Innateness of Children’s Language Acquisition

He found that children have a biological ability to detect phonology, syntax and semantics. Environmentally, children’s vocabularies are linked to family’s socioeconomic status. The child’s language is affected by the frequency of parents talking, child directed speech, and mother’s verbal response to infants. Language milestones are from 0-2 years. From birth children cry to communicate, at 2-4 months they coo, at 5 months they begin to understand words, at 6 they begin to babble, at 7-11 months they change from universal language to their specific language (their parents), from 8-12 months they use gestures to communicate, at 13 months the child’s first word is spoken, at 18 months vocabulary spurt starts, and from 18-24 the child uses two word utterances and understands words rapidly.

Babies have an astonishing ability to hear the different languages of the world and recognize the sounds used. This is a demonstration of the element of nature. Even at the age of seven months, babies’ can

Carol Chomsky studied the syntactic acquisition of children ages 5-10 in 1969. In order to do this, she created a series of experiments that involved different complex syntactic structures to test approximately when children have mastered certain syntactic structures. Her book, The Acquisition of Syntax in Children from 5 to 10 (1969) focuses on 4 experiments: (1) the Easy to see experiment, (2) the Promise experiment, (3) the Ask/tell experiment, and the Pronominalization experiment. This paper focuses on the first experiment, conducting Carol Chomsky’s original experiment as well as a variant on both of the participant.

Some linguistic models try to explain the development of second language acquisition. The three most common models are (1) the Universal Grammar Model, (2) the Competition Model, and (3) the Monitor Model. The Universal Grammar Model refers to the system of principles, conditions, and rules that are properties or elements of all human languages. At the same time, each language has grammatical rules that vary from one language to another. Thus, Chomky states that different languages have a limited possibility of different grammatical structures (1975). Therefore, second language learners base their second language acquisition on universal principles common to all languages, and on the force of the particular rules of each language. All of those can be concluded that as a human, especially as children, we have vary form of rules in language, in this case is second language.

As soon as infants are born they immediately begin innately paying attention to language. There are several major achievements in language as infants grow and develop. First in phonology, infants begin babbling using vowel-like sounds at 3-8 months, early consonants at 5-8 months, and CV syllables from 5-10 months. CV syllables means syllables with a consonant and a vowel, and are more complex for infants to produce. They also acquire prosodic abilities, or the ability to find patterns of intonations and stress in language. An infant proves unable to produce multiword utterances and therefore contains no syntax, but they begin to formulate single words beginning around 9-14 months of age. To count as first words, they must be “true words”,

First, children¡¯s acquisition of language is an innate mechanism that enables a child to analyze language and extract the basic rules of grammar, granted by Chomsky. It basically states that humans are born with a language acquisition device that, the ability to learn a language rapidly as children. However, there is one important controversy in language acquisition concerns how we acquire language; since Chomsky fails to adequately explain individual differences. From the behaviorists¡¯ perspectives, the language is learned like other learned behaviors. It is learned through operant

It is believed that babies develop language when they are in the utero and it continues throughout their lifetime. By twelve weeks old, babies may register the sounds they can hear and at the same time make basic visual, auditory and tactile mind maps (Karen Kearns, 2013, P.105). This allows the infant to turn towards any familiar sounds and noises. Babies begin to communicate with people around them quite quickly. By two months old, babies begin to make ‘cooing’ and other noises; this indicates the phonological component of language development. By six to nine months babies begin to experience with a mixture of sounds, and often you will hear a baby babbling. Babbling development is similar across many different languages and even hearing impaired babies will go through this stage. They may copy the sounds they are introduced too or beginning to recognize familiar

At 7 months, they able to segment word from speech that shows a strong-weak stress pattern, which is the most common stress pattern in the English language. The process that allows infant to use prosodic cues in speech input to learn about language structure is known as ‘prosodic bootstrapping’ . While children at 8 months old generally do not understand the meaning of the most single word yet, they still able to understand the meaning of certain phrases they hear a lot. By 9 months old, infant can differentiate native from nonnative language. Children uses [m], [n],[t],[d],[b],[p] and [y] in babbling multiple syllables by 6 to 9 months old. They babbling

