BAS17104 Linguistics and Phonetics

Theories and models of language acquisition

• The way clinicians assess and deliver treatment will depend greatly on their theoretical
viewpoint. Some are eclectic in nature, blending aspects of several different theories to
achieve what they view as balanced language assessment and treatment.
• Six major theories of language acquisition are:
– Biological maturation theory
– Linguistic theory
– Cognitive theory
– Behavioral theory
– Information processing theory
– Social interaction theory
• Theories differ in describing how language is acquired and their implications for:
– Areas that clinician should target in assessment and intervention
– What procedures should be used to facilitate language teaching
• Linguist theory and behavioral theory have been proposed as comprehensive theories
of necessary and sufficient conditions for language learning.
• Other theories relate to factors that are necessary for language acquisition to proceed
normally rather than describing factors that are sufficient for explaining it- couriered to
be interactionist b/c they acknowledge the presence of multiple essential factors.
• They do not claim that any single factor can explain the process of language acquisition
completely.
Biological Maturation Theory
• Major proponent - Norman Geschwind
• It is a concept that primarily relates to the idea that the development of human abilities,
particularly in children, is driven largely by the biological growth and maturation of the
brain and body. This theory suggests that genetic factors, biological processes, and the
body's physical growth play a major role in the cognitive, emotional, and physical
development of an individual, and that these developmental milestones unfold in a
predictable sequence as a result of maturation.
 • According to this theory, language is a product of brain structures and functions
(affected by genetic and environmental influences), which play a primary role in
supporting language acquisition.
• There are some micro and macro-structures of the brain that contributes to language
acquisition. Macrostructure on the left hemisphere like temporal and frontal lobes,
arcuate fasciculus, and some sub cortical structures play a vital role. Similarly, the brain
cell organization, branching and synapses of neurons, myelination of axons, genes and
metabolism contribute to language acquisition.
• The Biological Maturation Theory suggests that children are biologically prepared to
acquire language and that they will learn to speak at a certain age, typically around 2
years old, as their brains mature, regardless of the specific language they are exposed
to.
• However, it has significant limitations in its failure to account for the influence of the
environment, learning, culture, and individual differences. Modern theories of
development tend to integrate biological, psychological, and social factors,
acknowledging that human development is a complex interplay between nature and
nurture, rather than solely driven by biological maturation.
Linguistic theory
• Proposed by Noam Chomsky
• According to Chomsky, syntactic structures are the essence of language, and
language is a product of the unique human mind.
• He states that there are universal rules of grammar that apply to all languages.
• He states that children are born with an innate capacity to acquire language and are
born with Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which is a specialized language
processor that is a physiological part of the brain.
• Chomsky described language competence and performance. Competence is the
underlying knowledge of the rules of universal grammar and it is innate. Thus, the
child learns language relatively in-dependently of the environment. Language
performance is the actual production of language.
• He also introduced the concepts that syntax consists of surface and deep structure,
and they are related to grammatic transformations, which involves adding,
substituting, deleting and rearranging words to change meaning.
• Limitations:
 o Relatively narrow focus on learning the syntactic rules for forming single
sentences.
o It has very narrow clinical application – focus on a single stage of linguistic
development, middle stage of language acquisition (3-7 yrs), prelinguistic
events, communicative interactions of infancy, later stage of lang
acquisition were not given much importance.
Cognitive theory
• Major proponent – Jean Piaget
• Cognitive theory emphasizes on cognition, or knowledge and mental processes such as
attention, memory, and auditory and visual perception.
• They believe that language acquisition is made possible by cognition and general
intellectual processes. Language is only one expression of a more general set of
cognitive activities, and proper development of the cognitive system is a necessary
precursor of linguistic expression.
• Strong cognition hypothesis believes that there are cognitive abilities that are essential
prerequisites to language skills. The cognitive precursors are innate while language is
not.
• Add briefly - Piaget’s stages of cognitive development
• Weak cognition hypothesis states that cognition accounts for some of a child’s language
