Language Development

•Nativisit
•Behaviourist
•Interactional approach
 Nativist perspective
 Language: a small unit of individually meaningless symbols
(sounds, letters, gestures) that can be combined according to
agreed-on rules to produce an infinite number of messages
(Shaffer & Kipp, 2010).
 Language is one of the most complex & abstract bodies of
knowledge, children in all cultures come to understand & use
this indicate form of communication very early in life.
 Language is a system of symbols and rules that can generate an
infinite number of possible messages and meanings.
Noam Chomsky
 According to the nativists, human beings are biologically programmed to acquire

language.
 Linguist Noam Chomsky (1957) first convinced the scientific community that

children assume much responsibility for their own language learning.

 He proposed a nativist account that regards language as a uniquely human

accomplishment, depicted into the structure of the brain.

 Focusing on the grammar, Chomsky reasoned that rules for sentence organization

are too complex to be directly taught to or discovered by even a cognitively

sophisticated young child.

 Children and adults alike readily produce and understand an unlimited range of

sentences- often ones that they have never said or heard before.
 To account for this extraordinary facility with language, Chomsky proposed that all

children have a language acquisition device (LAD), an innate system that permits

them, as soon as they have acquired sufficient vocabulary, to combine words into

grammatically consistent, novel utterances and to understand the meaning of

sentences they hear.

 According to Chomsky (1976,1997), within the LAD is a universal grammar, a built

in storehouse of rules that apply to all human languages processing, children master

the structure of language spontaneously, with only limited language exposure.

 Nativist perspective also regards deliberate training by parents an unnecessary for

language development. Instead, the LAD ensures that language, despite its

complexity, will be acquired early and swiftly.

 Linguist Noam Chomsky (1959, 1968) has argued that the structure of even the simplest

of languages is incredibly elaborate—far too complex, he believed, to be either taught

by parents (as Skinner proposed) or discovered via simple trial-and-error processes by

cognitively immature toddlers and preschool children.

 Instead, Chomsky proposed that we humans (and only humans) come equipped with a

language acquisition device (LAD)—an inborn linguistic processor that is activated by

verbal input.

 According to Chomsky, the LAD contains a universal grammar, or knowledge of rules

that are common to all languages. So regardless of the language (or languages) a child

has been listening to, the LAD should allow any child to acquire a sufficient vocabulary,

combine words into novel, rule-bound utterances, and understand much of what he

hears.
Chomsky’s language acquisition
device (LAD)

 Chomsky’s term for the innate knowledge of grammar

that humans are said to possess—knowledge that might
enable young children to infer the rules governing
others’ speech and to use these rules to produce
language.
 universal grammar
 in nativist theories of language acquisition, the basic
rules of grammar that characterize all languages.
 He propagated an innate biological mechanism that contains
general grammatical rules which are common to all languages.
 Dependent on the initial exposure of culture and society a
particular type of language learning develops. It is compared to
electric switchboard.
 Consequently, he proposed the theory of Universal Grammar: an
idea of innate, biological grammatical categories, such as a noun
category and a verb category that facilitate the entire language
development in children and overall language processing in adults.
 Universal Grammar is considered to contain all the grammatical

information needed to combine these categories, e.g. noun and verb, into

phrases. The child’s task is just to learn the words of her language

(Ambridge & Lieven).

 For example, according to the Universal Grammar account, children

instinctively know how to combine a noun (e.g. a boy) and a verb (to eat)

into a meaningful, correct phrase (A boy eats).

 This Chomskian (1965) approach to language acquisition has inspired

hundreds of scholars to investigate the nature of these assumed

grammatical categories and the research is still ongoing.

 Support for the Nativist
Perspective

 Are children biologically programmed to acquire language?

 Several observations seem to suggest that they are. For example,

we’ve noted that children the world over reach certain linguistic

milestones at about the same age, despite cultural differences in the

structure of their languages. This must be supported by a species-

specific mechanism called LAD

 Even many retarded children who perform very poorly on a broad

range of cognitive tasks nevertheless acquire a near-normal knowledge

of syntax and become quite adequate conversationalists (Pinker, 1991).

 LIMITATIONS

 An explanation would require knowing how such an inborn processor filter

through linguistic input and infers the rules of language; yet nativists are not at

all clear about how an LAD (or LMC) might operate (Moerk, 1989; Palmer,

2000).

 In some ways, attributing language development to the mysterious workings of

an LAD or LMC is like saying that physical growth is biologically programmed

—and then stopping there, failing to identify the underlying variables (nutrition,

hormones, etc.) that explain why growth follows the course that it takes

(MacNeilage et al., 2000).

 For these reasons, the nativist approach is woefully incomplete; it is really more

of a description of language learning than a true explanation.

 Finally, there are those who claim that nativists, who focus almost exclusively on

biological mechanisms and on the deficiencies of learning theories, have simply

overlooked (fail to notice) the many ways in which a child’s language environment

promotes language learning (Brooks, 2004).

