Overview & introduction

What we observe
• “Daddy, did your hair slip?”
– Three-year-old to bald but long-bearded father
• “Daddy picked them up and looked underneath. I
thi nk it’s printed on the bottom”
– Three-year-old, when asked by mother how his father
knew the gender of four new kittens
• “How will that help?”
– Kindergarten student, when the class was instructed
to hold up two fingers if any of them had to use the
bathroom
 What we observe
• Children master their first languages
effortlessly and within a few short years
(typically before age 5)
– Syntax
– Phonology
– Morphology
– Pragmatics
• How is this possible?
 Why do we care
• Understanding how we learn to speak our
native languages can …
– Inform our understanding of the human mind
– Help devise and implement treatments for
children who are having difficulties with
language (e.g., SLI, autism)
– Help us better understand language learning
later on in life
 What we ask
Yes No ??
Children learn how to speak primarily by copying what
adults say.
Children learn language like they learn any other skill
(e.g., math)
Children’s brains contain a region devoted solely to
language learning
Children learn language by unconsciously paying
attention to patterns in social context
Individual differences play little if any role in first
language acquisition
Learning two languages at once slows or disrupts the
language acquisition process
Learning some languages (as L1) is more difficult
(takes more time) than learning other languages
 Major questions
• Is language learned by imitation?
• Is language innate (i.e., part of our genetic
inheritance)?
• Is language just another general
cognitive skill (like math)?
• How large a role does the environment
(e.g., caregivers) play in the language
development process?
 Theories
• Overview of the main theories in FLA
• Keep in mind what each theory holds
about the following:
– Imitation
– Innate mechanisms
– Role of general cognitive skills
– Environmental influences (e.g., caregiver
speech)
 Behaviorism
• In the behaviorist view, language learning
is a matter of conditioning (re. Pavlov’s
dogs)
 Behaviorism
• A bell is rung whenever the researcher
gave the dogs meat:
 Behaviorism
• After many repetitions, the dogs salivate
whenever the bell is rung, whether meat is
present or not
 Behaviorism
• The dog learns that the bell “means” meat;
i.e., it associates the bell with meat
• Language learning in children was
believed to occur in the same fashion:
 Behaviorism
• The infant is naturally “interested in” the
milk
 Behaviorism
• The child hears “bottle” whenever the milk
bottle is present
 Behaviorism
• After many repetitions, the infant
associates the sound “bottle” with the
actual bottle
 Behaviorism
• The behaviorists believed that
association was a key process in
language learning
• They also believed that imitation was one
of the main ways children learn language
 Behaviorism
Peter: Get more.
Lois: You’re gonna put more wheels in the
dump truck?
Peter: Dump truck. Wheels. Dump truck.
(later)

Patsy: What happened to it (the truck)?

