Theories of Language Development

Theories of Language Development

1. Nativist Approaches

   • Originally believed that language acquisition was based on the same general learning principles of operant condition. Noam Chomsky then argued that language is an innate mechanism that matures according to a biological timetable.
     • Universal grammar- a set of abstract, unconscious rules that all human languages are based on
     • Language acquisition device (LAD)- an innate mechanism that helps children to understand and reproduce the rules in any given language that is activated when the child hears speech
     • Module- a linguistic or cognitive system that is designed for a specific purpose and which functions independently from other cognitive systems

2. Cognitive Developmental Approaches

   • Emphases the interaction between cognition and language. In order to learn the meanings of words and sentences, children first needs to have a concept of the thing being referred to.
     • Some of the basic concepts acquired during infancy also shows a close correspondence with some of the first words/phrases that children produce

3. Envrionmental-Interactionist Approaches

   • Three main approaches have been proposed
     • 1. kind of language interactions between a child and their parents.
     • 2. the social and communicative functions of language.
       • this functionalist approach maintains that children's basic motivation for learning language is to understand those around them and to communicate their own thoughts/feelings
     • 3. a statistical learning approach that assumes all languages contain certain statistical regularities, that certain kinds of sounds, words and word combinations occur with more frequency than others