Theories Of Language Acquisition example essay topic

How Do Humans Acquire Language? Humans live in a world full of communication. Humans possess a native language that separates them from other animals. Language is developed within the first few years of a person's life. By the time one is a child; he can speak and understand almost as well as an adult. Children world-wide exhibit similar patterns of language acquisition even though they may be learning different languages.

How humans learn even the most complicated languages has perplexed the minds of many scientists. Two of the most popular beliefs on language acquisition today are held by Skinner and Chomsky. Their opposing belief on how humans acquire language has become the two standard views on this complicated issue; however, other researchers have also reported convincing theories. Some theories of language acquisition that are not as commonly recognized as Skinner's or Chomsky's theories are still important in understanding language development. "Even before using any words, the infant learns to communicate through gestures, facial expressions, and reciprocal vocalization with a caretaker" (Levine 4).

These nonverbal behaviors are very important for an individual's speech development. Another author, Fromkin reported that: Children diagnosed at birth as mentally retarded acquire language in the same way as those with normal intelligence. Not only can children learn any of the thousands of languages that exist in the world, they do so without being overtly taught. It is difficult, if not impossible, to account for this ability without assuming that the brain is genetically 'pre-wired' for language.

(2) One renowned researcher of language acquisition, Pinker, endorses language as being an instinct. The term instinct conveys the idea that: People know how to talk in more or less the sense that spiders know how to spin webs. Web-spinning was not invented by some unsung spider genius and does not depend on having had the right education or on having an aptitude for architecture or the construction trades. Rather, spiders spin spider webs because they have spider brains, which give them the urge to spin and the competence to succeed. Although there are differences between webs and words, [... ] it helps to make sense of the phenomena. (5) Pinker also acknowledged that Darwin was the first to articulate language as a kind of 'instinct.

' He explained that Darwin believed the ability of language was "an instinctive tendency to acquire an art" (6-7). Skinner believed language acquisition to be a learned behavior. He suggested that children learned language through observation rather then biological predisposition (Gazzaniga and Heatherton 373). Berry acknowledges Skinner's theory on operant conditioning, which is a behavior that is immediately reinforced (115). For example, when an infant imitates the pattern of syllables of the mother, the mother will immediately express joy and delight.

However, as speech continues to develop only closer approximations of the speech will be rewarded. Berry points out that with systematically applied rewards the child learns to repeat the word or phrase (115). Gazzaniga and Heatherton highlight that Skinner also believed people cross-culturally used the same type of speech patterns which helped a child to learn the language. He said it was easier for a child to learn when parents repeated words and used slower speech (373). Chomsky believed that humans acquire language through an instinctive knowledge. He thought that there was deeper meaning to words and that was how people learned them so easily (Gazzaniga and Heatherton 374).

When someone hears a sentence they do not merely hear the words, instead they acquire a certain understanding of the meaning of the words. Gazzaniga and Heatherton add that his major theory was that every human was born with a language acquisition device (LAD) that allowed them to learn any language. He believed it provided infants with the ability to attach meaning to words even if they weren't grammatically correct. This is referred to as primary linguistic data. Also, the language acquisition device provided infants with the ability to fix or deduce a theory for their native language. This is called the parameter setting, and is one of Chomsky's most well known ideas (374).

Chomsky believes that the structure of language is not fully learned by experience but is in part at least embedded in the network of connections of the human brain (Fromkin 3). This idea confirms how children have the ability to acquire language on even slight exposure and without specific training. Pinker explains Chomsky's theory very clearly by summarizing that: Virtually every sentence that a person utters or understands is a brand-new combination of words, appearing for the first time in the history of the universe. Therefore a language cannot be a repertoire of responses; the brain must contain a recipe or program that can build an unlimited set of sentences out of a finite list of words. The second fundamental fact us that children develop these complex grammars rapidly and without formal instruction and grow up to give consistent interpretations to novel sentence constructions that they have never before encountered. Therefore [... ] children must innately be equipped with a plan common to the grammars of all languages, a Universal Grammar, that tells them how to distill synaptic patterns out of the speech of their parents.

(9) His summary of Chomsky's fundamental facts about language explains the concept of Universal Grammar very clearly. The outlook of language acquisition drastically changed due to the expansion of Chomsky's ideas. Regardless of what view an individual takes of how children develop language, there are developmental milestones that they acquire. Hamaguchi recognizes that the developmental milestones are, "Points of progress children should reach in their own style and at their own pace" (19). Cross culturally, infants experience similar verbal behaviors such as cooing and babbling. Babbling is described as the sounds that consist of syllables using a consonant and vowel.

Intonation changes are also present during babbling (Hamaguchi 13-14). In the next stage of speech development, infants begin comprehending simple words, such as the one-syllable word 'no'. As speech development progresses, children go through stages that encompass the following experiences respectively: imitating common animal sounds; pronouncing words more clearly and asking simple questions; rapid vocabulary development, as well as, initiating conversations; describing pictures, making up stories, and following directions. Children between the ages of approximately five and seven are in the last major stage of speech development, which is referred to as the refinement years. During this stage, a child displays the ability to retell stories, participate in group discussions, and take turn in conversations. Children in this stage also show refined pronunciation of their speech (Hamaguchi 14-18).

There are many theories that strive to explain how humans acquire language. The most influential theory is that of Noam Chomsky, who developed the concept of Universal Grammar and much more. Some researchers disagree with Noam Chomsky's theory and believe that B.F. Skinner was more correct when he suggested that language was developed through observational learning and classical conditioning. Some people believe that language development is a combination of the two theories and language development cannot occur unless both are present.

Thus far, it is not precisely known how humans develop language. If researchers discovered how humans acquire language, they may be able to solve the problem individuals with hearing impairments experience or prevent hearing impairments from occurring.

Bibliography

Berry, Mildred. Language Disorders of Children: The Bases and Diagnoses. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1969.
Fromkin, Victoria. "The State of Brain / Language Research". Language, Communication, and the Brain. 66 (1988): 189-214.
Gazzaniga, Michael & Heatherton, Todd. Psychological Science: Mind, Brain, and Behavior. New York: Norton, 2003.
Hamaguchi, Patricia. Childhood Speech, Language, and Listening Problems: What Every Parents Should Know. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1995.
Levine, Linda. Great Beginnings for Early Language Learning. Tucson: Communication Skill Builders, 1988.
Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language. New York: Morrow, 1994.