Nativism CLD

Question 1

Who developed the nativism theory

Answer 1

Noam Chomsky

Question 2

Poverty of stimulus

Answer 2

States that caregivers of children do not provide a good enough standard of language and often break the rules.

Question 3

What is LAD?

Answer 3

Language acquisition device.
Chomsky states that children have something in built within their brains to help them learn language.

Question 4

What does Chomsky claim happens around the age of seven?

Answer 4

The LAD switches off, and then it becomes difficult to learn languages.

Question 5

What does Chomsky state children resist?

Answer 5

Corrections to their mistakes.
( LAD is instructing them that their way of using language is correct, and that the caregivers is wrong)

Question 6

Virtuous errors

Answer 6

Errors which are made with good intentions.
E.G. “I hurted his feelings”

Question 7

Universal grammar

Answer 7

Chomsky states that children have a universal grammar.
Set of rules on how to structure language .

Question 8

What supports Chomsky’s universal grammar?

Answer 8

That many languages follow the SVO (subject-verb-object) syntax.
Brown’s research states that 75% of languages use this syntax.

Question 9

Who created the Wug test and what did it study?

Answer 9

Jean Berko Gleason.
The test invented nouns and verbs to test pluralisation and over generalisation.

Question 10

What was the percentage of 4 to 5–year-olds that correctly used the -S ending for “wug”?

Answer 10

76%

Question 11

What was the percentage of 5 to 7-year-olds that correctly used the -S ending for “wug”?

Answer 11

97%

Question 12

What did the Wug test reveal?

Answer 12

Proved that children learn the rule and do not imitate because the words used the children hadn’t encountered before.

Question 13

Who was Genie?

Answer 13

A 13-year-old girl in the 1970s, found by authorities who could barely speak.
Her father trapped her in a room since she was a toddler, and he growled at her if she cried, or made any noise.

Question 14

How does Genie support Chomsky?

Answer 14

As Genie has passed the critical age, Chomsky would argue that LAD has expired and so cannot be activated.
This case study also supports the idea that children cannot learn language by interaction with caregivers alone.

Question 15

Pinker

Answer 15

Supports Chomsky.
Says every utterance is practically unique, children produce utterances they’ve never heard before.

Question 16

Two supporting arguments for Chomsky.

Answer 16

Berko Gleason’s inflectional mistakes- prove an application of a set of rules.
Children often produce grammatically, non-standard utterances, and so they cannot be copied.

Question 17

What have leading linguists like Tomasello dismissed Chomsky as?

Answer 17

“Armchair linguist”

Question 18

Main criticism of Chomsky’s theory?

Answer 18

Based on hypothetical, thinking, rather than real life children. Therefore it’s limited as it doesn’t have scientific evidence.

Question 19

FOR Chomsky

Answer 19

• Children acquire grammatical rules without explicit instruction- guided by innate universal grammar.
• Children successfully learn native lang even though its complicated for their age- biologically programmed.
• Language heard does not contain examples of all linguistic rules and patterns.

Question 20

AGAINST Chomsky

Answer 20

• He didn’t pay attention to how children developed- focused on children being hard wired for lang.
• Accepted interaction had an important role but didn’t say much about the features of it.

Question 21

What does the nativist theory look like?

Answer 21

Imitating adult speech, virtuous errors, overextension, underextention, overgeneralisations.