UI 1.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUSITION

Table of contents

UI 1. A BRIEF HISTORY OF CHILD LANGUAGE ACQUSITION Error! Bookmark not

defined.
1.1. Introduction ................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
1.2. Aims .............................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
1.3. On a brief history of child language acquisition ........... Error! Bookmark not defined.
1.4. Language acquisition theories ........................................ Error! Bookmark not defined.
1.4.1.The Behavioural theory (Skinner 1957) ..................Error! Bookmark not defined.
1.4.2. The Innateness theory (Chomsky 1957, 1988) .......Error! Bookmark not defined.
1.4.3. The Cognitivist theory (Piaget 1930, 1953) ............Error! Bookmark not defined.
1.4.4. The interactionist theory (Bruner 1983) ...............Error! Bookmark not defined.
1.5. Major periods of child language acquisition studies .... Error! Bookmark not defined.
1.6. Summary ........................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
1.7. Evaluation test .................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.

1.1.Introduction

This chapter introduces and discusses (a) the language acquisition theories
as proposed in the literature followed by (b) the major periods of child
language acquisition studies. We will start our investigation from the assumption that the
faculty of language is part of our biological endowment (Chomsky 1957). At first, we will
provide a short history of the study of child language acquisition, which has stirred a lot of
interest since ancient times, starting with Herodotus. We will then introduce several opposing
language acquisition theories which have been put forward in the literature in trying to
explain children’s course of language acquisition. Finally, the three major periods in
language acquisition will be introduced.
1.2. Aims
After having completed the chapter, students will be able to:
- to demonstrate a familiarity with the language acquisition theories
- to determine the way in which child language development occurs,
following the major periods of CLA studies discussed in the literature

Time envisaged for covering Unit 1: 2 hours

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 1.3. On a brief history of child language acquisition

“There is every reason to suppose that this mental organ,

human language, develops in accordance with its
genetically determined characteristics, with some
minor modifications that give one language or
another.” (Noam Chomsky, 1976. On the nature of
language)

There is no reason today to challenge Chomsky’s view that the faculty of language,
deeply embedded within the broader architecture of the mind/brain, is part of our biological
endowment. Language is a true “species property” which marks the distinction between man
and animal and it is responsible for the fact that, in the biological world, humans have a rich
history and a complex cultural evolution.
The elementary property of language is that of discrete infinity. Galileo was intrigued to
discover that we can communicate our “most secret thoughts to any other person with 24 little
characters” (Galileo 1632) while the authors of the Port Royal Grammar were amazed by the
“marvellous invention” of being able to construct, from a few dozen sounds, an infinite array
of expressions that allow us to express what we feel, think and imagine. Such discrete infinity
of the language, then, must come to us from “the original hand of nature”, in line with David
Hume (1748/ 1975: 108). And indeed, this system of extraordinary complexity is the result of
the interplay of two factors: the genetically determined “initial state”, common to all species,
and the course of experience. In other words, the “initial state” can be thought of as the language
acquisition device (LAD) which takes experience as “input” and gives the language as “output”.
The “output” is represented in the mind/brain.
In the same line of thought, the study of child language acquisition reveals very quickly
that language is a complex skill which develops in the child spontaneously, without conscious
effort. From the earliest stages, the child knows more than experience has provided as he
acquires words at a fast rate, in intricate and delicate ways, with limited exposure. The
environment matters to a large extent, but the general course of development and the features
of what emerges are predetermined by the initial state, which, after all, represents a biological
endowment specific to us, humans. We may stress that “language acquisition seems more like
the growth of organs generally; it is something that happens to the child not that the child does”,
as noted by Chomsky (1997:7). If the initial state is common to all of us, we might ask ourselves
the following questions: how do the genes determine the initial state and what role do they play?

