Theorists- CLA

Theorists- CLA

Noam Chomsky- stated that children are born with an innate knowledge of language when they are born and learning of their native language is at high speed when hearing it from others (Plato believed it too).

This links to children over regularising and putting grammar into utterances when they are not needed. Chomsky is one of the most famous theorists on child language acquisition and his theories were based on his own intuitions about English and not actually studied on real children.

Chomsky created the LAD - Language Acquisition Device

1. Baby already knows about linguistic rules, as they are born with an innate knowledge of language.

2. Baby hears examples of his/ her native language

3. The linguistic rules help Baby make estimations and presumptions about the language it is hearing.

4. From these estimations and presumption Baby works out grammatical sets of rules. As more language is heard the grammar becomes more and more like adults.

Skinner- B.F. Skinner bases his theory of children acquiring language through behaviourism. Skinner states that all behaviour is conditioned through:

Positive Reinforcement – Rewards, repetitions, following through of requests and demands

Negative Reinforcement – Punishment, ignoring, denial of wants

This happens again and again until the behaviour is learned and becomes natural and automatic. So, babies imitate their parents/carers and are either reprimanded or praised according to their accuracy. Skinner believes that biology plays almost no part in the way children learn language.

Piaget- Piaget's theory on children learning language is mainly focused around “cognitive development,” meaning language is controlled by the development of thinking. If a baby can use sentences involving phrases such as, "more than", "less than" it is obvious that the concepts of "more than" must have been grasped, before the child uses the phrase in an utterance.

Put simply, until the child thinks of a concept, they cannot vocalise it and the higher their thinking the more they vocalise.

Bruner- Bruner created and argued for the Language Acquisition Support System (LASS). Bruner states through LASS that parent often use books and images to develop their child’s naming abilities and their ability to get involved in conversation.

1- Gaining attention- drawing the babies attention to a picture

2- Query- asking the baby to identify the picture

3- Label- telling the baby what the object is

4- Feedback- responding to the babies utterances

This is also called SCAFFOLDING, where the child is supported in their learning of language by carers and once they have learnt it, the support is taken away.

Berko and Brown - found that a child who referred to a plastic inflatable fish as a ‘fis’ substituting the ‘s’ sound for the ‘sh’ sound, couldn’t link an adult saying ‘fis’ as the same object (only responded to adult saying ‘fish’).

Jean Aitchison -came up with stages of lexical development

1- Labelling – Linking words to objects to which they refer, understanding labels

2- Packaging – Exploring labels and where they can apply, over/underextension occurs in order to gain meanings.

Halliday -is just the functions of child language. The most commonly used is instrumental and regulatory, which are learnt, along with interactional and personal, at a young age. Representational is used by 6-8+ year olds.

David Crystal-  Children learn language through copying and imitating others. This is how children develop regional accents. David Crystal has the theory that children learn language in five stages, which aren’t clearly defined and some tie in with each other.Crystal believes that language acquisition is not just about producing sounds, but also about being able to perceive sounds and understand the meaning of utterances that people make.

· He says that babies respond to different types of sounds by being able to distinguish between different voices. Before the babies are 1 day old they can tell which is their mother’s voice to someone else’s voice. As well as contrasts in intonation and rhythm.

The babies also show signs of comprehension between 2 and 4 months. They do this by responding to different adult tones of voice such as angry or soothing. Between 6 and 9 months, the child learns to recognise different utterances in situations for example ‘clap hands’ or ‘say bye-bye’.Towards the end of the first years, the children show a sign of verbal learning whether it is names of people or objects.

Therefore knowing the meaning of at least 20 words by the end of the first year before even uttering a word.  Overall Crystal’s theory was that children learn in amorphous stages by trial and error to successfully learn the language. They learn in stages of grammar, different types of questioning e.g. intonation and recognising the rhythms of voices.