Chomsky's language learning theory

Chomsky's language learning theory

1. claims

   • children are
     • biologically programmed for language
       • meaning that language develops in the same way as biological functions do
         • E.g. Every child will learn to walk as long as adequate nourishment and reasonable freedom of movement are provided. All children learn to walk at about the same time (they do not have to be taught)
     • born with the ability to discover for themselves the underlying rules of a language system
       • Their minds are not blank slates that need to be filled merely by imitating language they hear in their environment
       • which is based on a:
         • Language acquisition device (LAD)
           • often described as an "imaginary black box" located somewhere in the brain
             • It is thought to contain all and only the principles that are universal to all human languages
               • which prevent the child from wrong trails in trying to dicover the rules of the language
           • For it to work
             • the child needs access only to samples of the natural language
               • which seve as a trigger to activate the device
           • once activated
             • the child is able to discover
               • the structure of the language to be learned by matching
                 • The innate knowledge of basic grammatical relationships
                 • The structures of the particular language in the environment
           • which is now referred to as.
             • Universal Grammar (UG)
               • It consists of
                 • a set of principles which are common to all languages
     • by no means
       • systematically corrected or instructed on language points
         • when "corrected" by parents they tend to focus on:
           • meaning instead of language itself
   • the language that the child is exposed to
     • is full of confusing information
       • e.g. false starts, incomplete sentences, or slips of the tongue.
     • does not provide all the information which the child needs

2. The innatist position states

   • The environment makes a basic contribution with
     • the availability of people who speak to the child (the child's endowment will do the rest)

3. was developed in reaction to

   • the behaviorist theory of learning
     • based on imitation and habit formation
     • which he considered that it failed to recognize "the logical problem of language acquisition"
       • referring to the fact that children come to know more about the structure of their language than they could reasonably be expected to learn on the basis of the samples of language which they hear

4. draws attention to

   • The fact that children seem to develop language
     • in similar ways
     • on similar schedule
       • Some variation in the rate of acquisition can be associated with environmental differences, but adult linguistic competence (the knowledge of how their language works) is very similar for all speakers of one language
     • with apparent ease (something which may be envied by adult second language learners)

5. evidence includes that

   • all children learn their native language successfully at a time when they would not be expected to learn anything else so comlicated
   • children master the basic structure of their native language or dialect successfully in a variety of conditions
   • the language children are exposed to does not contain examples of all the information which they eventually know
   • animals cannot learn to manipulate a symbol system as complicated as the natural language of a three- or four- year-old human child
   • Children accomplish the complex task of language acquisition without having someone consistently point out to them which of the sentences they hear and produce are "correct" and which are "ungrammatical"