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What does this skill tell us about our mind and the properties of our brain? How does a baby’s
babbling turn into words? How does a child get to form complex sentences? How can we simply
grow up speaking, but we have trouble learning a second or third language, later in life?
These eternally fascinating questions have been given an appropriate investigation starting
with the mid twentieth century, when it has been given a precise account of the computational
principles that generate the expressions of a language. Until then, everything that was known
about language, was vague and obscure, only skimmed at the surface. Advances in formal
sciences have brought about major achievements and a far richer understanding of the nature
and variety of languages. In what follows, the object of inquiry is to focus on what linguistic
theory can tell us about the acquisition of language from a generative perspective.
The linguistic ability of children has been a source of deep fascination since ancient times,
starting with Herodotus (4th century BC) who described an experiment carried out by the
Egyptian Pharaoh Psammetichus in 610 BC. In trying to trace back who first inhabited the
Earth, either the Egyptians or the Phrygians, the pharaoh ordered that two babies be raised in
isolation, by the shepherds, without being spoken to them. The idea was that the two infants
would start speaking their own language which would be considered the “original” language of
the human race. The first word they pronounced was becos, which was the Phrygian word for
bread, at the age of two. In light of the evidence, the pharaoh concluded that the Egyptians
came second, after the Phrygians.
The intrinsic nature of humankind has always been a hot topic for debate among
philosophers of the 17th century, who share some opposing views. Descartes (1662) argued that
human nature was a biological endowment while Locke (1690) argued that at birth the human
mind was a blank slate and what humans eventually become is an outcome of the society. An
answer to these opposing views has been evidenced through case studies of wild children, raised
outside society, who have been deprived of language. What these cases suggest is that there is
critical period for language acquisition, a certain age beyond which our ability to learn a
language is reduced. A thorough investigation of such cases will be provided in section 2.4.1.
The critical period hypothesis.
Similarly, in modern times, Darwin (1877) set out to investigate “the nature of
humankind”, by keeping diaries of his son’s linguistic development. At the age of 5 months his
son uttered da and before he was one he could understand intonations, gestures and short
sentences. At the age of one, he coined his first word, mum, which meant food (see section 1.4.
for further discussions).

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 The 1950s are known as the period of normative studies where the goal of research in
language acquisition was to set norms (cf. Ingram 1989). Following the behaviourist
orientation, the major interest for linguists and psychologists was to describe what could be
observed, to formulate hypotheses, methods and come up with results which could contribute
to a great extent in explaining the cognitive development of children, in line with Hoff (2008).
It was with the 1960’s when the study of child language changed completely. Chomsky (1957)
introduced a new wave of research which focused on children’s grammatical development, on
their mental grammar. Following Chomsky (1957), Brown (1973) investigated children’s
mental grammar, focusing on two children Adam and Eve; their transcripts have been analysed
and their grammatical knowledge described. Similar research can be found in Braine (1963),
W. Miller and Ervin (1964), Bloom (1970) among others. In the 1970s, a new wave of research
comprised all branches of linguistics, that is- syntax, morphology, semantics, pragmatics and
phonetics where the latter became central to the study of language acquisition as it became the
foundation for other aspects of language and literacy development (see chapter 7). In the 1980s
the focus was turned on syntax and two important discoveries were made. Firstly, the child does
not speak a faulty variant of the adult language around him, but he speaks his own language
and secondly, the child has to act as a linguist, in that he faces a set of utterances from which
he has to infer the basic rules, which he later uses in a creative way. Contrary to other language
acquisition theories, utterances are not the result of imitation, but of hypothesis building. In the
next section, I will introduce and discuss the language acquisition theories that have been
described in the literature, in an attempt to shed a light on children’s course of acquiring
language.

