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Preface

This module contains the theories of the origin of human language and of language
acquisition and development. It introduces the students to the field of language acquisition and
bilingualism in order to obtain essential knowledge and skills to evaluate theoretical studies in
language learning.

Through this module, you will be able to demonstrate an in-depth knowledge of the main
principles and theories in the field of first language acquisition and bilingualism. In doing so, you
will be able to show a good understanding about the biological capacities that make language
acquisition possible, as well as the role that historical, cultural, and socio-economic factors play
in this process.
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Objectives

At the end of this course, you should be able to:

1. Determine the various concepts involved in language acquisition and its relation to the
human brain;
2. Describe the role each brain structure involved in language production;
3. Analyze the cognitive processes involved in language acquisition; and
4. Reflect on how these processes have helped the human language evolve throughout time.
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Table of Contents

Module 4 – Theories of Language Acquisition

PREFACE .................................................................................................................................... 2
OBJECTIVES ............................................................................................................................... 3
VIEWS ABOUT LANGUAGE....................................................................................................... 5
STRUCTURALISTS ....................................................................................................................... 5
TRANSFORMATIONALISTS/COGNITIVISTS ..................................................................................... 5
FUNCTIONALISTS ........................................................................................................................ 5
INTERACTIONISTS ....................................................................................................................... 6
BEHAVIORIST THEORY ............................................................................................................. 6
INNATENESS .............................................................................................................................. 7
ACCULTURATION MODEL ........................................................................................................ 7
DISCOURSE THEORY ................................................................................................................ 7
ACCOMMODATION THEORY .................................................................................................... 8
COGNITIVE THEORY .................................................................................................................. 9
THE MONITOR MODEL .............................................................................................................. 9
THE ACQUISITION LEARNING HYPOTHESIS .................................................................................. 9
THE NATURAL ORDER HYPOTHESIS ............................................................................................ 9
THE MONITOR HYPOTHESIS ...................................................................................................... 10
THE INPUT HYPOTHESIS ........................................................................................................... 10
THE EFFECTIVE FILTER HYPOTHESIS ........................................................................................ 10
SOCIAL INTERACTION THEORY ............................................................................................ 10
THE VARIABLE COMPETENCE MODEL................................................................................. 10
THE UNIVERSAL HYPOTHESIS .............................................................................................. 11
NEUROFUNCTIONAL THEORY ............................................................................................... 11
ACTIVITY .................................................................................................................................. 13
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Test Your Knowledge
Identify the proponents of the theories and models below by matching the words from column A
with column B.

Column A Column B
1. Jean Piaget a. Cognitive Theory
2. Noah Chomsky b. Behaviorist Theory
3. Joseph Lamendella c. Monitor Model
4. BF Skinner d. Universal Theory
5. Stephen Krashen e. Neurofunctional Theory

Answer key: 1) a, 2) d, 3) e, 4) b, 5) c

Views about Language

Structuralists
• Presents language as “based on a finite set of predictable patterns”
• Language could be analyzed as a series of building blocks.
• Language is primarily vocal.
• Language is a system of systems.
• Language is arbitrary.
• Language is a means of communication.

Transformationalists/Cognitivists

They believe that language is a system of KNOWLEDGE made manifest in linguistic forms but
innate, and in its most abstract form, universal.

• Language is innate.
• Language is creative.
• Language is a mental phenomenon.
• Language is universal.

Functionalists

• They believe that language is a dynamic system through which members of speech
community exchange information.
 • They focus on the meaning and function of language rather than its grammatical
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characteristics.
• Language is a vehicle of expressing one’s emotions.
• Language is about persuading people, asking/giving information, and making people do
things for others.

Interactionists
• They believe that language is a vehicle for establishing
interpersonal relations and social transactions between
individuals.
• Language creates and maintains social relations through
conversations.
• Language is about exchange and interaction.

Behaviorist Theory

This theory was developed by B.F. Skinner. Skinner suggested that a child
imitates the language of its parents or careers. Successful attempts are
rewarded because an adult who recognizes a word spoken by a child will
praise the child and/or give it what it is asking for. Successful utterances
are therefore reinforced while unsuccessful ones are forgotten.

It attempts to explain behavior without reference to mental events or

internal processes. Rather, all behavior is explained solely with reference
to external factors in the environment.

In behaviorist learning theory, language behavior is conditioned by

sequences of differential rewards in the environment.

Language is achieved by building up the habits on the basis of stimulus-response chains.

