ST. MARY’S COLLEGE OF BANSALAN, INC.

Formerly Holy Cross of Bansalan College, Inc.

Dahlia st. Pob. Uno, Bansalan, Davao del sur

PRINCIPLES AND THEORIES OF LANGUAGE

ACQUISITION AND LEARNING

SUBMITTED TO:
DR. EVELYN V. CORTES

SUBMITTED BY:
POEHAN A. DUCOT, BSED II-ENGLISH
What is language?
Language is the primary method of human communication, but
there are also other ways to communicate without the use of language.
When asked to define language we tend to think of a verbal and written
system in which certain sounds and symbols come together in a specific
way to convey meaning. Language in its most complex form is unique to
humans, although some animals had been found to have basic
communication patterns. Languages often have verbal and written
components, but how we classify something like American Sign
Language? Animals manage to communicate – do they have language?
How did language evolve? How do we learn enough language ourselves
to begin to answer this question?

Why it is so surprising that we can learn language?

If you’ve ever tried to learn a new language, you know it’s not
easy. There are new rules of grammar which come with many
exceptions, new sounds that are hard to make, endless lists of vocabulary
to commit to memory and so on. And yet, you managed to learn the
basics of your very first language around the time you were two years
old; no textbooks in sight.
Not only are children able to absorb the complicated rules of
grammar without formal teaching, they do so from a limited vocabulary.
Regardless of how much a child is spoken to, they will not hear every
possible word and sentence by the time they begin speaking. Yet when
they do start to talk, children begin to follow grammatical rules and
apply them to form new, innovative phrases. This level of information
processing is incredibly impressive in anyone, much less someone still
figuring out counting and skipping!
What do we know?
As often the case in psychology and sociology, it’s hard to get
what we normally think of as data about language acquisition. It’s not a
chemical we can test for or a distance we can measure (imagine asking a
2 year old how many words they know – not a particularly useful or
productive task, right?). However, there are some facts that are generally
agreed upon by the scientific community. The first couple years of life
are the critical period for language learning, which becomes a much
harder task as people age. Children usually say their first words around
10-18 months of age, and graduate to phrases sometime before they are
two years old. In fact, studies have shown that 18 months old can tell the
difference between correctly formed verb pairs (is jumping) and
incorrect ones (will jumping). Somewhere between four and seven years
old children begin to be able to tell stories that more or less make sense.
We also know that learning a language is not like walking up the
steady increase of a ramp, but more like walking the hills and valleys of
a country road. Usually when we learn a new skill, the more we practice
the better we get. However, this isn’t always true in the early stage of
language development. When children are first learning to talk, the verbs
they use are usually the most common such as go, eat, talk, run, etc.
these are often irregular in the past tense. Although at first they use the
past tense properly (“I ran”, “he went”, etc), kids typically regress for a
while. They often over-follow rules, saying phrases like “I runned”
instead of “I ran”. As their vocabulary expand rapidly (known as
vocabulary burst), some researchers believe children notice patterns in
language, and that leads to over correction as described in the example
above. Eventually, children begin to understand where the rules apply
and where they don’t.
Language Acquisition Theories
Several theories and approaches over the years to study and
analyze the process of language acquisition. The main schools of
thought, which provide theoretical paradigms in guiding the course of
language acquisition are, innatist theory, cognitivist theory and
motherese theory. The innate theory asserts that language is an innate
capacity and that a child’s brain contains special language-learning
mechanisms at birth in which the main proponent of this theory is
Chomsky (Pinker, 1994). On the other hand, the cognitive theory by
Jean Piaget (Wilburg, 2010) claims that language is just one aspect of a
child’s overall intellectual development. Sassonian (2009) asserts that
language is a symbolic presentation which allows the children to abstract
the world. In this essay I will critically examining the input theory that
the child-centered “motherese” is universal, and there are cultures in
which speech is never addressed to language-learning children. More so,
the essay will critically discuss the cognitive theory and also how this
language acquisition is learned and develop by social interacting with
environments such as adults and the cognitive development. Also, I will
be highlighting studies that have critiqued Motherese and the other
theories of not being helpful to children in acquiring language.
 The innateness theory
Language is not an autonomous system for communication. It is
embedded in and supplemented by gesture, gaze, stance, facial
expression, voice quality in the full array of options people can use for
communicating (clark, 2009). Learning is complex and the conyext
where it takes place is influenced by our learning experience due to our
different experiences. Clark (2009,) states that in learning language,
children may first rely on nonlinguistic options, both in their initial
understanding and their own early use”. The innateness theory by Noam
Chomsky (Pinker, 1994) shows the innatist limitations of behaviorist
view of language acquisition in 1960’s to alternative ‘generative’
account language. The main Argument in this theory is that children are
born with an innate knowledge which guides them in the language
acquisition task. The children’s ability makes the task of learning a first
language easier than it would otherwise be (crain & Lillo-martin , 1999).
Pinker (1994). Claims that “the universally of complex language is a
discovery that fills linguists with awe, and is the first reason to suspect
that language is not just any cultural invention but the product of a
special human instinct”. It is an innate biological function of human
berings just like learning to walk. On the other side, clark (2009) poses
that “even if children are born with a learning mechanism dedicated to
language, the main proposals is to focus only on syntactic. The rest has
to be learnt.” This essay believes that children have the innate ability to
learn language as Chomsky believes, but this needs to be learn and
develop by social interaction and cognitive development. Moreover.
Chomsky (2009) argues that Language learning is not really something
that the child does; it is something that happens to the child placed in an
appropriate environment much as the child’s body grows and matures in
a predetermined way when provided with appropriate nutrition and
environment stimulation.
Furthermore, according to crain and Lillo-Martin (1999), the innate
knowledge, known as the language Acquisition Device (LAD), includes
principle common to all human languages, called the Universal
Grammar (UG). This is similar to pinker (1994) claims that the evidence
corroborating the claim that the mind contains blueprints for
grammatical rules comes, once again out of the mouths of babes and
suckling’s. for example, looking at the English agreement suffix-s as in
He walks” Chomsky theorized that children were born with a hard-wired
language acquisition device (hereafter, LAD) in their brains LAD is a set
of language learning tools, intuitive at birth in all children (pinker,
1994). Further expands this idea into that of universal grammar, a set of
innate principles and adjustable parameters that is common to all
humans.

