Lecture 2

Theme: Theory of first language acquisition

Subtopic 2: Distinguished features of Theoretical Approach of first language acquisition

Problematic questions:

1. Why is that behavioristic theories can account sufficiently well for the earliest utterances of the child, but not for utterances at the sentence and discourse level?

2. Do nativistic and functional approaches provide the necessary tools for accounting for those latter, more complex utterances?

3. What approaches of language acquisition do you know?

Behavioristic Approaches

The Nativist Approach

Functional approach

Cognitive Approach (views)

Behavioristic Approaches

According to behavioristic position – children come into the world with a tabula rasa (your mind in its original state, before you have learned anything), a clear state bearing no preconceived notions about the world or about the language, and that these children are then shaped by their environment and slowly conditioned through various schedules of reinforcement.

Is Language a fundamental part of total behavior of human being?

Language is a fundamental part of total behavior, and behaviorists examined it as such and sought to formulate consistent theories of first language acquisition.

A behaviorist might consider effective language behavior to be the production of correct responses to stimuli. If a particular response is reinforced, it then becomes habitual, or a conditioned. Thus children produce linguistic responses that are reinforced.

The Behaviorist Approach (Skinner)

• language is acquired by conditioning and reinforcement

• Learns through rewards and punishments.

Children learn to speak by imitation. Parents then reinforce or correct their speech. Children don’t imitate perfectly they may say words similar to what they hear around them.

• Problems:

• 1. They over-extend language patterns they already know;

Steal > stealed > instead of stole

Drive > drived > instead of drove

This is not imitation instead it is an extension

as adults do

• Poverty of the Stimulus

Environmentalist theories / Behavioristic

• Environment shapes learning and behavior

• Children react to their surroundings

• Children learn language from

– Input

– Trial and error

– Error correction

The Nativist Approach

According to nativist position – language acquisition is innately determined, that we are bornwith a genetic capacity that predisposes us to a systematic perception of language around us.

There are various nativist views on language development. Among them are the perspectives of David McNeill, Noam Chomsky, and Eric Lenneberg.

Nativist theories

• Children do not need any kind of formal teaching to learn to speak.

• Children are born with a natural capacity to learn language.

• The brain contains systems for recognizing patterns of sound.

Psycholinguistic theory

McNeill’s and Noam Chomsky’s views are referred to a psycholinguistic theory. Lennerberg’s theory hypothesizes the existence of a period during which children are particularly sensitive to acquiring the structures of language.

According to psycholinguistic theory, language learning involves an interaction between environmental influences and inborn tendency to acquire language. The emphasis is on the inborn tendency. Evidence for inborn tendency is found in the universality of human language abilities.