Process of habit formation:

1. A child imitates the sound patterns he/she hears around him/her.

2. People recognize the child’s attempt to imitate the sound; then they reinforce the
sounds by approval and other desirable reactions.
3. In order to obtain more rewards, the child repeats the sound and patterns until these
become habits.
4. The child’s verbal behavior is conditioned/shaped until the habits are the same with the
adults.
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Innateness
• Noam Chomsky published a criticism of the behaviorist theory in 1957. He focused
particularly on the impoverished language input children receive.
• Chomsky concluded that children must have an inborn faculty 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 predisposition to learn language is triggered by hearing speech and
the child's brain is able to interpret what s/he hears according to the underlying principles
or structures it already contains.
• This natural faculty has become known as the Language Acquisition Device (LAD).
• Chomsky did not suggest that an English child is born knowing anything specific about
English, of course. He stated that all human languages share common principles. (For
example, they all have words for things and actions - nouns and verbs.) It is the child's
task to establish how the specific language s/he hears expresses these underlying
principles. For example, the LAD already contains the concept of verb tense. By listening
to such forms as "worked", "played" and "patted", the child will form the hypothesis that
the past tense of verbs is formed by adding the sound /d/, /t/ or /id/ to the base form.

Acculturation Model

• By John Schumann
• The term acquisition refers to the process in which an individual adopts and acquires a
culture from a different group.
• Acquisition takes place in ethnic minorities who are acquiring L2, such as immigrants,
migrant workers, or the children of such groups
• This theory states that second language acquisition and acculturation are linked
together. This means that if learners can orient themselves to the target language culture,
then they are successful in learning L2.
• Acculturation is a model for L2 learning and communication.

Discourse Theory
• Michel Foucault coined the term “discourse.” He also developed the concepts of
discourse
• The discourse theory has resulted from a theory of language use. The theory
emphasizes that language development should be viewed within the framework of how
the learner discovers the meaning capacity of language by taking part in communication.
• Discourse = technical term for conversation (both written and spoken language)
• Language can be learned by communicating with the target language speaker.
• Learners discover the potential meaning of language by participating in communication.
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Accommodation Theory

• By Howard Giles
• Related to similarity attraction since it describes how people adjust their language
patterns to those of others
• People change the way they speak to be better understand others to accommodate to
their communication needs.
• Accommodation is a theory that breaks down the ongoing, interactive nature of
discourse.
• Accommodation Theory talks about these strategies or behaviors that help reduce social
differences:

o Speech Convergence
o Downward Convergence
o Upward Convergence
o Mutual Convergence
o Speech Divergence

Speech Convergence
• Speech convergence is the way the speakers move their speech closer toward
each other.
• There is a tendency for people to become more alike in terms of linguistic,
prosodic or non-verbal features, including pronunciation, utterance length,
pauses, speech rates, vocal intensities, as well as facial expressions and the
"intimacy of their self-disclosures."

Downward Convergence
• Downward convergence occurs when people in upper class (such as people with
an RP) toning down their way of speech to speak to people in a lower-class.

Upward Convergence
• Upward convergence occurs when lower-class people trying to eliminate some of
the stronger regional feature of their speech when they speak to the upper class.

Mutual Convergence
• Mutual convergence occurs when the speaker and the interlocutor adjust their
speech toward each other.

Speech Divergence
• Speech divergence is the ways in which both speakers accentuate their verbal
and non- verbal differences.
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Cognitive Theory

• By Jean Piaget
• Piaget placed acquisition of language within the context of a child's mental
• or cognitive development, and argued that a child has to understand a concept before
s/he can acquire the particular language form which expresses that concept. A good
example of this is seriation. There will be a point in a child's intellectual development
when s/he can compare objects with respect to size. This means that if you gave the
child a number of sticks, s/he could arrange them in order of size. Piaget suggested that
a child who had not yet reached this stage would not be able to learn and use
comparative adjectives like "bigger" or "smaller".
• Language is not acquired through imitation and conditioning.
• In cognitive theory of learning, experts see second language acquisition as a conscious
and reasoned thinking process, involving the deliberate use of learning strategies.

The Monitor Model

Stephen Krashen believes that there is no fundamental difference between the way we acquire
our first language and our subsequent languages.

Krashen’s Monitor Model (1981)

Consists of 5 central hypotheses:

• Acquisition learning hypothesis
• Natural order hypothesis
• Monitor hypothesis
• Input hypothesis
• Affective filter hypothesis

The Acquisition Learning Hypothesis

There are two ways of developing language ability:
• By acquisition : it is a subconscious process ,as the case of child learning its own
language or an adult picking up a second language.
• By learning : it is a conscious process of developing a foreign language through
language lessons

The Natural Order Hypothesis

• Here, language is acquired in a predictable order by all learners.
• This order doesn’t complexity of the grammatical features involved.
 • The natural order of acquisition can’t be influenced by direct teacher of features that
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learner is not yet ready to acquire.

The Monitor Hypothesis

• We are able to use what we have learned about the rules of a language in monitoring or
self-correcting our language input.
• Clearly, this is possible in the correction of written work .it is much more difficult when
engaging in regular talk.

