nativism

nativism

a theory developed by Chomsky and takes up the nature side of the nature/nurture debate

poverty of stimulus

children can’t learn through the imitation of their caregivers because they provide a poverty of stimulus - they don’t provide a good enough standard or language and often break the rules

so he states that kids must have something inbuilt within their brains to help them learn language - LAD

language acquisition device

within the LAD is a knowledge of language structures/universal grammar and the knowledge becomes activated through experience

Chomsky also claims around 7, the LAD switches off and it becomes hard to learn languages

kids often resist corrections as LAD is instructing that their way of using language is right and their caregivers’ is wrong

virtuous errors

errors made with good intentions e.g. ‘I hurted his feelings’

universal grammar

a set of rules on how to structure language

theory supported by the fact that many (75%) languages follow SVO (subject-verb-object) syntax

the wug test - Berko

children were given a picture of a bird-like creature called a wug and then asked to state things like what two of these creatures would be called - wugs

the test invented nouns and verbs to test pluralisation and over-generalisation

findings of the wug test

76% of 4-5 year olds and 97% of 5-7 year olds could correctly use the -s ending for wug

the test used words that children won’t have encountered before and so proves that children learn the rule and don’t imitate

Cruttenden

defined the u-shaped curve

at point 1, the child applies the general rule and gets it right

at point 2, the child applies the rule everywhere and gets it wrong

at point 3, the child learns that the rule only works in certain situations

case study - Genie

in 70s a 13 year old girl was found withered and held her hands like a rabbit, first thought she was autistic but found she couldn’t speak - her father trapped her in her room since toddler years in a straight-jacket and growled when she made any noise

she never acquired language as her LAD had expired

Pinker

every utterance is practically unique - children produce utterances they’ve never heard before

Tomasello

dismissed Chomsky as an armchair linguist as it is based on hypothetical thinking rather than real-life children

this throws into question the validity of his research

Pinker

nearly every utterance a child produces is a brand new combination or words, and so he questions whether a child can learn from imitation

limitations of Chomsky

his theory is limited by not having scientific evidence, but is still very important in considering how a child learns language