Language

Development
Theories of Language Development
 Introduction
 When we communicate successfully, we do
so because we are able to do at least four
different things.

 First, we need to be able to perceive and

produce the sounds that make up a language
and convey meanings to other people.
 Second, we need to know what the words of a
language mean.

 Third, we need to know how to put these words

together in grammatically appropriate ways such
that others will understand us.

 Fourth, we need to know how to effectively use

our language to communicate with others.
Three Theories of Language Development

1. Learning Theory
2. Nativist Theory
3. Interactionist Theories
 Theories of Language Development
1. Learning Theory

 Accounts of language development which

emphasize that language acquisition can be
explained using the principles of learning such
as classical conditioning, operant conditioning,
and observational learning.
 Skinner argued that children learn language as
parents selectively reward or punish only those
behaviors which they recognize as appropriate,
grammatically correct utterances.

 Bandura argued that language learning takes

place primarily by processes of observation &
imitation. Simply put, children overhear
language being used and they imitate the
behavior of these models.
 CRITICISM
 It is simply not possible for parents to reinforce or punish
all of the possible utterances a child will use.
 Studies of parent-child interaction show that parents
reward grammatically incorrect utterances that are
truthful.
 The language that children hear contains too few
examples for them to learn the correct rules ( poverty of
the stimulus argument).
 In the English language, young children will say ‘We
goed to the shops’ – they are very cleverly inventing the
past tense of ‘go’ based on the rules they have absorbed.
2. Nativist Theory

 The nativist view of language development is traced

back to the work of Noam Chomsky (1957).

 Chomsky argued that language is the product of an

unlearned, biologically-based, internal mental structure.

 Because the rules which underlie a language are too

complex to be acquired by children in a few short years,
some aspects of language must be innately specified.
 In short, many aspects of language are not
learned but are a part of our biological
endowment.
 All nativist theories of language development share
certain elements.

 First, they assume that certain grammatical concepts are

common to all languages and are therefore innate.

 Children are biologically predisposed to learn a

language.

 Children come equipped with a set of innate hypotheses

which guide their attempts to learn the rules of a
language. These help to reduce the complexity of
learning a language.
 Chomsky (1968) proposed that children come
equipped with an innate mental structure -- the
language acquisition device (LAD) -- which
makes learning easier.

 According to Chomsky, the LAD contains a set

of features common to all languages, which he
termed a universal grammar.

 Universal grammar refers to the entire set of

rules or linguistic parameters which specify all
possible human languages.
 The learning of grammar occurs when the
LAD operates on speech to abstract out the
linguistic parameters which underlie the
particular language used in the child’s
environment.

 Chomsky termed this process of determining

the parameters or rules of one’s native
language parameter setting.
 CRITICISM
 Linguists have failed to specify the nature of universal
grammar. Many linguists have speculated that this may
not be possible.

 Grammar is not learned as rapidly as one might expect if

a great deal of innate knowledge is assumed.

 There is little evidence neurological evidence to support

the existence of a biologically-based LAD. Presumably
there should be some pattern of damage that hinder our
ability to learn a language.
3. Interactionist Perspectives on Language
Development

 Interactionist theories are concerned with the

interplay between environmental & biological
factors in the process of acquiring language.

 Interactionists tend to view children as having a

strong biological predisposition to acquire a
language.
 However, in contrast to nativists, interactionists
stress the importance of both the social
support that parents provide the young
language learner, as well as the social contexts
in which language-learning child is instructed.
 Bruner (1983) argues parents provide their
children a language acquisition support
system or LASS.

 The LASS is a collection of strategies that

parents employ to facilitate their children’s
acquisition of language.

 One of these strategies is scaffolding, the

deliberate use of language at a level that is
slightly beyond what children can comprehend.
 With parental support, scaffolding leads the child to
acquire complex language more quickly then they might
on their own.

 Another strategy is called infant-directed speech or

‘motherese’. When using infant-directed speech,
parents speak in a higher pitch, stress important words,
and talk more slowly to their infants.

 Very young infants show a clear preference for infant-

directed speech. Gets an infant’s attention & increases
the chances of their understanding the message.
 Another a pair of techniques that adults employ
is expansion & recast.

 Expansion occurs when an adult takes a child’s

utterance and expands on its complexity.

 For example, when a child might utter

something like Felix eated, the parent might
expand on the complexity, adding Yes, that’s
right, Felix ate his dinner.
 Notice here that the parent has also corrected
the child’s grammar, changing eated to it’s
appropriate past tense form, ate.

 When parents expand, as in this example, they

often recast the child’s utterance as well,
correcting the grammatical form of the
utterance.
 CRITICISM

 DeVilliers & DeVilliers (1992) suggest that

parents rarely offer their children direct feedback
on the appropriateness of their grammar.

 Linguistic & social practices vary widely across

cultures. Some cultures do not use anything like
the practices described above and yet, their
children still learn language at a similar rate to
Western children.
 Conclusions
 Each of the three theoretical perspective adds
something to the study of human language.

 Learning theory provides some thoughts on

plausible mechanisms that might underlie the
acquisition of at least some facets of human
language.
 Nativist theory highlights the fact that now all
aspects of a language can be learned in the
time that humans typically do and thus, that an
innate language mechanism must be a part of
our equipment.

 Interactionist theories highlight the important

role of the social environment and the
important role social input has in structuring
our language-learning.
 https://www.khanacademy.org/science/health-
and-medicine/executive-systems-of-the-brain/a
ttention-language-lesson/v/theories-of-languag
e-development