Noam Chomsky believes that children are born with an inherited ability to learn any human language so it is innate. Chomsky believes that every child has a ‘language acquisition device’ (LAD) which encodes the major assumptions of a language and its grammatical structures into the child’s brain. Children then only need to learn new vocabulary and apply the syntactic structures from the LAD to form sentences. Chomsky points out that a child could not possibly learn a language through imitation alone because the language spoken around them is highly irregular – adult’s speech is often broken up and even sometimes ungrammatical. Chomsky’s theory applies to all languages as they all contain nouns, verbs, consonants and vowels. All children, regardless of their intellectual ability, become fluent in their native language within five or six years.
Evidence to support Chomsky’s theory
-Children learning to speak never make grammatical errors such as getting their subjects, verbs and objects in the wrong order.
-If an adult deliberately said a grammatically incorrect sentence, the child would notice.
-Children often say things that are ungrammatical such as ‘mama ball’, which they cannot have learnt passively.
-Mistakes such as ‘I drawed’ instead of ‘I drew’ show they are not learning through imitation alone.
-Chomsky used the sentence ‘colourless green ideas sleep furiously’, which is grammatical although it doesn’t make sense, to prove his theory: he said it shows that sentences can be grammatical without having any meaning, that we can tell the difference between a grammatical and an ungrammatical sentence without ever having heard the sentence before, and that we can produce and understand brand new sentences that no one has ever said before.
Evidence against Chomsky’s theory
-Critics of Chomsky’s theory say that although it is clear that children don’t learn language through imitation alone, this does not prove that they must have an LAD – language learning could solely be through general learning and understanding abilities and interactions with other people.
Skinner- operant conditioning
Skinner bases his theory of children acquiring language thrugh behaviourism. Skinner states that all behaviour is conditined e.g. punished or rewarded until it becomes natural and automatic. (postive reinforcement). Babies imitate their parents/carers and are either lectured or praised according to their accuracy. This is Skinner going against Chomsky, as he believe biology plays almost no part in the way children learn language.
Some skinner quotes- ''Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.''
''The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.''
Piaget
According to Piaget, children are born with a very basic mental structure (genetically inherited and evolved) on which all subsequent learning and knowledge is based.
- It is concerned with children, rather than all learners.
- It focuses on development, rather than learning per se, so it does not address learning of information or specific behaviors.
-It proposes discrete stages of development, marked by qualitative differences, rather than a gradual increase in number and complexity of behaviors, concepts, ideas, etc.
Lenneburg
Eric Lenneburg (1962) argued against Skinner's theory, in that children who are unable to speak due to illness are able to gain a normal comprehension of language without the ability to imitate adults, or by having their utterances reinforced.
Lenneberg formed the Critical Period Hypothesis theory which contends that language is innate but has to be attained before the age of puberty or else the ability to learn language.
Studies such as, linguistically isolated children (a.k.a. feral children) and genie support Lenneberg's theory of the critical period because they are unable to fully acquire language. The Critical Period Hypothesis, the origins of which date back to Lenneberg considered to be the “father” of such hypothesis. According to the Critical Period Hypothesis, there is an age related point on which, current researchers diverge, but it is usually within the puberty period, beyond which it becomes difficult or impossible to attain a native speaking like competence. Lenneberg (1967) sees the critical period starting at the age of 2 and ending around puberty, a period, which coincides with the brain lateralisation process, which is the specialisation of the dominant hemisphere of the brain language functions. Lenneberg cited a wide evidence of changes in the brain taking place during this period. However, his claim was at a later stage criticised by other researchers, who undertook several studies and reinterpreted the relevant data concluding that the process is already complete before puberty.
