NATURE VS.

NURTURE

Introduction

We know that there are stages to child language acquisition that are followed throughout
the world, they are universalities

In each of these stages, the child is improving their knowledge about language. First, we
experience something, then we remember it and after that, we are able to use it, we
acquire the knowledge.

But how do we get this knowledge? Is it all learned from experience? Or are we born
already “knowing” something?

This is the whole question concerning the nature vs. nurture debate.

Nature and nurture

This is a debate that has not just arisen in linguistics, but in various fields, and often finds its
way into the news.

Nature vs. Nurture

The whole debate is about where certain traits, characteristics, or behaviours come from.
Are these traits learned? Are they completely a product of our upbringing? Things we are
taught? Or is there something innate within us that means we will have, or are likely to have
these traits? Is there a genetic predisposition for being a certain way?

For language – the debate revolves around whether there is an innate ability to learn
language in humans. Often, innate theories claim this ability is unique to language.

Questions

If children learn everything from the environment, how does it work?

 What is the learning process that means we can take a massive amount of language
data and turn it into knowledge about word order, morphology, etc.?
 How does the child sort through all of the imperfections in language data?
 What are these skills? Pattern spotting? Statistical generalisation? General
Intelligence? How do we marry this with the fact that people’s levels of these things
differ?
This theory is called behaviourism and it states that we learn all from the environment.

1
If language is innate – what exactly does this mean?
 What exactly is innate? What kind of knowledge?
 Is it everything, or only certain types of language knowledge?
 How did this knowledge come to be innate? – evolutionary question
 This should be as only a ”last resort” – we can only go for this if we can argue that
we can’t say that everything is learnt from the environment.
This theory is called nativism

Behaviourism

Operant or classical condition (pablovian experiment): Skinner previously advanced this

theory. When a reaction to certain stimuli occurs, if it is positive, he received some
reinforcement to continue doing that action when the same stimuli was experienced again.

Behaviourism in language

B.F.Skinner’s (1959) Verbal Behaviour

 A major attempt to apply behaviourist psychological principles to human language
 Argued that the entirety of human outward spoken behaviour could be explained
according to the principle of stimulus/ response/ reinforcement
 The stimulus patterns for a particular sentence would necessarily be quite complex:
o The stimulus for “I am hungry” may be quite easy to imagine
o How about for something like: “Many people like eating a Terry’s Chocolate
Orange after work”?
 It works according to a principle of positive reinforcement.
o E.g. A child will say “milk”, and the mother will smile and give the child some,
which is rewarding (Ambridge & Lieven, 2011)
 Note that this theory believes that everything is learned from external sources – no
need for innate ideas/ pre-given knowledge. All is based on some kind of general
learning mechanism (memory, ability to focus attention, mildness: the ability to put
yourself in others’ position)

Behaviourists and the “Black Box”

Skinner and the Behaviourists were followers of a movement in philosophy known as

“logical positivism” (Moore, 1985)
Logical Positivism = the only statements that make sense are those for which we have
empirical evidence for.
 Known as verificationism

2
Essentially, the movement says we can only talk about things for which we can perceive
through the senses
In terms of mental phenomena – the inside of the head was closed off in the 1950s
 Before the advent of brain scans, etc.
So the only thing you can talk about is what you can see – that is stimuli and verbal
responses. The brain was seen as a magical box, something you could not look inside since
ethics did not allow to open the head to discover the brain. Therefore, we can only know
something if we perceive it.

Chomsky refutes behaviourism

In 1959 – Chomsky wrote a review of Verbal Behaviour that ruined the legitimacy of the idea
in many linguists’ and psychologists’ minds.
He pointed out a number of problematic aspects with the behaviourist position (c.f.
Graham, 2015: §7)
1. Language learning takes place too quickly to be solely explained by positive
reinforcement. At the age of 4, children are approaching full development so it is not
possible to know all that just by positive reinforcement.
2. Much of language learning seems not to be “learned” in this way – lack of explicit
teaching. There are certain things which are not learned through explicit teaching
3. Productivity
4. Doesn’t explain that certain sentences (e.g. actives vs. passives) seem to be linked.

