Theoretical approaches to acquistition Flashcards
Who proposed the LAD?
Noam Chomsky
What does the nativist idea of the LAD propose?
That human children have a neurological predisposition to categorise and understand certain grammatical functions of words that allows them to learn rules and use language creatively
What did the interactionist Vygotsky propose?
That language precedes thought so the process of learning increasingly complex language leads to increasingly complex thought.
Also the idea of a zone of proximal development where children must supported and gently pushed by their caregiver to use language they are unfamiliar with to develop.
Bruner proposed a LASS; what is this?
The language acquisition support system
refers to how the caregivers language supports and helps the child through asking questions, recasting, scaffolding, drawing child’s focus etc
Lenneberg discussed a critical period; explain?
This refers to a period of five years where the child is able to fully learn language and after this period they will no longer be able to reach grammatical fluency e.g Genie who was locked away from people for the first five years of her life never went on to fully acquire language.
What are the major ideas proposed by Piaget; relevant to language?
A child’s movement from solipsistic use of language to ecocentric use and from concrete to abstract. This causes the child to develop object permanence and use of abstract language such as pronouns.
Skinners ideas of operant conditioning relate to language acquisition; how?
He believes that children learn language through praise and punishment involving a child randomly throwing out language and waiting if the response from the caregiver. They then use this feedback to calculate what language should be used and when.
