LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

    How children acquire language

Four Theories about laguage acquisition:  

1. Imitation (modeling) 
2. Reinforcement (Rewards and punishment)  
3. Constructing grammar from input/experience         
4. Absorption of a specific language into an already existing general language structure in the brain:  “innateness hypothesis”

Imitation :  Children memorize words and sentences they hear from a language.

Reinforcement:  Children learn to speak by being praised or corrected by adults.

Input/Experience :  Children figure out and learn grammatical patterns from hearing adult language patterns.

Innateness Hypothesis

1.  Children’s brains have a “language acquisition device” that already contains the full range of structural possibilities inherent in language (“universal grammar”) .  This device absorbs the specific language the child hears.
2.  Children use the structural patterns they hear and discard the structural patterns they do not hear.
3.  Children do not have to learn structural patterns.  They only have to choose between them   

Arguments for Innate Language Acquisition Device   

–Perception for speech sounds is better than perception for other sounds

–Congenitally deaf children will learn sign language at about the rate that normal children learn spoken language, and will progress through roughly the same stages.

–Children are not exposed to as rich a variety of speech as they are able to develop.

–Parts of the brain seem to be specialized for language processing

–Parts of our physiology (larynx, highly manipulable tongue) seem to have no purpose except to facilitate the use of speech.

Language acquisition is not the result of a conscious decision.

•There is no evidence that children decide to learn language.

•Early language is an spontaneous game that happens between babies and their caretakers, not a conscious

goal.

Teaching and practice have little effect on language acquisition. 

•Parents do not give lessons to their children to get them to acquire language.

•Praise and correction do not occur with enough frequency to account for language proficiency

•Praise and correction may have little effect on language acquisition.

•Children produce language they have not heard from others

•Children learn language too rapidly to logically derive all linguistic rules from experience

 

There is a critical period for language development. •Childhood stages are quite regular

•Ability to acquire language after puberty declines in all humans regardless of cultural and/or

linguistic context

•People who learn a language after puberty retain their first language accent.

•Deaf individuals who learn to sign after puberty sign significantly differently than those who learn

before.