SEVERAL THEORIES: LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Introduction

Several theories and approaches have emerged over the years to study and
analyze the process of language acquisition. The main schools of thought, which
provide theoretical paradigms in guiding the course of language acquisition are,
innatist theory, cognitivist theory and motherese theory. The Innate theory asserts
that language is an innate capacity and that a child‟s brain contains special
language-learning mechanisms at birth in which the main proponent of this
theory is Chomsky (Pinker, 1994). On the other hand, the cognitive theory
by Jean Piaget (Wilburg, 2010) claims that language is just one aspect of a
child‟s overall intellectual development. Sassonian (2009) asserts that language
is a symbolic representation which allows the children to abstract the world.
children The innateness theory Language is not an autonomous system for
communication. It is embedded in and supplemented by gesture, gaze, stance,
facial expression, voice quality in the full array of options people can use for
communicating (Clark, 2009). Learning is complex and the context where it takes
place is influenced by our learning experience due to our different experiences.
Clark (2009, p.7) states that “in learning language, children may first rely on
nonlinguistic options, both in their initial understanding and in their own early
use”. The Innateness theory by Noam Chomsky (Pinker, 1994) shows the innatist
limitations of behaviorist view of language acquisition in 1960‟s to the
alternative „generative‟ account of language. The main Argument in this theory is
that children are born with an innate knowledge which guides them in the language
acquisition task. The children‟s ability makes the task of learning a first language
easier than it would otherwise be (Crain & Lillo-Martin, 1999). Pinker (1994, p.26)
claims that “the universally of complex language is a discovery that fills linguists
with awe, and is the first reason to suspect that language is not just any cultural
invention but the product of a special human instinct”. It is an innate biological
function of human beings just like learning to walk. On the other side, Clark (2009,
p.2) poses that “even if children are born with a learning mechanism
dedicated to language, the main proposals is to focus only on syntactic. The rest
has to be learnt.” This essay believes that children have the innate ability to learn
language as Chomsky believes, but this needs to be learn and develop by social
interacting with environments such as adults and in cognitive development.
According to Clark (2009) children beside their innate abilities; their acquisition of
language could also be affected by social interaction and cognitive development.
Moreover, Chomsky (2009) argues that Language learning is not really something
that the child does; it is something that happens to the child placed in an
appropriate environment much as the child‟s body grows and matures in a
predetermined way when provided with appropriate nutrition and environmental
stimulation. Furthermore, according to Crain and Lillo-Martin (1999), the innate
knowledge, known as the language Acquisition Device (LAD), includes principle
common to all human languages, called the Universal Grammar (UG). This is
similar to Pinker(1994, p.43) claims that the evidence corroborating the claim that
the mind contains blueprints for grammatical rules comes, once again out of the
mouths of babes and suckling‟s. For example, looking at the English agreement
suffix- s as in He walks” Chomsky theorized that children were born with a hard-
wired language acquisition device (hereafter, LAD) in their brains (Pinker, 1994).
He further expands this idea into that of universal grammar, a set of innate
principles and adjustable parameters that is common to all human languages. The
language acquisition Device (LAD) is a postulated organ of the brain that is
supposed to function as a congenital device for learning symbolic language
(Chomsky, 2009). To Chomsky (1977, p.98) all children share the same
innateness, all children share the same internal constraints which characterize
narrowly the grammar they are going to construct” Therefore, Crain and Lillo-
Martin (1999) pose that LAD explains human acquisition of the syntactic
structure of language; it encodes the major principles of a language and its
grammatical structures into the child‟s brain and enables the children to
analyze language and extract the basic rules of universal grammar or generative
grammar because it is a system of rules that generate or produce sentences of the
language. We are born with set of rules about language in our brains and children
are equipped with an innate template or blueprint for language and this blueprint
aid the child in the task of constructing a grammar for their language (Chomsky,
2009). The universal grammar according to Chomsky (2009) does not have the
actual rules of each language but it has principles & parameters in which the rules
of language are derived from the principles & parameters. In other words, the
principles are the universal basic features of grammar such as nouns and
verbs and the parameters are the variation across language that determines one
or more aspects of grammar e.g. pro, drop and head direction (Chomsky, 1977).
