child language acquisition - nativism

Question 1

What is meant by nativism?

Answer 1

• the belief that language is innate; children are born with an inherent ability to be able to understand and organise the structures of language

Question 2

What did Noam Chomsky propose in 1965?

Answer 2

• he proposed that the Language Acquisition Device (LAD), citing universal grammar which allows a child’s brain to select the correct grammar of the language they are exposed to
• the LAD is triggered when the hear speech

Question 3

What is the purpose of universal grammar?

Answer 3

• it enables a child to learn a language through the environment around them (due to most languages sharing some common grammar principles)

Question 4

What is meant by poverty of the stimulus?

Answer 4

• linguistic input received by young children is often insufficient for them to learn the complexities of their native language solely through imitation/reinforcement
• yet children consistently master their native language, pointing to inherent cognitive structures
• an illustration of this is that children make virtuous errors when first learning a language e.g. ‘I sitted’

Question 5

What are some arguments in support of a nativist perspective?

Answer 5

• can be seen by the fact that children learn the appropriate word order from a young age
• most children follow the same stages of development and it would be difficult to explain this in non-biological models
• modern imaging techniques, along with neurophyschological data, have revealed a network of regions specialised to comprehending language/articulation
• many languages follow the SVO syntax (Brown = 75% of languages)

Question 6

What did Marcus (1993) argue in support of nativism?

Answer 6

• explored the feedback that young speakers receive
• suggested internal factors and an innate knowledge must be crucial to constraining their generalisations

Question 7

How does Jean Berko’s ‘Wug’ test support nativism?

Answer 7

• shows that children have an innate ability to apply grammatical rules

Question 8

What is the ‘u-shaped curve’ as defined by Cruttenden (1979)?

Answer 8

• Point 1 = child applies rule and gets it right
• Point 2 = child applies rule everywhere and gets it wrong
• Point 3 = child learns the rule only works in certain situations

Question 9

What does Pinker (1994) find?

Answer 9

• agrees with language being an instinct akin to spiders weaving webs - though, he suggests its purpose was to meet the reliance on knowledge that would’ve been crucial to the continued survival of hunter-gatherer societies
• a language mechanism is built into our brains, therefore basic structures are part of our biological inheritance

Question 10

Can the LAD expire?

Answer 10

• Chomsky claims that around the age of 7, the LAD switches off and then it becomes difficult to learn languages

Question 11

What evidence is there to suggest that the LAD can expire?

Answer 11

• in the 1970s, 13 year old girl was found by the authorities, her father had trapped her in a room since she was a toddler, detaining her in a straightjacket and tying her to a chair
• linguists worked with her but she couldn’t properly acquire language as she had missed the critical period

Question 12

What did Lenneberg (1967) argue about the critical period?

Answer 12

• speculated a salient role of biological age, anticipating a critical period for language acquisition between 18 months and early puberty
• a decrease in neural plasticity following hemispheric lateralisation leads to constraint
• there appears to be a consensus that age is a key issue in learning a first language

Question 13

What are some evaluations of nativism?

Answer 13

• we don’t actually know what the LAD is/ where it is in the brain - nothing has been proven and there’s a lack of research evidence - although it is important to note that recent research has pointed towards the role of the protein FOXP2 as being associated with speech and language
• critics of Chomsky’s theory argue that it is too innatist and doesn’t give enough weight to social interaction
• Jeffery Elman = pointed out in Rethinking Innatness, it is unclear exactly how the supposedlt innate information might actually be coded for in the genes

Question 14

What is a positive aspect of nativism?

Answer 14

• 60% of linguists incorporate aspects of Chomsky’s theory