Theory Flashcards
Gleason and brown fis phenomenon
Active vocab =more limited then passive vocab
Comprehension is more developed then pronunciation
They understand the lexs of their environment
Promo words are a stage of CLA
They want to communicate
Mehler 1988
Found that french new don baholes were able to distinguish french from other language
Arguments for the social interactionist theory
-Routine/rituals seem to teach children about spoken discourse structure such as turn taking
-Pragmatic development suggests that children do learn politeness and verbally acceptable behaviour
-Role play in pretend play suggest that more interaction with carers can affect vocabulary
Relevant studies:
-Halliday’s research into the functions of language supports the importance of social interaction
-Vincent, a hearing child born to deaf parents, learn to communicate using sign language. As a hearing child he enjoyed watching television but he ignored the sounds, he did not start to speak until he went to school where people talked to him.
Arguments against social interactionist theory
Children from cultures that do not promote interaction with children for example Samoa can still become articulate and fluent language users without adult input
Arguments for cognitive theory
Children:
- can’t grasp aspects of language until they’re ready; stages of development support this
-Provide utterances which increase in complexity as they work towards mastering a role
Relevant studies:
-Brown’s morphemes
-Bellugi’s stages of pronouns and question formation
Arguments against cognitive theory
- Children with cognitive difficulties can still manage to use language beyond their understanding
- Children acquire language without having an understanding of it especially in the early stages of development
- ‘Fis’ phenomenon suggests children’s cognitive understanding can be present but their physical development still impacts their ability to use language
Arguments for the nativist theory
Children experience the same stages of development at the same pace
- children resist correction
- children create forms of language that adults don’t use (over generalisations)
- children make their own rules for language that seemed to understand that all languages have grammatical rules
- children produce correct language when surrounded by impoverished faulty adult speech I.e with full starts or incomplete utterances
Relevant studies:
-‘wug’ test suggest children apply grammatical rules
Arguments against nativist theory
- Children stop overgeneralizing and learn to use language correctly as with irregular verbs
- children need input to give them more skills than grammar for example pragmatic understanding
- children who have been deprived of social contact can’t achieve complete communicative competence
- Relevant st studies of Jeannie and feral children supports the critical period hypothesis that says that language needs to be acquired within a certain time frame
- this challenge is Chromsky as it shows that some interaction is needed for language competency
Arguments for the behaviourist theory
-Imitate accent and dialect
- learn politeness and pragmatic aspects of language
- repeat language they have heard around them and incorporate it into theirs - lexical knowledge must be gained from being told the right labels
Arguments against behaviourist theory
-Children do more than just imitate language in confirm sentence is that they’ve never heard of before
- they’re hear ungrammatical spoken language around them but can still learn correct language
- they do not seem to respond to correction
- they aren’t negatively reinforced for language use
- children aren’t always corrected by parents for incorrect grammar
- children imitate but don’t necessarily understand the meanings
Other limitations:
-‘fis’ phenomenon suggests that children can hear and understand the correct pronunciation but simply can’t produce it themselves at that stage
- research was conducted on rats and pigeons not humans
Desmond morris
First 6m = all babies sound the same regardless of nationality but by 6m = more attended to variations in rhythm
Francois grosjean
Simultaneous bilingualism
=two languages at the same time before age 3 - they acquire discretely and have no delayed development
Patricia kuhl
At birth babies are ‘citizens of the word’ but by 12m they become ‘culture bound listeners’
12m is critical as they are less vocal but receptors to language being used around them
Lenneberg- critical period hypothesis
Similar to Chomsky he suggests that the period to age 5 is critical to language acquisition as this os the time the brain is designed to acquire language- once this stage is passed - normal language is not longer possible
Halliday’s 7 functions
1-instrumental
2-regulatory
3-interactional
4-personal
5-representational
6-heuristic
7-imagineative
Instrumental
Language used to try fulfil a need
‘Nana’ for more banana
Regulatory
Language used to influence others - to command or persuade
E.g ‘come