Empiricism (Skinner)

A philosophical theory of epistemology – theory about the nature of knowledge and how we
come to know things. It states that everything we know, we have learned from our
experience. Roots in the writings of John Locke and David Hume in the 17th and 18th
Centuries. Major idea = tabula rasa, the mind at birth is like a blank slate; all knowledge and
reason come from experience
For language, the basic idea is that our knowledge of language can be explained solely
through the experience of the child
 There is no need for any “special” language ability, or innate knowledge to explain
how children learn their native language(s). We only know what we know because
we’ve seen it.

3
Nativism / Rationalism

Knowledge cannot
come from experience
alone. Children are born
with innate propensity
for language
acquisition. The mind
must have some pre-
existing structure in
order to organize and
interpret experience.
Language is a
fundamental part of the
human genome. Rationalist (e.g. Descartes) stated basic ideas in mind at birth. Chomsky
modified these ideas slightly. We known what we know because we can think it.

Chomsky’s ideas

To fully understand Chomsky’s ideas – we need to understand what he means by

“knowledge of language”. He refers to something he calls “linguistic competence”.
 Our ability to know whether a sentence is a grammatical or an ungrammatical
sentence of the language we speak.
We know that some sentences are grammatical, while others are ungrammatical. It is this
knowledge that Chomsky and his followers are talking about. It is how they have framed the
debate.
 Not necessarily unproblematic. Many feel that this conception is too narrow

Chomsky’s view on language

“Linguistic Theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-hearer, in a completely

homogenous speech community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by
such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of
attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of
the language in actual performance”
Chomsky (1965:
3)

The ideal speaker is somebody who has been immersed in language since they were born.

There is something innate in our brain that makes us know that something is not right.

4
LAD: capacity to universally acquire any language

5
Refutation of behaviourist argument

Poverty of the stimulus

Chomsky
 People seem to intuitively know what is, and what is not a grammatical sentence.
 The quality of the language we hear when we are learning our language is full of
hesitations, false stops, mistakes, slips of the tongue, etc.
 How does the child know that these are actually mistakes?
 Also, doesn’t contain enough of the “rarer” sentences to explain why we
immediately know when these are well formed.
He didn’t make any study or field work but he is a rationalist so he didn’t need it, he
wouldn’t do any empiric study.

Responses (see esp. Pullum and Scholz, 2002)

 Not giving enough credit to the language around us. A large number of the language
we hear is correctly formed
 No empirical evidence provided for the claims – no backing for this crucial premise
 Actually emerging evidence from corpora may hint to these constructions being
more common than previously thought

Ease and speed of acquisition

Chomsky
 Young child learns language perfectly and effortlessly in a very short time.
 If you relied only upon general learning mechanisms – you wouldn’t have enough
time in order to explain the abilities children have.
 LAD can “speed up” this process – and thus overcome the time-scale problem.
 It is not possible to memorize, proceed and retrieve every single word (Chomsky
knows this because of our experience)

Against
 Chomsky shows no evidence for this statement.
 Putnam counts up hours child learns language and compares to second language
learner.
 Just think about how many hours a child is hearing and learning language in the
course of, say, their first 7 years of life

6
The “cat and the rock” argument

Chomsky
 Other animals, regardless of their general intelligence, will not learn human
language.
 The is regardless of the amount of teaching/ input you give them.
 It is called the “cat and the rock” argument because he often makes analogies that
people talk to their pet cat, but no cat has ever spoken. Similarly, you can talk to a
rock all you like – it will never answer you!
 Shows that there is something special

Opponents
 The argument is just silly
 There are plenty of things other animals can’t do – dance the tango, drive a car,
make paper aeroplanes. Are we going to say that they are all innate??
 Some animal researchers point to primate language studies – but the success of
these are controversial

Irrelevance of intelligence

Chomsky
 People learn to use language regardless of intelligence. Language is acquired
indistinctively of intelligence.
 Has to be due to Universal Grammar.
 Intelligent animals don’t have language.