abilities, but it cannot account for all of them.
• Limitations:
o Fails to recognize language as a unique system and therefore limits the analysis
of language.
o Fails to recognize the aspects of linguistics system which appears to be
independent of the cognitive prerequisites.
Behavioral theory
• Major proponent – B. F. Skinner
• This theory focuses on the learning process rather than the linguistic system.
• Skinner explained the acquisition of verbal behavior, a form of social behavior
maintained by the actions of a verbal community.
• Verbal behaviors are learned under appropriate conditions of stimulation, response and
reinforcement.
 • Children begin with no language, and they gradually begin to imitate sounds and
utterances of the persons to whom they are most frequently exposed. If the child’s
imitation is reinforced, he or she will be likely to say the sound again. If punished or
ignored, the likelihood of the verbal behavior recurring is reduced.
• According to behaviorist, learning (not an innate mechanism) plays a key role in the
acquisition of verbal behaviours.
• Behaviorist focus on the observable and measurable aspects of language behavior. They
emphasize on performance over competence.
• Behaviorist break verbal bhr down into cause-effect (functional) units:
o Echoics: these are imitative verbal responses whose stimuli are the speech of
another person. Clinician will model target responses- child imitates- reinforces
the imitation when it approximates the model.
o Mands: it involve requests, demand, command that specifies its reinforcer, eg:
do you have something to drink?
o Tacts: it is a group of verbal responses that describe and comment on the events
and things around us. Tacts are reinforced socially; a nod of approval or smile
etc.
• Limitations:
o It could explain some aspects of sound/word learning, but behavioral theory is
inadequate for explaining the rapidity and complexity of normal acquisition of
grammatical knowledge in early childhood.
o They focus on the external forces that shape a child’s behavior into language
believing that children are passive during the language learning process.
o Children find it difficult to generalize newly learned behavior to complex real
life situations.
Information processing theory
• Focus on how language is learned.
• Interested in cognitive functioning, not cognitive structures or concepts.
• They view the human information processing system as a mechanism that
o encodes stimuli from the environment,
o operates on interpretations of those stimuli,
o stores the results in memory, and
o permits retrieval of previously stored information
 • Older version proposes a set of serial information processes that act on incoming
perceptual input from auditory (speech) or visual (print) sources to analyze it,
comprehend it, formulate a response, and transform it back into physical form.
o Sensation - perception - cognition - memory (unidirectional view)
• A second, newer version is based on computer modeling of the language acquisition
process.
• It proposes a parallel distributed processing (PDP) or connectionist model in which
incoming information is distributed to several processing nodes simultaneously.
• PDP models are designed to overcome limitations of linguistic theory by providing a
working model for the mysterious LAD.
• Limitation: relevance to primary language development is less clear.
Social Interaction Theory
• Primary proponent is Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist
• This theory states that language develops as a result of children’s social interactions
with the important people in their lives.
• It focuses on language function rather than language structure.
• In this theory Vygotsky emphasized the importance of verbal guidance and adult
modeling.
• Language develops because people are motivated to interact socially with other people
around them.
o Example: Infants seek out human faces and respond to them. Thus, the
environment and its inherent social experiences are foundational to the
emergence of language.
• Proponents believe that the child, as well as her caretakers and the environment, plays
an active role in language acquisition.
• The 2 key components of his theory are:
• The more knowledgeable other (MKO)- refers to anyone who has a better
understanding or a higher ability level than the learner, with respect to a particular task,
process, or concept. The MKO is normally thought of as being a teacher, coach, or older
adult, but the MKO could also be peers, a younger person, or even computers.
• The zone of proximal development (ZPD)- is the distance between a student’s ability
to perform a task under adult guidance and/or with peer collaboration and the student’s
 ability solving the problem independently. According to Vygotsky, learning occurred in
this zone.
• Also, they believed that oral and written language skills continue to develop across the
span of a person’s life.
• Limitation:
o More focus on language use and pragmatics whereas, language content and
form receive less attention.

All these theories could explain only certain aspects of language acquisition. No one theory
could explain the actual whole process of language acquisition.