INPUT (SOCIAL INTERATION) THEORY
Researcher: Jerome Bruner.
- Agreed with Chomsky on the existence of a LAD.
- Believe input in vital in language acquisition.
- Most largely believed theory.
LASS: Language Acquisition Support System. As well as a LAD you need a LASS, which works as a scaffolding system for language.
CDS: Child Directed Speach. Vital for the acquisition of language. Parents use CDS which includes exagerated mouth movements, more emphasised intonation and clear turn taking to encourage language from children.
FOR: Feral Children such as Genie cannot learn language without social interaction.
AGAINST: In some African tribal cultures there is no such thing as CDS but children still acquire language.
COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT THEORY
Researcher: Jean Piaget.
- There is a link between language and thought.
- Development of language can be linked to cognitive development stages.
- A child must understand the concept of something before they can verbalise it.
- Object permenance: the ability to understand that objects exist outside of a child's interaction with it.
- Classification: the ability to classify objects by single characteristics.
- Seriation: the ability to classify objects on a scale such as size.
FOR: The development stages of cognition seemingly add up to stages of a child's language.
AGAINST: Children with impaired cognitive abilities can still learn language. Piaget also neglects language as a form of communication in his theory.
COGNITIVE FUNCTIONALISM THEORY
- Disagrees with the existence of a LAD.
- Language acquisiton can be explained by looking at a person's cognitive abilties such as pattern recognition.
- Grammar emerges from our use of language.
FOR: Halliday's seven functions of language, first satisfying physical needs and then looking at enviromental understanding seemingly co-ordinate with the development of cognitive ability.
AGAINST: It seems that a child's acquistion of grammar is seperate from cognitive development. Many also argue that the role of cognitive development is overstated.
Researcher: Noam Chomsky.
- Children are born with the innate ability to learn language in the form of a LAD.
LAD: Language Acquistion Device. A part of the brain that works to extract the underlying rules of grammar from language.
CRITICAL PERIOD HYPOTHESIS:
Researcher: Eric Lenneberg.
- Lenneberg belives that input is needed to activate the LAD which needs to be activated before a certain time. At first he believed this to be around puberty age but now thinks its at about 5.
FOR: Berko's Wug Test and Children can understand new sentences they haven't heard before.
AGAINST: Under-estimates the importance of social interaction.
Researcher: B. F. Skinner.
- Children acquire language through the imitation of caregivers alone.
- A child's mind is a blank slate at birth.
OPERANT CONDITIONING: Children learn right and wrong language through being rewarded with praise when they get something right and punished and corrected when wrong.
FOR: Phonological development of regional accents, children must imitate sounds.
AGAINST: Parents dont often correct or possitively or negatively reinforce children's language. Children are also often resistent to correction (Bellugi and Brown's 'Fis' Phenomenon) Children cannot acquire grammar through imitation.
TYPES OF CHILD LANGUAGE
DELETION: Children dont pronounce the final sound of a word eg. 'Pi-' for 'Pig'. Another form of this is where a child switches two sounds around in a word eg. 'Parcark'. Another form of this is where a child deletes the unstressed syllable in a word eg. 'Nana'.
REDUPLICATION: The child repeats an entire syllable again eg. 'Woof Woof'.
SUBSTITUTION: A child switches a difficult sound to make with an easier one eg. 'Debra'.
ADDITION: A child often adds a syllable to make a word end on an easier sound eg. 'Doggie.'
ASSIMILATION: Where the first consonant sound is influenced by the second eg. 'Babbit'.
VIRTUOUS ERROR: Where the child applies a standard rule of grammar to an irregular word eg. 'Gooder'.