Do you know who is the person that proposed the idea of language learning?
Behaviorists, people who believe that everything is acquired through conditioning, argued that language is learned through operant conditioning- a form of conditioning that happens through rewards and punishments which makes someone associate between a particular behavior and its consequence. A child learns that a specific combination of words or sounds stands for a specific thing/idea through successfully repeated associations. For example, a child would learn that their house animal, Whiskers, is a cat while their other house animal, Fido, is a dog. He would do so because when the child would call Whiskers his dog, his parents would say that no, Whiskers is a cat, not a dog. The “big face” for this language acquisition theory is B.F. Skinner and he went on to publish this theory. However, Noam Chomsky, one of the world’s greatest linguists to date strongly criticised Skinner’s theory. Chomsky argued that kids often ignore their parents’ corrections and would not likely learn that actual, proper use of the word or phrase and end up using it incorrectly, by means of Skinner’s conditioning theory. Chomsky’s language acquisition theory involved a more mathematical approach to language development based on a syntax (the meaning of a word) study. Language acquisition theories Language acquisition theory: The Nativist Theory Being the most well-known and one of the most scientifically accurate theories yet, the Nativist Theory suggests that we are born with genes that allow us to learn language. This language acquisition theory argues that there is a theoretical device known as the language acquisition device (LAD) that is somewhere in our brain. This “device” is in charge of our learning a language the same way the hypothalamus, for example, is in charge of regulating our body temperature. The language acquisition theory also suggests that there is a universal grammar (a theory by Noam Chomsky) that is shared across every language in the world because universal grammar is part of our genetic makeup. Essentially, almost all languages around the world all have nouns and verbs and similar ways to structure thoughts. All languages have a finite amount of rules that apply to all languages from which we can build an infinite amount of phrases. The core and basic ideas from these finite rules are built into our brains (according to Universal Grammar and the Nativist Theory). This language acquisition theory explains well how humans seem to have a far more complicated and complex set of communication patterns than any other species in the world. It also is a working theory for how children are able to learn so quickly complicated ideas. This language acquisition theory is comparable to how we think of numbers- everyone in the world knows what 4 apples look like regardless if we say that there are four, cuatro, vier, or dört apples. Language acquisition theory: The Sociocultural Theory The sociocultural theory, also known as the interactionist approach, takes ideas from both biology and sociology to interpret our language acquisition. This language acquisition theory states that children are able to learn language out of a desire to communicate with their surrounding environment and world. Language thus is dependent upon and emerges from social interaction. The theory argues that due to our language developing out of a desire to communicate, our language is dependent upon whom we hang around and with whom we want to communicate. Essentially, the theory says that our environment when we grow up has a heavy influence on how quickly and how well we learn to talk. For example, an infant who is raised by a single dad will develop the word “dada” or “baba” before developing “mama”. Language acquisition theory: The Learning Theory The learning theory is a language acquisition theory that looks at language learning as learning a new skill and that we learn language much in the same way that we learn how to count or how to tie shoes via repetition and reinforcement. When babies babble, adults coo and praise them for “talking” (and also because it’s pretty adorable). When the kids grow older, they often are praised for speaking properly and corrected when they don’t. From this correction and praise comes the learning theory that language comes from stimulus and stimulus-response. However, this language acquisition theory, logical as it may be, fails to explain how new phrases and new words form since it’s all about repeating and mimicking what people hear from others.
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