LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

The process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive and comprehend language (in other words, gain the ability to be aware oflanguage and to understand it), as well as to produce and use words and sentences to communicate.

Behaviorist Theory of Second Language Acquisition (Embed)

Early Theories

One of the earliest scientific explanations of language acquisition was provided by Skinner (1957). As one of the pioneers of behaviorism, he accounted for language development by means of environmental influence. Skinner argued that children learn language based on behaviorist reinforcement principles by associating words with meanings. Correct utterances are positively reinforced when the child realizes the communicative value of words and phrases.      https://youtu.be/MLNFGWJOXjA

Universal Grammar

Chomsky -- Universal Grammar (Embed)

Caption: : Noam Chomsky

This “universal grammar theory” suggests that every language has some of the same laws. For example, every language has a way to ask a question or make something negative. In addition, every language has a way to identify gender or show that something happened in the past or present.

Principles and parameters

• Second Language Acquisition

Principles and parameters is a framework within generative linguistics in which the syntax of a natural language is described in accordance with general principles (i.e. abstract rules or grammars) and specific parameters (i.e. markers, switches) that for particular languages are either turned on or off. For example, the position of heads in phrases is determined by a parameter. Whether a language is head-initial or head-final is regarded as a parameter which is either on or off for particular languages (i.e. English is head-initial, whereas Japanese is head-final). Principles and parameters was largely formulated by the linguists Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik. Many linguists have worked within this framework, and for a period of time it was considered the dominant form of mainstream generative linguistics