Nature Debate

Question 1

Jean Burko

Answer 1

-the ‘Wug’ test
-where most children were able to add the ‘s’ suffix to the imaginary noun ‘wug’ in order to create the plural form

Question 2

Chomsky (Nativist model)

Answer 2

-places emphasis on the nature hypothesis, arguing that we are born with a Language Acquisition Device
-provides us with the building blocks for developing grammar e.g. syntax
-innate component/capacity for grammar

Question 3

Virtuous errors

Answer 3

-Children make the mistake of overgeneralising the rules of English
-For example, a child might say ‘runned’, where they added the -ed suffix to an irregular verb to form the past tense ‘ran’ as part of a learned rule.
-This demonstrates how children can apply inbuilt grammatical rules to a wide range of examples.
-It is highly unlikely that a child would have heard theses examples from adults, which challenges Skinners imitation theory.

Question 4

Universal Grammar

Answer 4

Chomsky’s concept of universal grammar states that 75% of the world’s languages either follow the SVO structure found in English, French and Spanish, or the SOV structure found in Korean and Japanese.

Question 5

Dr. Tehernichovski’s zebra finch experiment

Answer 5

• A colony of zebra finches were isolated so that they could not hear their parents song.
  -Raising the birds in isolation had a detrimental effect as the birds could only produce an unattractive sound (croak) which had no resemblance to the originally colony’s song.
  -However, by the 4th generation of birds the song had evolved back to the original version despite none of the birds ever having heard it.
  -If this were mirrored in human behaviour, then nativists would be in correct in arguing linguistic development is the result of innate capacity as the origin of language must lie in our genes.