Opponents
 Some syndromes result in low intelligence and this affects linguistic ability.

Response
 Other SLI (specific language impairments) seem to target language and leave
everything else unaffected. (KE family)

No negative evidence

Chomsky
 Children need to know not just what is grammatical, but what is not grammatical.
 They don’t receive this kind of information
 So they won’t know if something is correct but they just haven’t heard it yet. Or it is
wrong

7
  But we do know what is wrong – hence the need for the LAD to provide this
information

Against
 Children receive enough information from the input they receive to know what they
can do with language.
 Can use statistical pattern recognition from positive evidence to form inductive
hypotheses about what is wrong.
 This is fine for the child, as these hypotheses can be updated in light of new
incoming evidence.
 Even if you don’t correct them, children can work out something is wrong through
logical processes which are updated since they are always exposed to language data.

Carer-correction

Chomsky
 Carers tend to correct facts rather than syntax.
 Attempting to correct syntax/phonology has no immediate effects.

Opponents
 Correction is often indirect.
 Parents can show puzzlement, recast utterances, give responses which exemplify
correct form.
 Carers grade their language usage.

Patterns of leaning

Chomsky
 Evidence for UG in view of how children learn languages in similar patterns across
languages.
 Also make some errors which are not in their input; systematic error which also
modifies their linguistic system
 Shows children using UG.

Against
 This is a non-sequitur – the premises don’t justify the conclusion. Although there
may be a Universal Grammar, this does not justify the existence of LAD
 Just because we see similar patterns – does not necessarily mean there is a
language-specific, innate ability
 All children could just be using the same general learning mechanisms – hence
similarities

8
  Use these to learn the rules of their language, and develop them as they mature.

What do we mean by general learning mechanisms?

Bybee (2010) lists four cognitive abilities which she argues can explain language learning
without recourse to any innate mechanisms
1. Chunking – the ability to link smaller things that are used together into bigger units
2. Rich memory storage – we can link certain words, phrases with details of experience
3. Categorization – we can place new things we know about into existing categories
4. Analogy – we can gain knowledge about how newly encountered things work by
seeing how they are similar to what has come before/we know already

Social interactionism (middle ground)

Alternative to nativism does not have to be pure empiricism. Some innate characteristics of
the mind that allow it to develop. But there is an important role for carers, interaction,
pragmatic needs. Stresses Language Acquisition Support System (LASS)
 Places more importance of social interaction between the care givers and the
learning child
 There may be innate knowledge there, but without the support of those around the
child, they won’t learn a language.
 Contrary to Chomsky, who ignores social aspects of language in his ideas and
theories
 “Feral children” often pointed to provide evidence for this – see next week.
So it’s not really pure nature, or pure nurture – but needs both.

A knotty problem for Chomsky supporters?

9
If Chomsky is correct, and we have some kind of LAD, then this must be part of our genetic
make-up
 In fact some genes have been identified that have been argued to be “language
specific”
 FOXP2 and the KE family
 But the language specific, and human specific nature of this has been called into
question
 There is still no uncontroversial genetic uniqueness that could be linked to
something like the LAD
Last week we talked about language evolution
 If language is completely different to other communication – that’s a lot to fit into
our evolutionary history
 Not a killer argument – but still no explanation of how this innate ability got there

The case of Nicaraguan sign language

They created their language from no exposure at all

Certain forms of bilingualism

A problem for Chomsky’s theory are children who are acquiring very different languages at
the same time. If it relies upon the LAD being “set” to a particular language, what happens
when the child is learning to concurrently? Why doesn’t it reach some kind of intermediate
situation? But then is the situation really any better for non-Chomskyians? Learning two or
more languages at the same time places an even bigger burden upon the learning child.

Conclusion

It seems neither group has managed to present definitive arguments for their theories.
Empiricists can’t explain how we create infinite sentences from finite input. How is
intelligence formed?
Rationalists can’t explain how this innate knowledge got there.
Point of agreement: All humans can learn language as they are somehow prepared to and
are exposed to other people.

10