There are several theories regarding language development. Work by Chomsky, Piaget and Kuhl are critical. Studies by Chomsky, as examined by Albery, Chandler, Field, Jones, Messer, Moore and Sterling (2009); Deloache, Eisenberg & Siegler (2003) argued for the innateness of language acquisition due to its complexity. Development is assisted by a language acquisition device (LAD) and universal grammar both of which holding the propensity for commonalities throughout all languages. LAD is the key to the Syntax rule. The knowledge to master the rules is held unconsciously. Chomsky concludes exposure through auditory channels as being the only requirement for learning. Arguably Kuhl (2010) writes infantile exposure to language through auditory channels only, does not contribute effectively to learning indicating the importance of human interaction. Piaget, as discussed by Ault (1977) postulated language as not being part of the earliest stages of development. Signifying within sensorimotor stage, between birth and two years, the child’s development is too reflexive. Gleitman, Fridlund and Reisberg (2004) discuss the critical period hypothesis and suggest the young brain being more suited to acquisition than the adult brain. Lenneberg (1967) (as cited in Gleitman et al 2004) advocates, brain maturation closes language acquisition capacity window. Kuhl (2010) identified, within the critical period babies develop

As a child develops along their journey to acquire language, they go through several steps, of which all are crucial to the successful mastering of their native tongue. There is debate over whether the period of acquisition known as babbling is the first or second stage – Berk (1991) mentions that they class babbling as the first stage, but note that there is a previous stage before that, known as the ‘cooing’ stage; following this, this essay will refer to babbling as the second stage of language acquisition. To introduce a general overview of this particular stage, Berk (1991) explains that cooing usually develops into babbling at around 6

Modern day linguistics has seen the arrival of many different viewpoints of language. Beginning with Noam Chomsky, unquestionably one of the most influential figures in recent linguistics, new theories and ideas have been introduced at a rapid rate. In part due to his status as a revitalizer in the field, but also due to his often controversial theories, Chomsky maintains a place at the center of this discussion. His search for a universal grammar and criticism of pure descriptivism have informed generations of research. Much of this has been reactionary against him, but his influence can not be discounted. His theories of a universal grammar have inspired writers on both sides of the debate. Paul Hopper argues against this view, positing

According to Hutchison (2015), around age four, children expand their vocabularies at an ever increasing rate and are able to incorporate new words into eight to ten word sentences, “but the most remarkable aspect of language development in early childhood is the understanding of grammar rules. By age four, young children in all cultures understand the basic grammar rules of their language. They accomplish this mostly by a figuring out process.

However, it can be argued with (Bruner 1964) that social interaction doesn’t explain all the complexities of language acquisition. Almost every day the language we hear is often incorrect, poorly defined, incomplete and full of hesitations, mispronunciations and other errors, and yet despite this we still learn to talk following the correct grammatical rules. Again this indicates the idea of Chomsky’s (1968) LAD model that children are born ‘hard-wired’ with the innate knowledge of linguistic rules and so these rules help the baby make estimations and presumptions about the language it is hearing. From these estimations and presumption the child can work out grammatical sets of rules and when more language is exposed to them, the more their language develops. Even within Chomsky’s (1968) LAD theory, undoubtedly he believed the role and promotion of the ‘nature’ aspect is the core foundation on which language can develop. But his theory also requires the role of nurture

Linguistics has impacted cognitive psychology as the quest to understand language acquisition and the structure of language itself is undertaken. Linguistics is a complex and multifaceted; it includes language structural patterns and language development (Barsalou, 2005). The process of language development is complicated and dense, as the study of language is examined; the role of cognition is inherently examined and analyzed. Sternberg (2006) also explores language as an innate process and presents the idea that humans are born ready for language as a biological and cognitive process.

Numerous theories try to explain the process of language acquisition. These theories fall into one of two camps. The environmentalist (or connectionist) theory of language acquisition asserts that language is acquired through environmental factors (Halvaei et al. 811). Theorists in this camp believe that a child learns language by gaining information from the outside world and then forming associations between words and objects. The nativist (or rationalist) approach, on the other hand, asserts that it is innate factors that determine language acquisition. Noam Chomsky, often described as “the father of modern linguistics”, falls into this camp as he believes that speech is the result of hidden rules of language that are hidden somewhere in the brain (Rahmani and Abdolmanafi 2111). Steven Pinker, a colleague of Chomsky, is a renowned psychologist, cognitive scientist and linguist who discusses his own theories on language acquisition in his book Words and Rules.