More so, Crain and Lillo-Martin (1999) postulate that “language is not a
concrete set of things out in the world that we can point out to or
measure rather, it is something inside our brains and minds”. I support
this claim because I believe that the acquisition of language is innate but
as we grow and develop within an environment and interact with family,
school, society, we tend to develop cognitively, in which language
learning is a process of socialization. This claim accords well with
bruner (1957) who argues that children are not little grammarians,
motivated to decode the syntax of the language around them through the
operation of their LAD, but social beings who acquire language in the
service of their needs to communicate with others.
The Input theory
According to the input or Motherese theory, there are cultures in
which speech is never addressed to language-learning children; therefore
it must be possible to learn to talk by listening to adults talking to each
other or by the environments surrounding them. The studies of
Motherese in the 1970 focused upon the maternal input, that parents do
not talk to their children in the same way as they talk to other adults and
seem to be capable and adapting their language to give the child
maximum opportunity to interact and learn (lieven, 1994). This implies
that the child moves ahead a little at time. Adults do talk differently to
children than to other adults using what is sometimes called
“Motherese”. Crain and Lillo-Martin (1999) argue that “adults mumble
less to children, they use fewer incorrectly formed sentences, they use
shorter sentences, and they frequently use different intonation patterns
with young children”.

Mothers are able to provide semantically relevant and interpretable

speech because they follow up on topics introduced by the child; but
some mothers will be better at doing this than others, (lieven, 1994). It
also shows that some children will be better at eliciting semantically
relevant and interpretable speech than others. The utterance of the
parents is considerably and subconsciously simplified especially with
respect to grammar and meaning and sentences are shorter. However
various studies have indicated that they do not invariably use
grammatically simpler sentences. Crain and Lillo-Martin (1999) pose
that looking at studies that compared children whose parents used
Motherese to those whose parents did not use Motherese, no different
was found in language development. So it does not seem that Motherese
serves to pace the information presented to the child, in order to help her
learn the language in easy steps and must be clear that Motherese would
not be helpful, and “could be detrimental to language development in
certain cases” (crain & lillo-martin, 1994). Pinker (1994) objects to the
claims of Crain and lillo-martin (1994) in his findings and asserts that he
has observed the results of the experiment that we do not teach our
children to sit, stand, walk, but they do it on their own schedule.