Peter: Lose it. Dump truck! Dump truck!
Fall! Fall!
Lois: Yes, the dump truck fell down.
Peter: Dump truck fell down. Dump truck.
 Behaviorism
• Behaviorists also argued that feedback
was a crucial part of the language learning
process
• Feedback could be positive (“Yes, that’s
right!”) or negative (“No, you’re wrong”)
 Behaviorism
Cindy: Kawo? Kawo? Kawo? Kawo?
Patsy: What are the rabbits eating?
Cindy: They eating … kando?
Patsy: No, that’s a carrot.
Cindy: Carrot. (pointing to each carrot
on the page) The other carrot. The
other carrot.
 Behaviorism
• Behaviors that most frequently result in
positive feedback (including rewards) tend
to be repeated
– “Cookie”  Cookie
• Behaviors that most frequently result in
negative feedback (including being
ignored) tend to vanish
– “Plbbtt”  nothing
 Behaviorism
• So, how do children make the leap from
words to sentences?
• Behaviorists: parents change their
feedback patterns
– Beginning: “Cookie”  cookie
– Later: “Cookie”  “What’s the magic word?”
– Later still: “Please cookie”  “Ask politely”
– And later still: “Can you please give me a
cookie?”  cookie
 Behaviorism
• Language is just another skill, learned
through association, imitation and
feedback
• The child is not endowed with any innate
linguistic knowledge
– Rather, the child is a passive recipient of
environmental influences
– Skinner: children are “interested bystanders”
 Behaviorism
• What do you think about the behaviorists’
claims?
– Agree?
– Disagree?
– Not sure?
 Behaviorism
• Some problems with behaviorism:
 Behaviorism
• Behaviorist views to language learning
were common in the 1950s and 1960s
• The end of the “behaviorist reign” came
with the publication of Noam Chomsky’s
book review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal
Behavior
 Nativism
• Whereas the behaviorists thought that
language was nothing special, just another
skill to be learned, the nativists believe
that language is so special and so
complex that children must be born with
some kind of linguistic knowledge that
guides the language acquisition process
• Universal grammar (UG)
 Nativism
• UG consists of basic rules about language
• These rules apply to all languages
• These rules are innate
• These rules are believed to be housed in
the Language Acquisition Device (the
purported region of the brain devoted
specifically to language)
 Nativism
• These rules (i.e., innate linguistic
knowledge) guide the language
acquisition process and enable the
otherwise cognitively immature child to
master something as complex as
language in just a few short years,
according to the nativists
 Nativism
• Chomsky: “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”
• Learning language is like learning how to
walk
 Nativism
1. Universality
– Unless there are severe physical or mental limitations,
all human beings acquire language (spoken or
signed)
2. Uniformity
– Different languages are uniformly easy to learn during
childhood and children are uniformly successful in
learning any language which they are exposed to
3. Rapidity
– Most children reach near mastery of their native
language by the age of 5
 Nativism
4. Consistency of stages
– Children pass through the same sequence of major
stages in language acquisition; the stages are the
same regardless of language learned, culture, child
rearing conditions, motivations, talents, etc.
5. Poverty of the stimulus
– Adult input is ‘degenerate’ because the quality and
quantity of adult speech directed to children is not
enough for them to learn all the complex rules of
grammar
 Nativism
6. No negative feedback
– Children rarely receive negative feedback (evidence
of what is not possible in the language)
– Parents focus on content of utterance and not
grammaticality
– Children are oblivious to feedback anyway
7. Sophisticated knowledge that couldn’t have
been taught
– Children evidence sophisticated knowledge of their
L1s at a very early age
 Nativism
8. Creativity
– We must have innate rules because there is just
not enough space in our finite brains to store
the infinite number of sentences that are
possible in any given language:
• Bill thinks that Claire is smart.
• Dirk suspects that Bill thinks that Claire is smart.
• Egbert said that Dirk suspects that Bill thinks Claire is
smart.
• Fred knows that Egbert said that Dirk suspects that Bill
thinks Claire is smart. Etc. etc.
 Nativism
9. Critical period
– That there is a critical period for language
learning is believed to support the view that we
are biologically equipped to learn language,
and at a certain time
10. Developmental Dissociations
– Dissociations between cognitive and linguistic
development
• William’s syndrome
• SLI
 Nativism
• Nativism has been one of the most
influential theories in the field of language
acquisition
• It has not been without its critics, however
– One criticism is that nativism doesn’t take into
account the child’s cognitive development or
the child’s social environment
 Connectionism
• A recent pair of related theories
concerning language development are
connectionism and usage-based
theories
• To understand these theories, it helps to
go back to the nativist view of language
learning
 Connectionism
• The nativists essentially argue that
language is so complex and so
complicated and that children are so
cognitively immature, that the only way
we can explain how children acquire
language is to posit that they are guided
by innate linguistic knowledge
– Their own cognitive skills are not enough
 Connectionism
• The connectionists acknowledge that
language is tremendously complex, but
they argue that children are not as
“cognitively immature” as they appear
• Rather, they argue that children have
tremendous cognitive abilities to detect
patterns and note frequencies—abilities
that might even outstrip those of adults
 Connectionism
• Connectionists argue that children, being
exposed to millions and millions of
utterances over the first few years of life,
figure out the patterns (grammar) of
language
• They then make generalizations based on
the patterns they detect
– E.g., “the” comes before the noun
– E.g., “ed” marks past tense ( broked)
 Connectionism
• Whereas the nativists argue that
linguistic knowledge is innate,
connectionists argue that the ability to
detect patterns and note frequencies is
innate
– They also argue that these skills are present
in other species as well
 Conclusion
• There is a tremendous amount of current
debate between nativist and connectionist
approaches to language acquisition
• This is not just a “theoretical” question, as
the answer will have a huge impact on
how we understand the human mind
– Are we unique as a species?
– Are we born with innate linguistic knowledge?