How Children Acquire Language

How Children Acquire Language?

Four Theories about Language Acquisition

1.Imitation (modeling)

2.Reinforcement (Rewards and Punishment)

3.Constructing grammar from input/experience (1- 3  are all learning theories)  

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.

Pros

•Language symbols are arbitrary and not logically connected to the things they represent

•Children only learn the language people around them speak

Cons

•Children use forms of words that adults never say

•The mistakes children make are consistent between children and between language groups

•Children produce words and sentences they have never heard.

•

•Children undertand words and sentences they have never heard.

Reinforcement: 

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

                                                                  Cons

•Corrections are rare when total number of speech events is considered.

•Praise is rare when the total number of speech events is considered.

•Even without ANY praise or corrections children acquire language

•Praise or corrections  frequently don’t change child language.

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

Pros

   Children make systematic mistakes in grammar by “over regularizing” forms

                                               Cons  

 The speed with which children acquire all of the grammatical patterns of a language is so rapid that is is difficult to see how they can figure out all grammar from experience in so short a time

Over Regularized Forms

Verb Forms

Children learn such past tense patterns as           e.g. walked, hugged, wanted,

     then apply the rules to irregular verbs

          e.g.“bringed”, “eated”, “runned”

Nouns

  Given nonsense nouns like “wug” children make them plural by adding “s”

and

Children regularize plurals of      irregular nouns  e.g. womans, mans

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.

Lenneberg’s  Six Components of Innate Behavior 

1.Emerges before it is necessary.

2.Is not the result of a conscious decision.

           3.Is not triggered by external events.

           4.Teaching and practice have little effect

           5.There is a regular developmental sequence

          6.Emerges during a critical period of development.