1.4. Language acquisition theories

As we have seen so far, humans, especially children, have this incredible capacity to
acquire language. In trying to explain children’s course of language acquisition, several theories
have been put forward in the literature, which share some opposing views. Firstly, B.F. Skinner
(1957) proposes the Behavioural theory of language acquisition (B.F. Skinner) according to
which children learn language first by imitating their caregivers and then by modifying their
language in a process known as operant conditioning. In an opposing view, Chomsky’s (1957)
Innateness theory, claims that children are born with a capacity for language which is
biologically determined. Children are biologically present to acquire language and language
acquisition can no longer be accounted for only by social or pragmatically based approaches.
Piaget’s (1955) Cognitive theory takes a different stance and proposes that children are born

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with little cognitive ability and once their minds develop and build new schemas, they can start
using language through assimilation (fitting new information into what is already known) and
accommodation (changing one’s schemas to support new information). In trying to reconcile
the Behavioural and Innateness theories, Bruner (1982) proposes the Interractionist theory
which recognises both our genetic predisposition for learning a language, but also the
importance of our social environment for developing it. Let us consider each of these in turn.

1.4.1. The Behavioural theory (Skinner 1957)

Starting from Watson’s (1924) habit formation hypothesis1, Skinner (1957) set out to
investigate how habits are formed in the acquisition of L1. He argues that language develops
as a result of children trying to imitate their caregivers or the people around them. Contrary to
Chomsky (1957), children have no innate ability to learn language, but they are born as a “blank
slate” and they lean on operant conditioning to form and enrich their understanding of it.
Operant conditioning refers to the idea that children are offered rewards for using the language
in a functional manner. Skinner’s (op cit.) model is reminiscent of Pavlov’s experiment which
shows that stimulus and response work together. In other words, babies acquire native language
habits from the varied babblings which resemble the words repeated by a person or object near
them. Once these babblings are rewarded, the award reinforces other articulations until the child
starts emitting groups of sounds and later on he ends up combining the sentences via
generalisation and analogy. When these babblings are not approved, the child learns to make
finer and finer associations between his behaviour of pronouncing the word correctly and
receiving the desired reward. Thus, this points towards the major principle on which the
Behaviourist theory rests: the analysis of human behaviour in observable stimulus- response-
reinforcement.
Behaviourism is operated on the following principles: the primary medium of language
is oral, language learning is a mechanical process which leads learners to habit formation, each
stimulus initiates a response and each response in its turn is the initiator of a stimulus leading
to a continuous chain. Furthermore, all learning is the creation of habits as the result of
reinforcement and reward and, last but not least, each person can learn equally if the learning

1
The habbit formation hypothesis claims that the association of a particular response with a particular stimulus
constitutes a habit. A habit is formed when a particular response becomes regularly linked with a particular
stimulus.

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conditions are the same for each individual. At a closer look, however, Skinner’s (op cit.) theory
has some limitations which are worth mentioning; firstly, children’s errors point towards the
fact that language is based on a set of rules which cannot be worked out simply by imitating
individual utterances. Secondly, explicit grammatical correction varies to a great extent as
parents correct only the sample structures while the complex structures are only occasionally
corrected (cf. H. Clark & E. Clark 1977) and there are grammatical regularities that cannot be
discerned from the surface features of language alone. A criticism on the Behaviourist theory
was also published by Chomsky (1957) according to which children receive an impoverished
language input, therefore children must have an inborn capacity for language acquisition, which
brings us to the Innateness hypothesis which we now address.