 Researchers have had great difficulty specifying the universal grammar that

Chomsky believes underlies the widely varying grammatical systems of human

languages.
 A persistent source of dissatisfaction is the absence of a complete description of

these abstract grammatical structures, or even an agreed-on list of how many exist,

to the best examples of them. How do children manage to link such rules with the

strings of words they hear is also unclear.

 Chomsky’s assumption that grammatical knowledge is innately determined

does not fit with certain observations of language development.

 Once children begin to use an innate grammatical structure, we would

expect them to apply it across the board, to all relevant instances in their

language. But although children make extraordinary strides in grammatical

development in the preschool years, their mastery of many forms is not

immediate, but continuous and gradual.

 Complete mastery of some forms ( such as the passive voice) is not

achieved until well into middle childhood. This suggests that more learning

and discovery are involved than Chomsky assumed.

????????
Behaviourist theory of language
development
The behaviourist theory suggests that language
is learned from the environment and through
conditioning.
 The Behaviorist theory of language acquisition, led by
psychologists like B.F. Skinner, argues that language develops
through conditioning and reinforcement of associations between
environmental stimuli and vocal responses.
 Language is viewed as a set of learned behaviors that are
acquired through interactions with one's surroundings.
 According to this perspective, children gradually develop
language skills by imitating the words and sentences they hear
from others.
 When their utterances are positively reinforced through
attention, praise or understanding from caregivers,
children are likely to repeat those utterances.
 Over time, through continuous conditioning and
reinforcement, children form stable associations between
environmental stimuli and vocal responses.
 These associations become habitual, allowing the child to
produce appropriate language in given contexts.
 Behaviourists reject the idea that language develops due to
innate cognitive or mental mechanisms.
 They argue that meaning, concepts and grammar emerge
gradually as children's linguistic habits become more complex
and systematic.
 Behaviourists see language as a series of learned behaviors,
acquired through conditioning principles of reinforcement and
punishment.
 Internal mental processes play little or no role in their view.
 Behaviourist Theory of Language
Acquisition
Criticism

 It fails to explain the creativity and productivity of language.

Children are able to spontaneously produce and understand
novel utterances that they have never been reinforced for
before.
 It lacks explanatory power for many linguistic phenomena
like language disorders, language changes over time,
language breaks and loss, etc. This suggests innate linguistic
principles beyond simple behaviourist conditioning.
THE INTERACTIONIST APPROACH
OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
 The theory that language is acquired from an interaction of a human’s

innate biological capabilities to acquire language with exposure to language

in the environment in which the child is developing.

 The social-interactionist theory in child language acquisition recognises

both our genetic predisposition for learning language (like

the Nativist Theory) and the importance of our social environment in

developing language (like the Behavioural Theory.

 The interactionist theory as a compromise between the two! It also

emphasises the importance of interaction with other people in acquiring and

developing language skills.

 The interactionist theory was first suggested
by Jerome Bruner in 1983 who believed that, although children do
have an innate ability to learn language, they also require plenty
of direct contact and interaction with others to achieve full
language fluency.
 In other words, the theory of interaction suggests that children can't
learn to speak just by watching TV or listening to conversations.
 They have to fully engage with others and understand the
contexts in which language is used.
 Caregivers tend to provide the linguistic support that helps a child learn

to speak. They correct mistakes, simplify their own speech and build the

scaffolding that helps a child to develop language.

 This support from caregivers can also be referred to as the 'Language

Acquisition Support System' (LASS).

 The interactionist approach looks at both social and biological

perspectives to explain how children develop language.

 It moves away from Noam Chomsky's Nativist Theory which failed to

recognise the importance of the social environment in language

acquisition.
 The interactionist theory also suggests that:
 Children learn language as they have the desire to
communicate with the world around them (i.e., it is a
communication tool to do things like interact with others, ask for
food, and demand attention!)
 Language develops depending on social interactions. This includes
the people with whom a child may interact and the overall experience
of the interaction.
 The social environment a child grows up in greatly affects how well
and how quickly they develop their language skills.
 Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) first laid the foundations for the

interactionist theory when he developed the sociocultural theory of

language development.

 With regards to the interactionist theory, Bruner used the concept

of 'scaffolding' to explain the role of caregivers in child language

development.

 He first developed the idea from Vygotsky's theory of proximal

development which emphasised that children need a more

knowledgeable other to develop their knowledge and skills.

Bruner argued that caregivers provide the same
kind of support for children.
They provide support (referred to as the
'Language Acquisition Support System' (LASS)
and this is gradually removed as the child learns
and develops by themselves.
What is the Language Acquisition Support
System (LASS)?

LASS is a term used to describe

the support from
caregivers/parents/teachers in a child's
early language development.
Child-Directed Speech (CDS)

 In the interactionist theory, child-directed speech (CDS

for short) refers to the way in which caregivers and
adults typically speak to children.
 It is thought to enhance communication between child
and caregiver by helping the child to identify sounds,
syllables, and words in sentences.
 The slow and melodic speech is also thought to hold the
attention of toddlers.