2 - The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition

Question 1

What are the 3 arguments in favour of Universal Grammar?

Answer 1

1) Lack of Negative Evidence
2) Poverty of Stimulus
3) Ordered Stages of language acquisition

Question 2

What is the Logical Problem of Language Acquisition (LPA)?

Answer 2

Is it a general observation that: in spite of the complexity exhibited in every language, the vast majority of children acquire the grammar of their native language seemingly with little effort.

The input does not give learners enough information to work out all of the properties of language that they eventually know.

Our knowledge is more complex, abstract, and subtle than would be expected if language was acquired from input alone.

Question 3

What are the 5 ways that the grammar of a language is acquired by children?

Answer 3

1. Subconsciously
2. Quickly
3. Relatively uniformly
4. Without explicit instruction or correction
5. Based on input that an sometimes be of poor quality

Question 4

What are some biases that children be born with?

Answer 4

1) Knowledge of type of categories and operations that are found in the grammars of all languages
Ex. D, N, NP

2) Knowledge that categories principled ways, resulting in hierarchical representations (constituency)
Ex. D + N = NP

Question 5

What are 2 properties of biases that form part of universal language?

Answer 5

1) innate
2) purely linguistic

Question 6

What is the Nativist approach?

Answer 6

Language learning is truly organic and innate and that we are predisposed to language; there is a language acquisition device (LAD) in the brain that guides language acquisition.

Question 7

What is the Behaviourist Approach?

Answer 7

That language is learned through imitation and reinforcement.

Question 8

What are 4 ways that children learn language according to behaviourism?

Answer 8

1) Imitation
2) Reinforcement
3) Analogy
4 Structured input

Question 9

What are the 9 factors that suggests a biological basis of language acquisition?

Answer 9

1) The behaviour emerges before it is necessary.
2) It is not the result of conscious decision.
3) Critical period
4) Teaching/intensive practice have little effect
5) Milestones of language development. Children go through the same stages in the same order (though not necessarily at the same rate or age).
6) Regular onset
7) Occurs inevitably regardless of upbringing
8) Similarities across acquisition of different languages
9) Areas of human brain are specifically devoted to language. In majority of people, the language areas of the brain are found in the left hemisphere.

Question 10

Explain the Lack of Negative Evidence. Give an example.

Answer 10

Children’s productions are constrained by the grammar they have built at any given time in development based on the generalizations they have arrived at. Their non-target productions are not receptive to correction by adults.

Children do not attend to the corrections. For children to benefit from correction, minimally, they need to understand which part of an utterance is I’ll-formed and in what way it is I’ll-formed.