The Input Hypothesis

• We acquire language in one way only.
• When we are exposed to input “written or spoken language” that’s comprehensible to us.
Comprehensible input is the necessary but also sufficient condition for language
acquisition to take place. It requires no effort from the learner.

The Effective Filter Hypothesis

• Comprehensible input will not result in language acquisition if that input is filtered out
before it can reach the brain’s language processing faculties.
• The filtering may occur because of anxiety, poor self-esteem or low motivation.

Social Interaction Theory

• The interactionist approach (sociocultural theory) combines ideas from sociology and
biology to explain how language is developed.
• According to this theory, children learn language out of a desire to communicate with the
world around them. Language emerges from, and is dependent upon, social interaction.
• Language ability develops out of a desire to communicate, then language is dependent
upon whom we want to communicate with.
• This theory is based on socio-cultural theories of Lev Vygotsky.

The Variable Competence Model

• Rod Ellis proposed this model in 1984. Ellis thought that many aspects of language and
vocabulary are learned implicitly through exposure: word structure and form, collocations,
word class, and certain extent meaning. This suggest that a great deal of exposure to a
target language is necessary for learning.
 • The variable competence model of second language acquisition proposes that the ability
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to use language varies systematically within functional domains and linguistic contexts,
and that such variability is inherent in interlanguage as well.
• The product of language is the plan and unplanned discourse previously, where the user
chooses to speak out of a source of general knowledge to provide automatic information
or to speak meticulously planning ahead what is to be said. That is the basic premise of
the "product" part of the theory.
• Product or performance of language use comprises a continuum of discourse types
ranging from entirely unplanned to entirely planned.
• The product refers to what the learner does with the language. On the other hand, the
discourse helps to construct it.
• The discourse continuum is of central importance in the Variability Model. It accounts
that L2 learners produce output that manifests one rule on one occasion and a different
rule on another occasion - what is called “backsliding,” which might be better termed
“discourse sliding.”

The Universal Hypothesis

• By Noah Chomsky
• The universal hypothesis states that language acquisition is governed by the way in which
natural language are organized. That is, certain universal linguistic properties influence
the order in which the rules of a specific language are acquired. In other words, this is a
theory of knowledge: its concern is with the internal structure of the human mind. The
nature of this knowledge is inseparable from the problem of how it is acquired.
• Universal Grammar: All languages have certain basic structures in common, these are
called universals. Universal grammar refers to the system of principles, conditions, and
rules that are elements or properties of all human languages
• Language is an innate faculty. We are born with a set of rules about language in our heads.
It’s wired into the brains.

Neurofunctional Theory
• By Joseph Lamendella
• This theory states that the acquisition of second and foreign languages is mainly the
product of neural (brain-based) processes. In turn, the neurofunctional activity is also
based on sub-processes which take charge of specific pieces of the language itself.
• It is founded on the biological and neural aspects of acquisition, and not in a behavioral or
merely developmentally cognitive approach.
• It reaffirms SLA as a mainly brain-based process that, with enough exposure and
opportunity for application, can be achieved by just about anybody.
 • It touches on research that shows that the right side of the brain is in charge of processing
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language holistically, that is, in a more generalized and universal way. This side of the
brain recognizes patterns in speech and intonation that are reinforced by constant
exposure to the second language.
• The theory further offers that language acquisition is done in a primary and secondary
manner.
• The secondary manner refers to SLA. There is a list of sub-processes, or hierarchies,
which work together to achieve the final product. One of these hierarchies is
the communication hierarchy, which consists on all the sub-processes taking place
during interpersonal communication to include monitor language usage. The other
hierarchy is the cognitive hierarchy , or the combination of sub-processes that analyze
and synthesize information. The latter is highly influential in acquiring language because
it is through comprehension that it can actually be applied.

References:

Christiansen, Morton H. and Simon Kirby (eds.). 2003. Language Evolution. New York: Oxford
University Press.

Hauser, Marc; Noam Chomsky; and W. Tecumseh Fitch. 2002. The faculty of language: What is
it, who has it, and how did it evolve? Science 298.1569-79.

Hurford, James; Michael Studdert-Kennedy; and Chris Knight (eds.). 1998. Approaches to the
Evolution of Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Jackendoff, Ray. 1999. Some possible stages in the evolution of the language capacity. Trends
in Cognitive Sciences 3.272-79.

Pinker, Steven, and Ray Jackendoff. 2005. The faculty of language: What's special about it?
Cognition 95.210-36.
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Activity
Create a Venn Diagram that would compare and contrast the following ideas or theories. (5 points
each item)

1. Acculturation Model versus Accommodation Model

2. Language Learning versus Language Acquisition
3. Neurofunctional Theory versus Behaviorist Theory
4. Cognitive Theory and Innateness