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Name:
Kajal Keraliya
Topic:
Language Acquisition
Roll
no.: 18
Paper
no 12: ELT-1
M.A:
Sem-3
Enrolment
no.:2069108420180030
Year:
2017-19
Submitted
to:
Smt.
S.B. Gardi Department Of English
Maharaja
Krishnakumarsinhji
Language is a cognition that truly
makes us human. Whereas other species do communicate with an innate ability to
produce a limited number of meaningful vocalizations (e.g. bonobos), or even
with partially learned systems (e.g. bird songs), there is no other species
known to date that can express infinite ideas (sentences) with a limited set of
symbols (speech sounds and words).
This ability is remarkable in
itself. What makes it even more remarkable is that researchers are finding
evidence for mastery of this complex skill in increasingly younger children.
Infants as young as 12 months are reported to have sensitivity to the grammar
needed to understand causative sentences (who did what to whom; e.g. the bunny
pushed the frog (Rowland & Noble, 2010).
After more than 60 years of research
into child language development, the mechanism that enables children to segment
syllables and words out of the strings of sounds they hear, and to acquire
grammar to understand and produce language is still quite an enigma.
Early
Theories
One of the earliest scientific
explanations of language acquisition was provided by Skinner
(1957). As one of the pioneers of behaviorism, he accounted for language development by means of
environmental influence.
Skinner argued that children learn
language based on behaviorist reinforcement principles by associating words
with meanings. Correct utterances are positively reinforced when the child
realizes the communicative value of words and phrases.
For example, when the child says
‘milk’ and the mother will smile and give her some as a result, the child will
find this outcome rewarding, enhancing the child's language development
(Ambridge & Lieven, 2011).
Universal
Grammar
However, Skinner's account was soon
heavily criticized by Noam Chomsky, the world's most famous linguist to date.
In the spirit of cognitive revolution in the 1950's, Chomsky argued that
children will never acquire the tools needed for processing an infinite number
of sentences if the language acquisition mechanism was dependent on language
input alone.
Consequently, he proposed the theory
of Universal Grammar: an idea of innate, biological grammatical categories,
such as a noun category and a verb category that facilitate the entire language
development in children and overall language processing in adults.
Universal Grammar is considered to
contain all the grammatical information needed to combine these categories,
e.g. noun and verb, into phrases. The child’s task is just to learn the words
of her language (Ambridge & Lieven). For example, according to the
Universal Grammar account, children instinctively know how to combine a noun
(e.g. a boy) and a verb (to eat) into a meaningful, correct phrase (A boy
eats).
This Chomskian (1965) approach to
language acquisition has inspired hundreds of scholars to investigate the
nature of these assumed grammatical categories and the research is still
ongoing.
Contemporary
Research
A decade or two later some psycho
linguists began to question the existence of Universal Grammar. They argued
that categories like noun and verb are biologically, evolutionarily and
psychologically implausible and that the field called for an account that can
explain for the acquisition process without innate categories.
Researchers started to suggest that
instead of having a language-specific mechanism for language processing,
children might utilise general cognitive and learning principles.
Whereas researchers approaching the
language acquisition problem from the perspective of Universal Grammar argue
for early full productivity, i.e. early adult-like knowledge of language, the
opposing constructivist investigators argue for a more gradual developmental
process. It is suggested that children are sensitive to patterns in language
which enables the acquisition process.
An example of this gradual pattern
learning is morphology acquisition. Morphemes are the smallest grammatical
markers, or units, in language that alter words. In English, regular plurals
are marked with an –s morpheme (e.g. dog+s). Similarly, English third singular
verb forms (she eat+s, a boy kick+s) are marked with the –s morpheme. Children
are considered to acquire their first instances of third singular forms as
entire phrasal chunks (Daddy kicks, a girl eats, a dog barks) without the
ability of teasing the finest grammatical components apart.
When the child hears a sufficient
number of instances of a linguistic construction (i.e. the third singular verb
form), she will detect patterns across the utterances she has heard. In this
case, the repeated pattern is the –s marker in this particular verb form.
As a result of many repetitions and
examples of the –s marker in different verbs, the child will acquire
sophisticated knowledge that, in English, verbs must be marked with an –s
morpheme in the third singular form (Ambridge & Lieven, 2011; Pine,
Conti-Ramsden, Joseph, Lieven & Serratrice, 2008; Theakson & Lieven,
2005). Approaching language acquisition from the perspective of general cognitive
processing is an economical account of how children can learn their first
language without an excessive biolinguistic mechanism.
Conclusion
However, finding a solid answer to
the problem of language acquisition is far from being over. Our current
understanding of the developmental process is still immature. Investigators of
Universal Grammar are still trying to convince that language is a task too
demanding to acquire without specific innate equipment, whereas the
constructivist researchers are fiercely arguing for the importance of
linguistic input.
The biggest questions, however, are
yet unanswered. What is the exact process that transforms the child’s
utterances into grammatically correct, adult-like speech? How much does the
child need to be exposed to language to achieve the adult-like state?
What account can explain variation
between languages and the language acquisition process in children acquiring
very different languages to English? The mystery of language acquisition is
granted to keep psychologists and linguists alike astonished a decade after
decade.
Work cited:
https://www.simplypsychology.org/language.html
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