Innateness and Modularity

Question 1

What is the empiricist/behaviourist view of language learning?

Answer 1

All knowledge comes from experience, we start as blank slates (Tabula Rasa)

Question 2

What is Skinner’s view on language learning?

Answer 2

Children learn language purely from behaviourism and association - no innate knowledge

Question 3

How does the empiricist/behaviourism view explain language learning?

Answer 3

Good linguistic behaviour is reinforced with positive experience
Faulty linguistic behaviour results in deprivation of positive reinforcement

Question 4

What is the rationalist view of language learning?

Answer 4

Knowledge is gained through reasoning, there is also some innate understanding

Question 5

What is Chomsky’s view on language learning?

Answer 5

language cannot be learned purely from imitation

Question 6

How does the rationalist view explain language learning and innateness?

Answer 6

• Children develop novel sentences
• Infinite possibilities with finite number of symbols/words
• Mental rules for language; shown by over-regularisation
• Poverty of stimulus
• Language universals
• Species specificity
• Creolisation

Question 7

What is poverty of stimulus in relation to language learning?

Answer 7

Children hear a very limited range of simplified language which is not sufficient to explain the level of sophistication developed by age 4

Question 8

What is a Pidgin language?

Answer 8

One with a very reduced, simplified structure developed when there is contact between 2 or more languages

Question 9

What is Creolisation?

Answer 9

The process by which Pidgin becomes grammatically complex by the children of Pidgin speakers learning it as their first language

Question 10

What do Creoles tell us about language universals?

Answer 10

Creoles follow similar patterns to other language even though the first speakers never had any contact with complex grammar

Question 11

What is the Language Acquisition Device?

Answer 11

The mental apparatus we are born with which allows us to learn language

Question 12

What is canonical sentence structure?

Answer 12

Basic declarative sentences which have a clear place for the subject, object and verb

Question 13

What are some arguments against innateness?

Answer 13

• Is the stimulus poor?
• Are language really similar?
• Is language really different from cognition?
• Why do we not see a partially developed LAD in other species?
• If children aren’t exposed to language they will never properly learn it

Question 14

What is the modularity theory?

Answer 14

There is a separate language organ in the brain for a specialised type of knowledge; both cognitively and anatomically distinct

Question 15

What is the cognitivist view?

Answer 15

Language is a part of general cognition - language concepts need to be learnt in a certain order e.g. seriation before comparison and

Question 16

What is seriation?

Answer 16

Being able to sort objects by characteristics such as size, colour, shape etc. - Chomskyan view is that this must be learnt before comparisons can be made

Question 17

What systems does Jerry Fodor classify as modular and non-modular?

Answer 17

Modular; language, perception

Non-modular; attention, representation, reasoning

Question 18

What is the double dissociation argument for modularity?

Answer 18

Linguistic ability can be lost with the cognitive ability still in tact and vice versa

Question 19

What is species specificity?

Answer 19

all humans and only humans acquire language

Question 20

Can genes play a role in language development?

Answer 20

mutation in the FOXP2 gene causes a specific language impairment, homeobox gene, switches other genes on and off

Question 21

What is William’s syndrome?

Answer 21

cognition is impaired but linguistics are in tact; fluent, prodigious language use

Question 22

What is a language savant?

Answer 22

individuals with severe autism can learn languages quickly and easily

Question 23

How does is language processed in the modularity view?

Answer 23

serially, subconsciously

separate phonological and syntactic subsystems