Language Acquisition Theories

Language Acquisition Theories

1. Nativist Theory - Humans have an inbuilt capacity to acquire Language

   • For Children: all children experience the same stages of language development at the same time. They create forms of language that adults don't use (over generalisations). Make their own rules in language use - that have vague grammatical rules. They can produce correct language even when being surrounded by 'impoverished language'.
     • Theory: 'wug' test suggests children are able to produce the 'correct' grammatical rule
   • Against Children: stop overgeneralising and learn to use language correctly, as with irregular verbs. need input to give them more skills than grammar, for example pragmatic understanding. Children who have been deprived of social contact can't achieve complete communicative competence
     • Relevant Studies: Studies of Genie and feral children support the 'critical period' hypothesis.
   • Noam Chomsky (American Linguist) - learning takes place through an innate brain mechanism --> pre-programmed with the ability to acquire grammatical structures - (LAD) Language Acquisition Device. Human languages may seem different yet are very similar (universal grammar).
     • Eric Lenneburg (1967) - Furthered the nativist argument by proposing the 'critical period' hypothesis.

2. Behaviourist Theory - Language is acquired through imitation and reinforcement

   • For Children: imitate accent and dialect. Learn politeness and pragmatic aspects of language. Repeat language they have heard around them and incorporate it into theirs - lexical knowledge must be gained from being told he right labels.
   • Against Children: Do more than just imitate language and can form sentences that they have heard. hear ungrammatical language but can learn to correct it.
     • Other Limitations: 'fis' phenomenon suggests that children can hear and understand the correct pronunciation but simply can't produce it themselves at that stage.
       • research was conducted on rats and pigeons, not humans.
   • B.F. Skinner
     • Through reinforcement thy are conditioned
       • positive and negative reinforcement

3. Social Interactionist Theory - Child language is develop through interaction with adults

   • Foregrounds the role of parents and carers
     • For: Routine and rituals seem to teach children about spoken discourse structure such as turn-taking. Pragmatic development suggests that children learn politeness and verbally acceptable behaviour. Role-play and pretend play suggest that more interaction with carers can effect vocab.
       • Relevant studies: Halliday's research into the functions of language supports the importance of social interaction.
       • Vincent - the hearing child born to deaf parents, learned to communicate using sign language.
     • Against: Children from cultures that do not promote interaction with children can still become articulate and fluent language users without adult input.

4. Cognitive Theory - Language acquisition is part of a wider development of understanding that develops

   • For Children: cannot grasp aspects of language until they are ready; stages of development sport this. Produce utterances which increase in complexity as they work towards mastering a rule.
     • Relevant studies: Brown's morphemes. Bellugi's stages for pronoun and question formation.
   • Against Children: with cognitive difficulties can still manage to use language beyond their understanding. acquire language without having an understanding of it, especially in the early stages of development. 'Fis' shows that physical development impacts their ability to use language
   • Jean Piaget - can only understand language when you understand the concept. Emphasised that children are active learners use environment and social interaction to shape language.
     • Up to 2 years - Sensorimotor stage: experience physical world through stages, object permanence develops, classifies things within the world, lexical choices tend to be concrete.
       • 2-7 -Pre-operational stage: cant yet think logically or in an abstract way -thought is initiative, represents the world symbolically - language is egocentric, see things from their point of view, used by children when no-one is around.
         • 7-11 Concrete Operational Stage: Can't think logically about obvious things, some inductive reasoning, recognise that others have different viewpoints
           • 11+ Formal Operational Stage: Abstract reasoning develops, manipulate ideas in mind without relying on concrete things, doesn't need to have experienced things in order to think about them, can imagine what is possible.