Chapter 2
Language Acquisition: A Theoretical Journey
Chapter Overview
This chapter is designed to facilitate comprehension of the evolutionary changes that have occurred over the past 50
or more years in the theories of language acquisition. It considers the contributions made by each major theoretical
Learning Outcomes
• Summarize the nativist interpretation of the role biology plays in language development.
• Discuss the behaviorist interpretation as it relates to the role of nurturing language acquisition.
Key Terms and Concepts
• Wernicke’s areas, p. 29
• Arcuate fasciculus, p. 29
• Broca’s area, p. 29
• Motor cortex, p. 29-30
• Primary motor strip, p. 30
• Mirror neurons, p. 30
• Plasticity, p. 31
• Behaviorist theories, p. 40-45
• B.F. Skinner, p. 41
• Operant conditioning, p. 41–43
• Terms associated with operant conditioning, p. 41–42: operant, reinforcement, punished, discriminative
stimulus, delta stimulus, aversive stimulus
• Modality, p. 48
• Proposition, p. 48-49
• Fillmore’s seven universal cases, p. 49: agentive, dative, experiencer, factitive, instrumental, locative, objective
• Bloom, p. 50
• Information processing theory, p. 51
• Parallel vs. serial patterns of language acquisition, p. 51
• Parallel distributed processing (PDP), p. 51-52
Points of Emphasis
1. Theories designed to explain how language develops address the nature-versus-nurture debate at various points
along the continuum. Each theoretical view addresses certain aspects of language more directly than others.
However, neither side completely discounts the other.
2. Researchers in the 20th and 21st centuries have uncovered compelling evidence about how the human brain is
specialized for language.
a. Major cortical structures involved in language include Wernicke’s area, arcuate fasciculus, Broca’s area,
motor cortex and the primary motor strip.
3. Nativists stress that language is innate or biologically based. They argue that human beings are born with a
species-specific capacity for language, a capacity that is realized with minimal assistance from the environment.
a. The theorist most closely associated with the nativist view is linguist Noam Chomsky.
b. The idea that language is universal among humans and unique to humans is the foundation of the nativistic
interpretation of language acquisition.
c. Another basic assumption of the nativist perspective is that because language is acquired so quickly and so
early in the child’s life, learning alone cannot adequately account for acquisition.
d. Nativists stress that all languages have rules for organizing words into grammatical forms. These
commonalities, or linguistic universals, are evidence that language is an ability humans possess by virtue of
their humanness.
e. The language acquisition device, or LAD, is an innate language reservoir filled with information about the
rules of language structure. The existence, and certainly the nature, of the LAD have been widely debated.
f. Language acquisition is a matter of discovering and applying the rules or regularities of one’s native
language.
g. Chomsky devised transformational generative grammar to account for the production of an unlimited
number of grammatically acceptable sentences.
4. The proponents of the behaviorist perspective focus on observable behaviors in children to explain language
development.
a. Behaviorists believe language is learned because they do not believe language is unique among human
behaviors. Language in its earliest stages is a behavior no more complicated than a habit used to influence
or control the behaviors of others.
i. Basic principles of operant conditioning include: operant, reinforcement, punishment, discriminative
stimulus, delta stimulus, aversive stimulus, shaping, chaining.
ii. In general, behaviorists claim that children acquire language as a result of caregiver models and
selective reinforcements they provide.
iii. Behaviorists stress the idea that language is a “doing” or “performing” phenomenon more than a
5. The interactionist theory is the most current view of language learning. It is a combined approach in which
biology (neural substrates and genetics) and participation in the native linguistic environment work in tandem
for language growth.
a. Cross-linguistic studies comparing one or more aspects of language provide us with very rich information
on the ways in which language learning is influenced by the particular input received from those in
communication with the learner.
i. Although languages share many commonalities, they differ greatly in structure. Using cross-linguistic
studies, researchers have been able to observe how the nature of the language input strongly influences
the learning of that particular language, and how children focus on the perceptually relevant aspects of
their language.
b. The interactionist viewpoints of how language acquisition occurs in children span 40 years and offer
varying degrees of support for the roles that biology and nature play in the acquisition process. Three views
are presented that fall into the general interactionist category – semantic, cognitive and social interactionist
– but note that all interactionist viewpoints realize that meaning is the reason for and the result of language.
i. During what is known as the semantic revolution, theorists shifted their focus from the structure of
language conveyed by grammar to the meaning that children convey through grammar as they learn
about their world. Those who take the semantics view argue that for a language to be truly generative,
it must generate meaning as well as structure, and that meaning in language is expressed not only in
words but also through the syntactic relationships among words.
a) Fillmore developed one of the earliest and most often cited generative semantic theories.
