Ch. 8. 19 - Theories of Language Acquisition

Behaviourist theory

children acquire sentence structure and syntax through imitation and operant conditioning

pros and cons of behaviourist theory

pro: many aspects of language have a learned component (accents)

con: some types of language errors are resistant to feedback that are not the resykt of imitation or reinforcement (overgeneralizations)

Nativist theory

assumes humans have a native (genetic) predisposition to develop language effortlessly

who introduced nativist theory

noah chomsky

universal grammar

common grammatical building blocks in all languagese

ex of universal grammar

-            Nouns/verbs, subjects/objects

Interactionist theory

language development involves both biology and experience

what does interactionist theory say

-            Special emphasis on the need for social interaction for proper language development

-            Balanced approach to nature-nurture debate