Theories Of Child Langugage Acquisition
These theories that suggest how children aquire their first language. These theories are formed on existing data and then tested against additional data as it becomes avalible. Each of these theories explain how children are able to obtain their first language, how to say what they want to say and how they become to speak like adults
The Behaviourist Approach
This theory explains that children learn to speak by imitating the language they hear around them and by positive reinforcement and correction by their caretakers. B.F Skinner created this theory. The imitations may be a exact copy of an utterance the child has heard as with bye-bye. It may also be an imitation that only partially resembles the previously heard utterance and the child then substitutes words within the frame of the utterance they are imitating. For example, from 'Tom wants a toy' he can substitute out the 'toy' and insert the phrase 'some milk'. If the child is able to produce this utterance, and receives the milk from the care takers, this motivates further imitation. Throughout the child's language development, it is believed that the caretakers play a very active role in training the child to speak.
The Innate Approach
Noam Chomsky (creator of this theory) believes that the children are born with a inherited ability to learn any language. In this theory, every child has a 'language acquisition device' or LAD which acts as a special language processor which encodes the major principles of language and it's grammatical structures into a child's brain. He believes exposure to speech would allow the child's brain to automatically begin to make sense of utterances because it has been programmed to do so. This theory recognizes that children need to be exposed to language, but that exposure only acts as a trigger for developing the language-specific aspects with in the LAD. In this approach, the caretakers are not believed to actively shape or train a child in their language development.
The Interactionist Approach
This approach lies between the innate and the behaviorist approach. Jean Piaget believed that the complex structure structure of language is not necessarily innate or learned, but instead it emerges as a result of the interaction between a child's cognitive development and their social and linguistic development. For example, a child will only be able to acquire and use past tense once an understanding of the past tense has been grasped. Social interaction is also important in this approach. Other researchers believe that the structure of human language emerges due to the social-communicative functions that language plays in human relations.