Child Language Development Theories

Child Language Development Theories

1. Behaviourism

   • Accredited to B.F. Skinner, who says that a child learns language based on positive and negative reinforcement of ideas
   • For example, when a child correctly calls a dog "a dog", a caregiver may say something positive like "yes, that's a dog" to reinforce the idea
   • Similarly, when an incorrect utterance is produced, like a child calling a dog "a cat", the caregiver may say something negative like, "no that's not a cat, it's a dog", often assisted with tone of voice and paralinguistic features

2. Interactionism

   • Interactionalists believe that a child is born tabula rasa (or blank state) and learns language based on their interaction with caregivers. In the case of "nature vs nurture", interactionalists argue for nurture
   • Child directed speech (CDS) - the process of talking to a child
   • Bruner: The main interactionalist is Bruner. He created LASS (Language Acquisition Support System) to "scaffold" a child in learning a language (structuring responses in order to help a child use language more accurately)
   • Catherine Snow: coined the term "motherese" to describe the language used by mothers to talk to children. She argues that language acquisition happens due to interaction between the mother and her child. Interactions with father use "fatherese" and others use "otherese"
   • John Snarey argues that mothers and fathers interact with their child differently. He says that "roughhousing" with the father teaches that violence is unacceptable and how to gain self control.
     • He believes that tickling, wrestling, throwing the child in the air, chasing, loud volume, bouncing rather than cuddling and rough rather than gentle, encouragement of competition, promotion of independence over security, less simplification of speech, and challenging the child to expand language and linguistic skills are part of the fatherese process
   • Snow and Bruner: argue that caregivers may use the following strategies as part of the scaffolding and CDS process:
     • Recasting and Reformulation: the caregiver repeats what the child said containing anything needed to make a grammatically standard utterance
     • Expansion: the caregiver expands the sentence to make the utterance more complex
     • Exaggerated prosodic cues: varying intonation and pitch
     • Expatiation: expressing what the child said giving more information
     • Overarticulation: the caregiver stretches out vowel sounds
     • Rhades adds that the following are used:
       • Melodic short and simple sentences
       • Focus on what the child is doing
       • Repetition of what the child and caregiver say
       • Pausing between words
       • Higher frequency of interrogatives and imperatives
       • Slower speech
   • In 1975, Grice proposed a set of maxims to define cooperative principles (features which must be present in conversation)
     • 1) The maxim of quantity - the contributions must carry the right amount of information
     • 2) The maximum of quality - the contributions must be truthful
     • 3) The maximum of relation - the contributins must be relevant to the discussion
     • 4) The maximum of manner - the contributions must be clear and lack ambiguity

3. Challenging Interactionism

   • De Villiers and De Villiers state that it is rare for caregivers to give direct feedback about the correctness of their language, so it must be something more innate
   • Myzor believes that CDS help to aid social development but does not help linguistic development. For example, it may teach children to take turns in conversation, but not aid their ability to use correct forms.
   • Clif Pye researched how different cultures learn language. His researched detailed that children acquire language at roughly the same time and that not all cultures use CDS. For example, Samoan families do not speak to their children for around 18 months. This implies that language acquisition may be more innate.
   • Chomsky in particular takes issue with Bruner's work. In 1959, he published a paper criticising Bruner's theory on a number of flaws. Chomsky questions how children produce utterances that are grammatically non-standard to the point where no caregiver would have said them- errors often happen that are not present in the template

4. Nativism

   • Nativism is a theory taken on by Chomsky, and takes on the "nature" side of "nature vs nurture"
   • Chomsky's theory states that children cannot learn through the imitation of their caregivers because they provide a "poverty of stimulus", meaning that caregivers do not provide a good enough standard of language and often break the rules. Therefore, children must have something inbuilt within their brains to help them learn language. He calls this the "Language Acquisition Device", or the LAD.
     • Within the LAD is a knowledge of language structures (universal grammar) and the knowledge becomes activated through experience.
     • Chomsky also claims that around the age of 7, the LAD switches off and then it becomes difficult to learn languages
     • He states that children are often resistant to corrections of their mistakes, and that this is the LAD instructing them that their way of using language is right and the caregiver is wrong
     • Chomsky states that children make virtuous errors (errors made with good intentions) e.g. "I hurted his feelings"
     • He states that children have a universal grammar which states a set of rules on how to structure language. His theory is supported by the fact that many languages follow the SVO (subject-verb-object) syntax. Brown's research details that 75% of countries follow this syntax

5. Support for Nativism

   • Jean Berko Gleason created the "Wug Test", where children were given a bird-like picture called a "wug" and then asked to state things like what two of these creatures would be called "wugs". The test invented nouns and verbs to test pluralisation and over-generalisation.
     • 76% of 4-5 year olds and 97% of 5-7 year olds could correctly use the "-s" ending for "wug". The test used words that children will not have encountered before and so proves that children learn the rule and do not imitate.
     • This research was by Cruttenden's research in 1979 in which he defined the "u-shaped curve". At point 1, the child applies the rule and gets it right. At point 2, the child applies the rule everywhere and gets it wrong. At point 3, the child learns that the rule is right in certain circumstances.
   • Case Study: Genie. In the 1970's, a 13 year old girl was found by the authorities. They found she was withered and held her hands like a rabbit. At first, welfare officers assumed she was autistic, but futher probing discovered she was limited to very few words. Her father had trapped her in a room since she was a toddler, detaining her in a straight jacket and tying her to a chair. He growled at her if she cried or made a noise
     • Linguists worked extensively with Genie, but because she had passed the critical period, she could not properly acquire language. Chomsky would argue that the LAD had expired and could not be activated. This case study also supports the idea that children cannot acquire laguage through interaction with caregivers alone
   • Children often produce grammatically non-standard utterances, and so they cannot be copied.
   • Inflectional mistakes (Berko Gleason) prove an application of a set of rules.
   • Pinker- every utterance is practically unique, children produce utterances they've never hear before.
   • Culture is not a barrier: all cultures require language at a similar age
   • Children notice mistakes (Berko and Brown)
   • Non-standard grammatical constructions can make sense

6. Challenging Nativism