In this article, we will Compare and Contrast the Behaviouristic and Innate Theory of Language Acquisition.
Compare and Contrast the Behaviouristic and Innate Theory of Language Acquisition.
Behaviouristic Theory:
Behaviourist psychologists developed their theories while completing a series of experiments on animals. They observed that rats or birds, for instance, might be taught to perform numerous tasks by encouraging habit-forming. Researchers rewarded desirable behaviour. This was called positive reinforcement. Undesirable behaviour was punished or just not rewarded — negative reinforcement. The behaviourist B. F. Skinner then projected this theory as an explanation for language acquisition in humans. In Verbal Behaviour, he stated: “The basic processes and relations which give verbal behaviour its special characteristics are now fairly well understood. Much of the experimental work responsible for this advance has been carried out on other species, but the results have proved to be surprisingly free of species restrictions. Recent work has shown that the methods can be extended to human behaviour without serious modifications.”
Skinner suggested that a toddler imitates the language of its parents or carers. Successful attempts are rewarded because an adult who recognizes a word spoken by a toddler will praise the toddler and/or give it what it’s asking for. The verbal input was key – a model for imitation to be either negatively or positively reinforced. Therefore, successful utterances are reinforced while unsuccessful ones are forgotten. There is no essential difference between the way a rat learns to negotiate a maze and a toddler learns to speak.
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Limitations of Behaviouristic Theory:
In Skinner’s explanation, there must be some truth, but there are many objections too.
- Language is based on a set of structures or rules, which could not be developed simply by imitating individual utterances. The mistakes made by children tell that they are not simply imitating. But actively developing and applying rules. For instance, a child who says ‘drinked’ instead of ‘drank’ is not copying an adult but rather over-applying a rule.
- The huge majority of children go through the same stages of language acquisition. Apart from certain extreme cases, the sequence seems to be largely unaffected by the treatment the child receives or the type of society in which she/he grows up.
- Children are often unable to repeat what an adult says, specifically if the adult utterance contains a structure the child has not yet started to use.
- Few children receive much clear grammatical correction. Parents are more interested in politeness and truthfulness. According to Brown, Cazden & Bellugi: “It seems to be true value rather than well-formed syntax that primarily governs clear verbal reinforcement by parents – which renders mildly paradoxical the fact that the usual product of such a training schedule is an adult whose speech is highly grammatical but not remarkably truthful.”
- There is evidence for a critical period for language acquisition. Children who have not learned the language by the age of seven will never entirely reach. The most famous example is that of Genie, discovered in 1970 at the age of 13. She had been severely neglected, brought up in isolation, and underprivileged of normal human contact. Naturally, she was disturbed and underdeveloped in many ways. During the following attempts at rehabilitation, her caretakers tried to teach her to speak. Despite some success, mainly in learning vocabulary, she never became a fluent speaker. She failing to acquire the grammatical competence of the average five-year-old.
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Innate Theory:
In 1957, Noam Chomsky published a criticism of the behaviourist theory. Also some of the arguments listed above. He focused mainly on the impoverished language input children receive. Although the theory has been around for hundreds of years, it is connected with the writings of Chomsky. Children are born with an innate capacity for learning human language. Humans are destined to speak. Based on their inborn grammar, children discover the grammar of their language. Certain aspects of language structure seem to be predetermined by the cognitive structure of the human mind. This accounts for surely very basic universal features of language structure: every language has nouns/verbs, consonants, and vowels. It’s assumed that children are preprogrammed, hard-wired, to obtain such things.
Still, no one has been able to explain how quickly and perfectly all children acquire their native language. Every language is extremely complex, filled with subtle distinctions that speakers aren’t even aware of. However, children master their native language in 5 or 6 years irrespective of their other talents and general intellectual ability. The acquisition must certainly be more than mere imitation; it also doesn’t seem to depend upon levels of general intelligence, since even a severely retarded child will acquire a native language without special training. Some innate features of the mind must be responsible for the universally rapid and natural language acquisition by any young child exposed to speech.
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Chomsky concluded that children must have an inborn ability for language acquisition. According to this theory, the process is biologically determined – the human species has evolved a brain whose neural circuits contain linguistic information at birth. The child’s natural tendency to learn the language is triggered by hearing speech. Then the child’s brain can interpret what she/he hears according to the underlying principles or structures it already contains. This natural ability has become known as the Language Acquisition Device (LAD).
Chomsky didn’t suggest that an English or Hindi child is born knowing anything specific about English or Hindi. He stated that all human languages have common principles. For example, they have words for things and actions — nouns and verbs. It’s the child’s task to establish how the specific language she/he hears and then expresses those underlying principles.
For example, already the LAD contains the concept of verb tense. By listening to such forms as ‘worked’, ‘played’, the child will form the hypothesis that the past tense of verbs is formed by adding some sound to the base form. This will lead to the ‘virtuous errors’ mentioned above. It hardly needs saying that the process is unconscious. Chomsky doesn’t imagine the small child lying in its cot working out grammatical rules consciously!
Chomsky’s innovative theory remains at the centre of the debate about language acquisition. Although, it has been modified, both by Chomsky himself and by others. Chomsky’s original position was that the LAD contained specific knowledge about language. Dan Slobin has proposed that it may be more like a mechanism for formulating the rules of language.
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Evidence to Support Innate Theory:
Work in some areas of language study has provided support for the idea of an innate language faculty. There are three types of evidence offered:
- Dan Slobin has pointed out that human anatomy is specially adapted to the production of speech. Unlike our nearest relatives, the great apes, we have developed gradually a vocal tract that allows the precise articulation of a wide range of vocal sounds.
- Neuroscience has also recognized specific areas of the brain with distinctly linguistic functions, especially Broca’s area, and Wernicke’s area. Stroke victims provide some valuable data. They may suffer a range of language dysfunction, depending on the site of brain damage.
- Teaching chimpanzees to communicate using plastic symbols or manual gestures has proved controversial. It seems likely that our ape cousins, while able to learn individual ‘words’, have little or no grammatical competence.
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