(i) Fillmore’s case grammar is designed to explain the importance and influence of semantics on
the form of language. He suggests that sentences have two components: modality and
proposition.
(ii) Case refers to a specific semantic role or function that can be filled by a particular type of
noun phrase. Fillmore identifies seven universal cases: agentive, dative, experiencer, factitive,
instrumental, locative, objective.
b) Bloom asserted that both structural analysis and semantic analysis can be used to draw
conclusions about the underlying structure of an utterance because the information comes from the
context of the situation.
ii. At about the same time that the semantic revolution was under way, there was renewed interest in
Piaget’s cognitive theory and its relationship to language acquisition.
a) What separates cognitive theorists from others is their belief that language does not hold an
absolutely unique position in overall development. Language emerges as a product of cognitive
organization and development.
b) The information processing theory has its roots in the workings of the mind and suggests that a
human processes information in much the same way a computer does. Language acquisition
occurs when a child experiences and gathers language in the productions of her speech and
language models and uses that evidence to make fundamental changes within her personal
information processing system.
(i) A parallel distributed processing (PDP) system is one in which the processing patterns
responsible for the acquisition of language are parallel rather than serial. Parallel patterns
occur at many levels at the same time.
(ii) The competition model of Bates and MacWhinney is an example of a PDP system. A basic
premise of this model is that children are not born with an innate understanding of language
but with a powerful PDP device that has the capacity to process many different forms of
information, including language information.
c) The information processing theory and competition model include elements on both extremes of
the nature-nurture continuum.
iii. The evolution in theoretical interpretations relative to language acquisition eventually led theorists to
explore a middle ground that is known as social interactionism. According to this interpretation of
speech and language development, both biological and environmental factors are important in the
acquisition process, although not necessarily equally.
a) These theories assume that language acquisition is a product of children’s early social interactions
with the important people in their life.
b) Another emphasis in the interactionist perspective is the focus on language use known as
pragmatics.
c) Interactionists believe children are active participants in language acquisition by virtue of their
involvement with their parents.
d) Studies of caregivers’ speech have revealed that the language forms adults use with young
children are very different from the forms they use with other adults or even older children. This
motherese or parentese includes simple sentences, added redundancy, varied and exaggerated
pitch, and longer pauses between utterances.
(i) Expansion is a facet of motherese that seems to be related to language acquisition.
iv. The last interactionist perspective reflects the evolving nature of theories about language and the
acquisition process that children engage in to learn language. Pragmatics is the study of the functions
served by communication.
a) Austin’s primary assertion was that when speakers produce utterances, they are doing more than
saying words organized by conventional language rules. They are also using these words to get
things done.
b) Searle suggested that every speech act consists of three separate acts: locutionary act,
illocutionary act and perlocutionary act.
Discussion Topics
• How is learning included in the various theories of language acquisition, if at all? Is learning always described
within a Skinner-influenced framework?
• How does the nature/nurture argument impact our understanding of speech and language development?
• How did the discovery of mirror neurons in primates and humans change the way in which we consider human
language learning?
• What do studies involving chimpanzees implicate as we consider whether humans have an innate and unique
ability to learn language?
Suggested Activities
• Ask students to observe a spontaneous language interaction between a parent/caregiver and a child between the
ages of 10 months and 3 years via online videos or home recordings. Students should transcribe the language
sample and include the nonverbal and contextual information then develop a report detailing the following: a)
characteristics of the parents’ speech/language behaviors (e.g. changes in pitch, rhythm, utterance length, etc.);
b) any instances of selective reinforcement, modeling or imitation; c) any requests or commands made by the
caregiver; d) any instances of expansion from the caregiver.
• Split the class into groups to prepare a handout explaining one of the theories covered in the chapter.
Assignment Suggestions
• Video Example 2.1 (p. 39): The nativist perspective is used to plan and implement intervention for children
with communication disorders. As you watch the video, consider the importance of the input in designing
interventions for children with hearing loss, language problems and limitations in cognitive functioning.
• Video Reflection 2.1 (p. 45): Readers may watch the video to learn about how practitioners apply the principles
of behaviorism when teaching students, then answer the question.
Websites to Explore
• An article titled “Enhancing the Language Development of Young Children,” written by Sandra Crosser, Ph.D.
and published online by Early Childhood News, provides a summary of language theories and suggestions for
strategies to promote language development. The article was written with early childhood professionals as the
target audience.