CH 2 (PG 38-45)- THEORIES OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

LINGUISTIC THEORY
*Study language development b/co *Interest in language development represents part of larger concern for
human development
o *Its interesting and can help us understand our own behavior
*As mature language users we cannot state all rules we use; as children
we deciphered and learned all rules within a few years
o *Language development studies can probe the relationship between language
and thought
Language development is parallel to cognitive development
Linguist- concerned with describing language symbols and stating the rules they
follow to form language structure
o Psycholinguist- interest in psychological processes and constructs underlying
language; psychological mechanisms that let language users produce and
comprehend language = concern
Sociolinguist- studies language rules and use as a function of role, socioeconomic
level, and linguistic/cultural context. Dialectal differences and socialcommunicative interaction are important
Behavioral psychologist- minimizes language form and emphasize behavioral
context of language. The behaviorist is concerned with eliciting certain responses
and determining how the number of these responses can be increased or
decreased.
Speech-language pathologist- disordered communication; cause and
evaluation/extent of disorder, and remediation process
4 theoretical approaches- behavioral, syntactic, semantic/cognitive, and
sociolinguistic
o Emergentism has become popular with linguists; answers some concerns
expressed about the 4
NATURE VS. NURTURE
An aspect of development occurs because it is an inherent part of being human or
because of learning from the environment
*Has been the focus of intense interest and debate within linguistics
Two primary approaches: generative/nativist and constructionist/empiricist
GENERATIVE/NATIVISTS APPROACH
Children are able to acquire language because they are born with innate rules or
principles related to structures of human languages
It is impossible for children to learn linguistic knowledge from environment
because the input children hear is limited and full of errors and incomplete
information
o Even so they acquire the linguistic knowledge quickly because of the guidance
of innate linguistic hypotheses; something innate guides learning
*Chomsky- (leading proponent) from his assumption that language is a universal
human trait, tried to identify universal syntactic rules that applied to all human
languages

o Assumed to be present in everyones brain at birth in a location

called the language acquisition device (LAD)
o Nativists tried to describe syntactic rules that enable adult language users to
generate an infinite number of sentences in their specific language
o Applied the new adult linguistic model to children; assumed they used
universal language rules found in their LADs to figure out rules of their
language
o Roger Brown- concluded none of the models were completely satisfactory in
explaining childrens development of language
B/C the early theories were adult based and there was no evidence of child
use or need of the adult-like linguistic categories and rules to acquire
language
o Linguists decided no formal grammar was adequate to account for acquisition
process of all languages
Then, theorists suggested a semantic-cognitive basis existed for childrens early
language
o Called semantic revolution- semantic-syntactic relations in early language
correspond with some categories of infant and toddler sensory-motor
cognition
o Children used meaning units: agents (mommy) which caused action (eat) and
objects which received it (ball)
o Units children know nonlinguistically may form basis for linguistic unit (agentaction-object)
These rules failed to explain other utterances and was difficult to explain how
children moved from these semantic-based rules to adult syntactic rules
Generative grammar- natural language = formal language such as mathematics;
natural languages are characterized by:
o Unified set of abstract algebraic rules; meaningless themselves and
insensitive to meaning of the elements (words) they combine
o Set of meaningful linguistic elements (words) that serve as variables in the
rules
To learn a language children begin with innate universal grammar to abstract
structure of that language; acquisition then consists of:
o Acquiring all words, idioms, and constructions of the language
o Linking the core structures of the particular language being learned to the
universal grammar
Being innate, universal grammar doesnt developits the same throughout a
persons life span; continuity in language acquisition and use
Problem for generative grammar- fixed and semi-fixed structures based on
particular words or fixed expressions (how do you do)not based on abstract
categories
Constructionists would see these language structures as examples that structure
emerges from use

CONSTRUCTIONIST/EMPIRICIST APPROACH
*Children learn linguistic knowledge from the environmental input theyre
exposed to (sometimes labeled interactionist)

 Children figure out the linguistic structure of the input language assuming it
contains sufficient info related to linguistic structures
To learn language children rely on their general cognitive mechanisms
o Process is accomplished by general brain processes
Language acquisition involves learning linguistic constructions from the input
Child is contributing member; has dynamic relationship with the language
environment
Child directed speech (CDS)- parents adapted way of speaking to a child
Emergentism- approach to language acquisition; *view language as structure
arising from existing interacting patterns in the human brain
o The something innate in the brain making language possible didnt
necessarily evolve for only language
o Language is most likely what we do with a brain that evolved to serve many
varied and complex challenges
o Language emerges from the interaction of general cognitive mechanisms and
the environment.
o Learning mechanisms found in cognition are sufficient for emergence of
complex language
o We have acquired language over time with a range of cognitive, perceptual,
and social tools
Skinner- one of 1st theorists to propose how language learning occurs
(behaviorist)
o Published Verbal Behavior- *assumed learning language was similar to
learning any behavior
Theorized that parents model language, children imitate, then parents
reinforce
o Chomsky countered that: parents provide poor models, children couldnt learn
all constructions by imitation, and parents didnt reinforce the grammatically
correct constructions
*Believed children learned language rules by deciphering them from
utterances heard; by relying on innate structures in the LAD
Later sociolinguistists countered that language acquisition follows a transactional
model of child-caregiver give-and-take: child learns to understand rules of dialog
(not syntax or semantics)
o First establish communication base then language develops to verbally
express intensions
o Social interaction and relationships provide needed framework that enables
children to decode and encode language form and content
o Children gradually refine skills through repeated interaction
o Sociolinguists saw parent input to children as highly selective; children
selectively imitated structures they were learning
Constructionist approach- usage-based; language composed of
constructions/symbol units that combine form and meaning using morphemes,
words, idioms, and sentence frames
o Structure emerges from language use
o Suggest linguistic constructions learned gradually from input

o Children realize theres abstract ways to represent constructions from wordspecific constructions
Correct production maybe influenced by frequency grammatical
construction is heard
o Linguistic rules are meaningful linguistic symbols (meaningful units for
communication)
Because its assumed that no universal grammar exists, usage-based theories
dont have to explain the connection of grammar to language learning
o Instead children figure out language from regular and rule-based construction
of that language
o Construct abstract categories and schemes from concrete, learned things
o 2 cognitive processes used to construct abstractions:
Intention reading- attempt to understand significance of utterance
Pattern-finding- create more abstract dimensions
o Linguistic input is crucial to this process
Initially children collect many different concrete pieces of language
With the examples rules are generalized to construct more abstract linguistic
constructions in their mind
These underlie ability to generate creative new utterances
At the center of the Constructionist theory: grammatical construction consisting of
a unit of language comprised of multiple linguistic elements used together for a
coherent communicative function