Language Theorists

Language Theorists

1. Cognitive theoriests

   • Those who believe that language development is linked to the brain and is part of a wider understanding of life

2. Child Directed Speech (CDS)

   • The most suitable way to refer to the language used when speaking to children
   • Alison Clarke-Stewart
     • Children have a larger vocabulary if their mthers talk to them often

3. Behaviourists

   • Those who believe that language is acquired through imitation and reinforcement
   • B.F. Skinner
     • reinforcement- the idea that positive and negative reinforcement used to encourage/ discourage readers
     • Believes children learn through imitation

4. Jean Berko

   • The Wug Theory
     • Berko drew a picture of an imaginary creature, naming it a 'wug'. She asked children what ore than one wug would be called- 75% said wugs
     • way of investigating the acquisition of plural and other inflectional morphemes in English- speaking children

5. Michael Halliday

   • Halliday's taxonomy
     • Children acquire language in order to facilitate developments in live
       • instrumental
         • 'I want'
       • Regulatory
         • 'Do as I tell you'
       • Personal
         • 'Here I come'
       • Interactional
         • 'Me and you'
       • Heuristic
         • 'Tell me why'
       • Imaginative
         • 'Let's pretend'
       • Representational
         • 'I've got something to tell you'

6. John Dore

   • Infant language functions
     • labeling
       • simply naming/ identifying a person, object or experience
     • repeating
       • echoing something spoken by an adult
     • requesting action
       • demanding food, drinking, a toy etc.
     • calling
       • attracting attention
     • greeting
       • saying 'hello'
     • protesting
       • objecting to requests
     • practising
       • using and repeating language when no adult is present
   • Looks at individual utterances, rather than the broad picture of life

7. Lev Vygotsky

   • Children's play
     • Children learn meaning through play/ interact with others
     • object permanence
       • the child cannot understand an word if they cannot see it
   • words do not acquire meaning/ become rational until around 2 years

8. Catherine Garvey

   • pretend play
     • sometimes termed 'sociodramatic play'
     • children often adopt roles and identities, acting out story lines and inventing objectives and settings
       • fulfilling Halliday's theory of Imaginative language function
     • they practice negotiation and social interaction
     • involves social and dramatical skills, has explicit rules and reflects real world behaviour
     • starts around age 4

9. Jerome Bruner

   • Language Acquisition Support System (LASS)
     • for spoken language- the idea that ritual activities have rules and are predictable enough for children to learn
       • e.g. meal time, bed time etc.
       • includes games such as peekaboo
     • non-verbal actions and prosodic features also teach children important linguistic aspects such as turn taking and syntax
     • he championed the idea of scaffolding where adults help children to further develop their skills
     • reading
       • adults use books to interact with children and encourage speech- 4 phased
         • gain attention
         • query
         • label
         • feedback
         • sees children as active leaners and sees social context as important

10. Eric Lenneburg

    • Critical period
      • furthered Chomsky
        • said there was a 'critical period' during which children should pick up language
      • argued that they don't evolve language skills by the age of five, and never reach full grammatical fluency
        • tested on feral children (e.g. children)