A-Level AQA English Language - Child Language Acquisition

1. What does the Behaviourist approach say about language acquisition? 2. What did Skinner suggest? 3. Limitations of Behaviourism - Virtuous Errors. 4. Limitations of Behaviourism - Developmental Milestones. 5. Limitations of Behaviourism - David McNeill. 6. Limitations of Behaviourism - Critical Period. A-Level AQA English Language - Child Language Acquisition Children acquire language through imitation and reinforcement. Skinner suggested that a child imitates the language of its parents or carers. Successful attempts are rewarded (positive reinforcement) as the caregiver will praise the child for using the correct word. Undesirable behaviour is simply not rewarded (negative reinforcement). Mistakes made by children show that they are actively working out and applying rules of language. For example, a child who says 'drinked' instead of 'drank' is over-applying a rule. The 'mistakes' occur due to irregular verbs. The vast majority of children go through the same stages of language acquisition apart from extreme cases like Genie. The sequence of steps for language acquisition seems to be largely unaffected by the treatment the child receives. Children are often unable to repeat what an adult says, especially if it is a structure the child has not yet started to use. For example, David McNeill proved this. Data - The child is asked to say 'Nobody likes me' several times by the mother but can only say 'Nobody don't like me' or 'Nobody don't likes me'. Children who have not acquired language by the age of about seven will never entirely catch up. For example, Genie. Lenneberg coined the term 'critical period' in reference to the period of early childhood when children must be exposed to social interaction and language in order to master it for themselves. 7. Bee found that while motherese can be used to explain how aspects of individual children's environments help or 2 / 11 Limitations of Behaviourism - Bee (1989). 8. What does the Innate Theory suggest about language acquisition? 9. What is the Language Acquisition Device (LAD)? 10. Universal Grammar - Chomsky 11. What was the Wug Test? 12. Evidence to support the Innateness Theory - Slobin. hinder them from talking, it doesn't explain the underlying causes of language acquisition. Chomsky argued that children must have an inborn faculty for language acquisition. The process is biologically determined. A child is able to interpret what it hears through the natural faculty LAD. Chomsky stated that all human languages share common principles. It is the child's task to establish how the specific language they hear expresses these underlying principles. For example, the LAD contains the concept of verb tense and the children work this out through hearing words. The notion that all human language possess similar grammatical properties which the brain is 'hard wired' to be able to decode and use. Jean Berko Gleason: The Wug test was designed to investigate the acquisition of the plural and other inflectional morphemes in children. It aimed to show that children learn language through patterns and not imitation. A child was shown a bird-like drawing called a 'wug'. They were then showed another 'wug'. Children who successfully acquired the allomorph /s/ of the plural morpheme will respond with 'wugs'. 76% of 4 and 5 year olds responded correctly with 'wugs' meaning that children's understanding of morphology goes beyond what they have been taught. Slobin has pointed out that human anatomy is peculiarly adapted to the production of speech. We have evolved a vocal tract which allows the precise articulation of a wide repertoire of vocal sounds. Also, Broca's area and Wernicke's area of the brain have been identified as being involved in speech development.