Language Acquisition Theories in Linguistics with reference to Linguistic Scholars such as Noam Chomsky, B.f Skinner, Jean Piagot, J.B. Watson, Pavlov, and Vygotsky

1. Language Acquisition Theories
Department of Linguistics – Aligarh Muslim University
Submitted by:
Naila Ahsan
Roll Number: 18 – LNM – 001
Enrolment Number: FC – 1322
Paper: Psycholinguistic
Paper Code: LNM – 4004
Submitted to:
Dr. Sadia Husna Hasan

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Language Acquisition- An Overview
Language acquisition is the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and
use words to understand and communicate.
It involves the picking up of diverse capacities including syntax, phonetics, and an extensive
vocabulary.
However, learning a first language is something that every normal child does successfully without
much need for formal lessons.
Language development is a complex and unique human quality but yet children seem to acquire
language at a very rapid rate with most children's speech being relatively grammatical by age three
(Crain & Lillo-Martin, 1999).
[1]
Grammar, which is a set of mental rules that characterizes all of the sentences of a language, must
be mastered to learn a language.
Most children in a linguistic community seem to succeed in converging on a grammatical system
equivalent to everyone else in the community with few wrong turns, which is quite remarkable
considering the pitfalls and complexity of the system.
By the time a child utters the first word, according to the Linguistic Society of America, he or she has
already spent many months playing around with the sounds and intonations of language, [2]
but there
is still no one point at which all children learn to talk.
Children acquire language in stages and different children reach various stages at different times,
although they have one thing in common and that is that typically developing children learning the
same language will follow an almost identical pattern in the sequence of stages they go through.
The stages usually consist of:
 cooing- 6 months- use phonemes from every language
 babbling- 9 months- selectively use phonemes from their native language

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 one word utterances- 12 months- start using single words
 telegraphic speech- 2 years- multi-word utterances that lack in function
 normal speech- 5 years- almost normal developed speech
Language acquisition is a complex and unique human quality for which there is still no theory that
can completely explain how language is attained.
However most of the concepts and theories we do have explaining how native languages are acquired
go back to the approaches put forward by researchers such as Skinner, Chomsky, Piaget and others.
Most of the modern theories we have today have incorporated aspects of these theories into their
various findings.
Theories of Language Acquisition:
Behaviourist Theory:
The Principle of the Behaviorist Theory:
The behaviourist theory believes that “infants learn oral language from other human role models
through a process involving imitation, rewards, and practice. Human role models in an infant‟s
environment provide the stimuli and rewards,” (Cooter & Reutzel, 2004).
When a child attempts oral language or imitates the sounds or speech patterns they are usually
praised and given affection for their efforts.
Thus, praise and affection becomes the rewards.

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Behaviourist theory, which is a psychological theory in its essence, founded by J.B. Watson, is a
theory of native language learning, advanced in part as a reaction to traditional grammar.
The supporters of this theory are Leonard Bloomfield, O.N. Mowrer, B.F.Skinner, and A.W. Staats.
Behaviourism was advanced in America as a new approach to psychology in the early decades of the
20th-century by making a particular emphasis on the importance of verbal behaviour, and received a
considerable trust from the educational world of the 1950s.
The major principle of the behaviourist theory rests on the analyses of human behaviour in
observable stimulus-response interaction and the association between them.
SOME COMMON APPROACHES TO BEHAVIORISM:
Conditioned reflexes – Ivan Pavlov
Experimental method – John B.Watson
Operant conditioning – B.F.Skinner
THE PAVLOVIAN EXPERIMENT; CONDITIONED REFLEXES/CLASSICAL
CONDITIONING:
While studying digestive reflexes in dogs, Pavlov found out that it could reliably be predicted that
the dogs would salivate when food was placed in the mouth through a reflex called the salivary
reflex in digestion.
Yet he soon realized that after some time salivary reflex occurs even before the food was offered.
Because of the sound of the door, and the sight of the attendant carrying the food, the dogs had
transferred the reflex to these repeated actions.
Thus the dogs learnt a new behaviour.

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It was maintained by the behaviourists that language is also a sort of behaviour that can be acquired
in ideal social conditions.
According to them, language is essentially the product of the society.
Experimental method: Little Albert experiment
In 1920, John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner performed a conditioning experiment on an infant by
the name of Albert B.
He was given a white rat and his reaction was noted to be playful.
He had no fear of the white rat and was even comfortable picking the rodent up while playing with
it.
The next time the rat was given to Albert, he did exactly the same thing.
This time, the psychologists made a loud noise using a metal pipe and a hammer.
The noise was so sudden and loud that it made little Albert cry.
They did the same thing multiple times.
Finally, when they gave Albert the rat without the noise, the child would cry at the mere sight of the
animal.
Next, they introduced a white rabbit and as soon as Albert saw the animal, he began to
cry.
They gave him a Santa Claus mask which also made him cry.
Little Albert was conditioned to cry at the sight of the white rat, but in the process, he
made the connection to anything white and furry would lead to a loud noise.
This experiment proofs the Behaviorism theory and shows that people could be
conditioned to fear something and they can even end generalizing the object.