Therefore, the parameters in children set during language acquisition (Chomsky,
2009). In Chomsky‟s 1965 book „Theory of Syntax‟ it laid out the reasoning for
a theory of innate knowledge, and since then much of his work and volumes of
work inspired by him have added to our understanding of this theory of language
acquisition (Crain & Lillo-Martin, 1999).So, the mechanism of innate theory and
mechanism of language acquisition formulates from innate processes
(Chomsky, 1977; 2009). More so, Crain and Lillo-Martin (1999, p.5) postulate that
“language is not a concrete set of things out in the world that we can point out to
or measure rather, it is something inside our brains and minds”. I support this
claim because I believe that the acquisition of language is innate but as we grow
and develop within an environment and interact with family, school, society, we
tend to develop cognitively, in which language learning is a process of
socialization. This claim accords well with Bruner (1957) who argues that
Children are not little grammarians, motivated to decode the syntax of the
language around them through the operation of their LAD, but social beings who
acquire language in the service of their needs to communicate with others.
However, in literatures, some scholars have argued and critiqued the innateness of
language as it relates to having nothing defending the thesis. Sampson (2005)
argues that to say that language is not innate is to say that there is no difference
between my granddaughter, a rock and a rabbit. According to Sampson (2005) if
you take a rock, a rabbit and my granddaughter and put them in a community
where people are talking English, they will all learn English. This simply implies that
if there is a difference therefore language is not innate. Although Chomsky (2009)
argues that children learn their first language remarkably fast and also it is
relatively fast. In contrast, Sampson(2005, p.37) argues that people normally
reckon the period of language acquisition from birth and children take years
from birth, rather than months or weeks to master the main grammatical
structures of their mother tongue. Gethin (1999) in a similar vein argues that adults
who go about it the right way can acquire a far larger vocabulary in a foreign
language and far quickly than native child for reason that adults know the world
already, while children do not. Meanwhile, Chomsky argues that language
acquisition in childhood works quite differently from acquisition in later life and their
learning of language is more complicated than the last (Pinker, 1994). Gethin
(1999, p.25) further claims that “it is an unwarranted assumption that children go
through stages in this order because one stage is simpler than another; nor does it
follow that because a general psychological reason is not observable and there is
not one”. Sampson (2005, p.41) refutes this assumption by explaining the best-
known case of Genie: A girl born in 1957 whose father was insane: from the age
of 20 months to 13 years 7 months she was kept in isolation from human
company and from virtually all other mental stimulation. Susan Curtiss has
documented Genie‟s development during the first fifty-five months after society
discovered her as an unsocialized, primitive, barely human‟ creature and
began in November to try help her towards normality. Within that period, Genie had
not learned to speak English in anything like normal sense; nor had she acquired
the most basic non-linguistic skills. Susan Curtiss herself regarded Genie as
refuting the strong version of Lenneberg‟s claim‟ that, natural language
acquisition cannot occur after puberty. Succinctly, Gethin (1999) pose that
nobody knows exactly what experience did to Genie‟ brain. In this essay, looking at
Chomsky‟s (1977; 2009) arguments on Language acquisition, from my own point
of view, I will say it is valid. On the other hand, Chomsky‟s (1977) theory might not
be applicable on all the children in the world. This is because every child
passes through different circumstances from others and there are differences
in context in which a child develops and grows. Looking at the case of Genie
and what the emotional damage she suffered, this issue might be attributed to her
difficulties in acquiring language and speaking. Furthermore, Chomsky (2009)
claims that children learn language very quickly. Gethin (1999) argues that some
older children hear more new words than others; this is probably why the pace at
which older children learn varies a lot, when they are smaller, their experience is
probably more equal and so they learn at the same speed. I agree with
Gethin(1999) argument that children also have the ability to acquire even more
than one language in the same time, because their minds are bright and they are
not busy with the stress of life as adult, so they able to learn fast but adults‟
minds are always busy, in which they concentrate on the other sides of life which
is more important to them than acquiring language. Moreover, Sampson (2005,
p.50) refutes “Chomsky‟s argument on language universality that it is central to
Pinker (1994) case for nativism. Gethin (1999, p.31) claims that “there is a single
unquestionable universal of language as opposed to universal ways of
thinking” in which Chomsky and his supporters would not necessarily
demonstrate a separate faculty inherited with a restricting program, rather than
universal ways of thinking and experiences which limit what people can express
and the ways they do it. Gethin (1999) poses that if language is really
universal, why do humans around the world learn and have different languages. I
believe that the fact that all languages have much in common has nothing to do
with the world appearing basically the same to everyone everywhere. In Sampson
(2005) views no specialized linguistic faculty or brain component is specific to
language. Children learn their first language by a process of trial and error
hypothesis formation based on their experience with language data made
available in linguistic community into which they are born combined with the
skills provided by general human abilities (Sampson, 2005). On the other hand,
Gethin (1999, p.31) asserts that “the basic truth to be realized about language, is
that studying it cannot tell us anything at all about the nature of thought”.
Therefore the innate theory by Chomsky (2009) that language acquisition is a
matter of growth and maturation of relatively fixed capacities.