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Theories of Language Acquisition - Coggle Diagram
Theories of Language Acquisition
Atheoretical Studies
Competence distinguished from performance
The interpretation of the data is the crucial issue
First spelling out either a specific theory of language
Child language appears from a prevocalic stage (replete with errors and deficiencies)
"First words” are uttered at a characteristic time
Grammatical distinctions acquired through the elimination of various errors
Vocabularies expand as the child’s dictionary gains more entries.
Behavioristic Theories
Theory of language acquisition and language behavior
Syntactic Structures
Theories of language are inadequate for almost any purpose
N. Chomsky’s
Attacks the adequacy of reinforcement theory and the notion of generalization
Specific linguistic behaviors acquired through operant
conditioning.
Cognitve Theories
Cromer
A single factor explains the observed linguistic changes
The child can create a perspective.
Cognitive capacity allows him to express new meanings.
The child discovers that he can explore
Slobin
The child is born not with a set of linguistic categories but with some sort of process mechanism
Cognitive ability
Ability to segment utterances into sounds and meanings
Ability to isolate meaning units
Ability to make wide generalizations
Mental ability
The child’s ‘pre- programming’
The ability to learn certain types of semantic or conceptual categories is needed
Considers the learner as an active participant
Language learning
superficial description of the acquisition of a language
Staats and Staats(1962-1968)
operant learning
stimulus reinforcement
programming and reinforcement
Time
Garret and Fodor (1968)
abstraction that children must acquire
mass of data
mentalistic phenomenon
Jenkis and Palermo(1964)
recognizes linguistic advances
age the child acquires grammar
equicalents of stimuli and responses
Language adquisition
Chomsky( 1957)
inadequate
does not account for the abstract nature of linguistic knowledge
Weskel (1965)
Braine (1963-1965)
contextual generalization
child acquires hierarchical grammatical structures of grammar
learn abstract structures
that there is no order
Native theories
Lenneberg (1967)
acquisition of language
backed by biological evidence
Language emerges during this maturation process
when?
anatomical, physiological, motor, neural and cognitive developments allow it.
He he claims that language acquisition is a natural activity
The ability to learn language is innate and is part of the body's biological endowment.
McNeill
affirms that the child must acquire a generative-transformational grammar.
The properties of the LAD
A second is the ability to organize linguistics, this ability allows both phonological and syntactic development
The third is the knowledge that only a certain type of linguistic system is possible and that other types are not.
The first is the ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds in the environment.