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OPERANT CONDITIONING:
Behaviourist theory takes language acquisition as a process of habit-formation through stimuli-
response model, as represented in Skinner‟s Verbal Behavior (1957):
1) The child imitates the sounds and patterns which he hears from around him.
2) People recognize the child‟s attempts as being similar to the adult models and reinforce (reward)
the sounds, by approval or some other desirable reaction.
3) In order to obtain more of these rewards, the child repeats the sounds and patterns, so that these
become habits.
4) In this way, the child‟s verbal behaviour is conditioned (or „shaped‟) until the habits coincide with
the adult models.
Thus children learn language in the following steps:
1. Imitation
2. Repetition
3. Memorization
4. Controlled Drilling
5. Reinforcement
IMITATION AND REINFORCEMENT:
Children just imitate what they hear.
Parents teach them by telling them when they make mistakes.
Children start as clean slates and through the process of imitation, they get linguistic habits printed

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on these slates.
So we can say that language acquisition is a process of experience.
CONDITIONED RESPONSE/STIMULUS RESPONSE PROCESS:
The operant conditioning proposed by skinner is based upon four elements
Stimulus Response Reinforcement Repetition
The hunger or loneliness Stimulus
The baby cries Response
The mother comforts him Reinforcement
The same process happens again Repetition
The baby cries whenever hungry New behaviour
Innateness hypothesis/ Nativism:
The innateness hypothesis is an expression coined by Hilary Putnam to refer to a linguistic theory of
language acquisition which holds that at least some knowledge about language exists in humans at
birth.
Putnam used the expression "the innateness hypothesis" to target linguistic nativism and specifically
the views of Noam Chomsky
Linguistic nativism is the theory that humans are born with some knowledge of language: they
acquire a language not entirely through learning.
Human language is complicated and is said to form one of the most complex areas of human
cognition.
However, despite the complexity of language, children can accurately acquire a language within a
short period.
Moreover, research has shown that language acquisition among children (including the blind and the
deaf) occurs in ordered developmental stages

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This highlights the possibility of humans having an innate language-acquisition ability.
According to Noam Chomsky, the speed and precision of vocabulary acquisition leaves no real
alternative to the conclusion that the child somehow has the concepts available before experience
with language and is learning labels for concepts that are already a part of his or her conceptual
apparatus"
Nativists advocate that the fundamentals of language and grammar are innate rather than acquired
through learning.
The innateness hypothesis supports language nativism and several reasons and concepts have been
proposed to support and explain this hypothesis.
In his work, Chomsky introduced the idea of a language acquisition device (LAD) to account for the
competence of humans in acquiring a language.
The universal grammar (UG) - also often credited to Chomsky - was introduced later
Chomsky‟s theory:
Chomsky, who was a linguist, argues that the ability of language acquisition is innate; therefore
taking a biological approach-stand.
Children will automatically acquire language by being exposed to it. There is no need for operant
conditioning.
This ability is supported by, what Chomsky calls a LAD (innate language acquisition device) an
inbuilt mechanism that automatically allows a child to decode any spoken language it hears around
it. Chomsky suggests that all languages share a similar deep structure despite the differences in their
surface structure.
For instance, “I did the homework” and “The homework was done by me” have the same deep
structure but differ in the surface structure.
The LAD supplies humans with the transformational grammar, which simply means the process of
translating underlying meaning into speech.
Children use these rules but will sometimes make errors, such as goed and comed (went and came).

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Chomsky claims that these are errors in performance not in competence.
Jean Piaget's Theory of Cognitive Development:
Piaget's (1936) theory of cognitive development explains how a child constructs a mental model of
the world.
He disagreed with the idea that intelligence was a fixed trait, and regarded cognitive development as
a process which occurs due to biological maturation and interaction with the environment.
There Are Three Basic Components To Piaget's Cognitive Theory:
1. Schemas (building blocks of knowledge).
2. Adaptation processes that enable the transition from one stage to another (equilibrium,
assimilation, and accommodation).
3. Stages of Cognitive Development:
Sensorimotor,
Preoperational,
Concrete operational,
Formal operational.
Schemas:
Piaget called the schema the basic building block of intelligent behaviour – a way of organizing
knowledge. Indeed, it is useful to think of schemas as “units” of knowledge, each relating to one
aspect of the world, including objects, actions, and abstract (i.e., theoretical) concepts.
When Piaget talked about the development of a person's mental processes, he was referring to
increases in the number and complexity of the schemata that a person had learned.

