CLA Nativism

Question 1

Dog Girl

Oxana (1991)

Nativism

Answer 1

• An 8-year-old who had lived with a pack of dogs.
• When she was found, she could hardly speak and ran on all fours barking.
• Since being taught language; her speech is odd, without rhythm , inflection or tone.
• Oxana speaks flatly, as though it’s an order, and can still communicate through barking.

Question 2

Genie (1961)

Nativism

Answer 2

• A 13-year-old Los Angeles girl who had been locked away from all social interaction.
• Following her rescue, there were attempts made to teach her English.
• However, these attempts were only ever partially successful and Genie never achieved full grammatical competence.

Question 3

Chomsky

Nativist theory

Nativism

Answer 3

• Every person is born with the biological capacity for language and universal grammar.
• This innate ability is governed by the LAD (Language Acquisition Device) must be activated by language exposure.
• Explains why children can overgeneralise and put grammar into utterances where it is not needed.
• Criticism: Tomasello criticised Chomsky’s theory as it is all speculative.

Question 4

Berko and Brown (1960),

The ‘Fis’ Phenomenon

Nativism

Answer 4

• A child called his toy fish, ‘Fis’.
• When asked: ‘Is that your fis?’ the child said no.
• However, when the child was asked: ‘Is this your fish?’, he responded, ‘Yes, my fis.’
• Suggests that children’s perceptual abilities are often in advance of their productive abilities.

Question 5

Jean Berko Gleason (1958),

The ‘Wug’ Test

Nativism

Answer 5

• When faced with a picture of an imaginary ‘wug’, Berko Gleason found that even very young children are able to connect suffixes to nonsense words they had never heard before.
• This suggested that children have already internalised systematic aspects of the linguistic system.

Question 6

Eric Lenneburg

Nativism

Answer 6

• Proposed that everyone has the innate capacity for language but if it is not acquired before the onset of puberty, the child will not master the language.
• Dubbed the ‘Critical Period Hypothesis’
• Evidence is derived from Lenneburgs study of feral children such as Genie and Oxana.

Question 7

‘The Language Instinct’

Steven Pinker (1994)

Nativism

Answer 7

• Suggests that language is not learnt but instead an innate human ability as:
• Deaf babies “babble” with their hands as other babies normally do with the voice and spontaneously invent sign languages with true grammar.
• Even in the absence of active attempts by parents to correct children’s grammar, accurate speech still develops.

Question 8

Nicaraguan Sign Language (1980s)

Nativism

Answer 8

• Deaf children in Nicaragua spontaneously collaborated to form their own sign language, suggesting an innate capacity to create a new language with sophisticated grammar systems.

Question 9

Pivot

John Braine (1963)

Two-Word Stage

Answer 9

• At the two word stage, children use patterns of two-word utterance that seems to revolve around certain key words.
• Braine named this a ‘Pivot Schema’
• Children use key words as a ‘pivot’ to generate utterances e.g. allgone: ‘allgone dinner,’ ‘allgone milk,’

Question 10

The Reimer Twins