Crain and Lillo-Martin (1994) assert that there are two facts about
language acquisition “first, it is universal (within the human species)
and, second, there is a considerable latitude in the kind of environmental
inputs that permit children to develop language”. Theories of
environmental influences on language-learning have tended to be built
upon the study of the mother infant. In fact most children in the world
grow up in polyandry situations (lieven, 1994). According to Wyatt
(1969) in his observation of mother-child interaction, he observed that
the interaction between mother and child was as much nonverbal as it
was verbal. The mother followed her child with her eyes almost
continuously; she played with him; she cuddles him; carried him and
protect him. Mother and child obviously were close to each other, she
spoke to him in short simple sentences, using a limited vocabulary that
most probably he was able to comprehend. Her short phrases and
sentences were grammatically correct, and she articulated clearly.
During the time of the observation she talked much more with her son
than with her mother. Most striking in her speech with the child were the
frequent repetitions she used (Wyatt, 1969).
Cognitive theory
This is a learning theory which is based on cognitive psychology
and encompasses the manner in which people think and ultimately
acquire knowledge and skills. This theory was developed by Swiss
psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) and focus on exploring the links
between the stages of cognitive development and language skills. The
links clearly shows from the earliest period of language learning up to
18 months, relating to the development of what Piaget called ‘sensory
motor’ intelligence, in which children construct a mental picture of a
world of objects that have independent existence. During the latter part
of this period, children develop a sense of object permanence and will
begin to search for the objects that they have seen hidden (Clark, 2009).
The outcome of cognitive development is thinking, “the intelligent mind
creates from experience generic coding systems that permit one to go
beyond the data to new and possibly fruitful predictions” (Brunner,
1957).
In other words, cognitive thinking is therefore concerned with the mental
changes in a person’s mind and these changes are as a result of the
cognitive processes. The processes involved in learning are outlined by
Wilburg (2010) namely: observing, categorizing, forming
generalizations, decision making and problem solving which allows the
learners to make sense of the information provided. This theory also
deals with the nature of knowledge itself and how humans come
gradually to acquire, construct and use it. Cognitive theories facilitate
the improvement and growth of children.
According to the cognitive theories all aspects that are learnt by an
individual are as a result of what learners have constructed or discovered
their own mental process and not through observable behavior (Warren,
2001). Wilburg (2010) asserts that the children /learners come to school
with knowledge, skills and related experiences to the learning situations
and this make them actively involved in their learning process.
Therefore, several studies has shown that children growing up in
polyandry situations are taking part in multi-party conversation from an
early age and in many of these cultures adults have particular
interactional techniques to help them do so. According to Wyatt (1965),
be describes the speech transmission between adult and child in Piaget
theory namely:

 Psychological level: the feelings of speech partners for each

other, their relationship, their mutual experiences, and the
respective levels of maturation, which determine the choice
of words by the speaker and the interpretation of their
meaning by the listener.
 Linguistic level: process of word finding; selecting the
correct sounds and putting them into correct sequences;
putting words into correct grammatical order to form
sentences.
 Physiological level: neural activities affecting the speaker’s
perceptual and motor mechanism and activating the hearing
mechanisms of speakers and listener.
 Acoustic level: sound waves travelling through the air
between speaker and listener. There is not much evidence of
the effects of the presence of siblings on children’s language.
On the other hand, Lieven (1994) reviews a report on young
children’s language in conversations which include their
 mother and an older siblings as more complex than when
alone with the mother.

At the early symbolic level, the child engages in almost unending

repetition of words, Wyatt (1969). The linguistic units repeated
under the influence of frustration or anxiety is no longer
representative of child’s normal stage of language development.
Wyatt (1969) investigated the role imitation of the mother’s speech
differently at different age levels. It should be added that the
mother, taking her clues from the child, also imitates the child’s
speech differently at different times, thus providing various and
changing types of corrective feedback for child. Wyatt (1969)
points out that mothers frequently expand the child utterances
adding those grammatical elements left out in the young child’s
“telegraphic” mode of speech.
Therefore, the cognitive theory indicates that a child must be able
to set up representations of what they see, hear, touch, and taste so
they can recognize recurrence and without representations in
memory, they could not categorize experience (Warren 2012).
Therefore Clark (2009) poses that to do this, “children must be
able to detect similarity or degrees of similarity, a capacity that
appears fundamental for all learning”.
To Clark (2009)the cognitive theory has indicates that children
develop cognitively at about the same rate in similar societies all
over the world, this in turn suggests that they should go through
the same age”. This means children may find some aspects of a
language easier to master than others, and children exposed to
different languages may well learn at different rates on equivalent
parts of the system. Cognitive theory is criticized for being highly
difficult to show precise correlations between specific cognitive
behaviors and linguistics features at the very early stage of
language acquisition as the children become linguistically and
cognitively more advanced in the course of time (Wilburg, 2010)

Conclusion
This essay has critically discussed the various theories of language
acquisition and learning and their positive and negative aspects in
which none has yet be seen to be definitive in explaining the
acquisition of language by children which are complex learning
experience. Although I have elucidate that in the innateness theory,
children are born with an innate knowledge which guides them in
the in the language acquisition task; more so, on the aspect of the
maternal input theory which shows that parents do not talk to their
children in the same way as they talk to other adults and seem to be
capable and adapting their language to give the child maximum
opportunity to interact and learn while the cognitive theories which
are concerned with the development of the child and its
transformation society.