4th ed. Cambridge University Press, 2010)