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When a child's existing schemas are capable of explaining what it can perceive around it, it is said to
be in a state of equilibrium, i.e., a state of cognitive (i.e., mental) balance.‟ Piaget believed that
newborn babies have a small number of innate schemas - even before they have had many
opportunities to experience the world.
These neonatal schemas are the cognitive structures underlying innate reflexes. These reflexes are
genetically programmed into us.
For example, babies have a sucking reflex, which is triggered by something touching the baby's lips.
A baby will suck a nipple, a comforter (dummy), or a person's finger. Piaget, therefore, assumed that
the baby has a 'sucking schema.'
Assimilation and Accommodation:
Jean Piaget (1952; see also Wadsworth, 2004) viewed intellectual growth as a process of adaptation
(adjustment) to the world. This happens through:
Assimilation: – Which is using an existing schema to deal with a new object or situation.
Accommodation: – This happens when the existing schema (knowledge) does not work, and needs
to be changed to deal with a new object or situation.
Equilibration: – This is the force which moves development along. Piaget believed that cognitive
development did not progress at a steady rate, but rather in leaps and bounds.
Equilibrium occurs when a child's schemas can deal with most new information through
assimilation. However, an unpleasant state of disequilibrium occurs when new information cannot be
fitted into existing schemas (assimilation).
Equilibration is the force which drives the learning process as we do not like to be frustrated and will
seek to restore balance by mastering the new challenge (accommodation). Once the new information
is acquired the process of assimilation with the new schema will continue until the next time we
need to adjust to it.

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Piaget's 4 Stages of Cognitive Development:
Piaget proposed four stages of cognitive development which reflect the increasing sophistication of
children's thought:
1. Sensorimotor stage (birth to age 2)
2. Preoperational stage (from age 2 to age 7)
3. Concrete operational stage (from age 7 to age 11)
4. Formal operational stage (age 11+ - adolescence and adulthood).
Each child goes through the stages in the same order, and child development is determined by
biological maturation and interaction with the environment.
Vygotsky's Theory of Cognitive Development:
Vygotsky‟s theory of cognitive development centered on the ideas that social interaction and
imaginative play are large contributors to the process of cognitive development in children.
He believed that the social interactions that children engaged in helped them to both discover and
create meaning from the things that they discover.
Specifically, he believed that some of the most important learning a child could experience was in
the social interactions they had with a skilled tutor that is often an adult, such as a parent or teacher.
The child will observe the behaviours of the tutor as well as follow the verbal instructions the tutor
provides. The child will then emulate what they observe in their tutor. The child tries to understand
what they observe and the instructions they receive by copying and internalizing while learning to
apply them to their own lives.
Zone of Proximal Development and Scaffolding

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Vygotsky also proposed something called the “zone of proximal development” and the idea of
“scaffolding” in a child‟s development. The way this works is by recognizing that there are some
things a child cannot do independently, but they would be able to do with the assistance of someone
else. For example, a child may be developing the ability to make different sounds, but cannot yet
talk. With assistance, or scaffolding, from an adult who begins showing them pictures and repeating
the names of the pictures, the child will soon begin to develop words and start communicating
independently without help. The scaffolding helped them to develop the skills necessary to
communicate on their own.
Language Development
Vygotsky was particularly interested in the role of language in cognitive development. Given that
language is vital to human interactions, he believed that language was the most important tool that
human could utilize. Language, especially in the realm of collaborative dialogue, is the way the more
knowledgeable other communications important information to a child. Vygotsky believed that there
are three forms of language, as outlined below:
 Social Speech – This is what Vygotsky referred to as the external communication that people
use to talk with other people, and he believed that this form of language was typical in children
from the age of two.
 Private Speech – This is what Vygotsky referred to as the internal communication that a person
directs to themselves. It serves an intellectual function, and it is typical in children from the age
of three.
 Silent Inner Speech – Vygotsky believed that this is what happens when private speech
diminishes in its audibility until it become a self-regulating function.
He believed this was typical in children from the age of seven.

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Vygotsky‟s focus on language as a part of cognitive development was based on the idea that at the
beginning of a child‟s life, language and thought begin as separate systems within a child‟s brain.
He believed that these two systems would merge in the child at around the age of three, and the two
systems would become interdependent. As the two systems become interdependent, a child‟s
communication can be internalized to become private speech to the self, and this internalization of
language is an important component to a child‟s cognitive development.
Bibliography:
https://www.mimersbrunn.se/article?id=3899
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innateness_hypothesis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Albert_experiment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Psycholinguistics/Theories_and_Models_of_Language_Acquisition
Daniels, H., Cole, M., & Wertsch, J. V. (2007). The Cambridge companion to Vygotsky. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Langford, P. E. (2005). Vygotsky‟s developmental and educational psychology. New York:
Psychology Press