1.4.2. The Innateness theory (Chomsky 1957, 1988)

A shift in perspective arose in the 1950s with what is known as the “cognitive revolution”
when a great deal of attention has been given to the inner mechanisms that enter into thought
and action. For the study of language, a new idea was brought into light: the brain has a
component called the language faculty, dedicated entirely to language and its use. For all of us,
the language faculty has an initial state which is part of our biological endowment, it is a
common human possession. The environment further on triggers and, to a certain extent shapes
a process of growth which stabilizes at puberty.
Chomsky (1957, 1988) argues that there is “an innate structure which determines the
framework within which language and thought develop” (1988: 5). Both develop in the mind
and follow a predetermined course, just like any other biological property, providing a rich
structure of meaning. Language is characterized by discrete infinity, for it constructs, from a
few discrete elements, an infinite variety of expressions of thought. The feature of discrete
infinity was first introduced by Humboldt who spoke about the “infinite use of finite means”.
This doctrine was at the heart of the Cartesian concept of the mind and it served as a criterion
for identifying creatures with “other minds” like ours and it was further adopted by Descartes
who focused solely on language. The property of discrete infinity is a unique feature,
biologically isolated, among systems of animal communication. Chomsky (1988) further shows
that there exists only one other phenomenon which shares the property of discrete infinity: the
human number faculty, unteachable to other organisms. This shows that at a certain time in the
history of evolution the human brain developed a capacity for digital computation, for using
recursive rules and associated mental representations. Indeed, this poses a challenge for

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evolutionary explanation. Firstly, Darwin’s theories of evolution point towards a gradual
descent from an ancestor. Secondly, since language is a human capacity, there seems to be a
biological leap, thus violating Linnaeus’ and Darwin’s principle “natura non facit saltum”, a
view also expressed in Chomsky (2016).
Chomsky (1988) further notes that languages of the world appear to be highly diverse,
however they appear to vary only in marginal ways. Variation among languages is limited to
restricted options in the lexicon, however, these slight changes yield dramatic differences. Let
us take as an example the Spanish pronominal system; pronouns in Spanish are lexically marked
as affixes, thus they must attach to other elements. The way these affixes attach and the targets
to which they adjoin, is dictated by the same principles that dictate the formation of complex
syntactic constructions, applied now to lexical items and not to full phrases. English, in contrast,
does not exhibit clitic pronouns, thus the forms look quite different. However, the principles
that govern them are the same, reflecting the same universal underlying structure. Chomsky
calls this Universal Grammar (UG).
Within the innateness approach, the language organ resembles others where its primary
character is an expression of the genes. Each language exbibits both a language acquisition
device (LAD) and the course of experience. The LAD takes experience as “input” and gives the
language as “output”. Thus, the linguistic input cannot be fully responsible for the acquisition
of this skill and it needs to be filtered by the LAD. Children have some a priori knowledge of
the principles which govern the linguistic constructs, independent of the input they receive.
They approach the task of acquisition with some innate constraints which are at work, with a
cognitive capacity about the structure of language. Chomsky (1980: 33-34) describes this
property as follows: “Were it not for this highly specific innate endowment, each individual
would grow into some kind of amoebic creature, merely reflecting external contingencies, one
individual quite unlike another, each utterly impoverished and lacking the intricate special
structures that make possible a human existence and that differentiate one species from
another.” So, what is the evolutionary explanation? Perhaps, it’s “the missing link”, in a literal
sense.
1.4.3. The Cognitivist theory (Piaget 1930, 1953)

The cognitive theory of language acquisition, introduced by Piaget (1930, 1953), holds
that children are born with a finite cognitive ability upon which new knowledge can be
constructed. Piaget (op cit) thought that language learning is linked to maturation and
development of the brain, thus as the child gets exposed to the world, both his mind and his

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language develop. Children actively build their understanding of the world, while going
through different stages of cognitive development: the sensorimotor stage, the preoperational
stage, the concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage. As they progress from
one stage towards the other, children expand their knowledge and build their own mental image
of the world.
During the sensorimotor stage (from birth to about two years of age), children learn
though the sensory experiences and manipulating objects. Piaget (op cit) mentions that the
child’s language can function in two distinct ways: either (a) egocentric which means that
children are able to use language but don’t understand its social function or (b) socialised when
children begin to use language as a means of communicating with others. At this stage,
children’s language is egocentric and they talk for themselves. During the preoperational stage
(two to seven years of age) children can create an internal representation of the world through
language. Children’s language develops at a fast rate and they begin to form basic sentences
(instead of saying “out” they may say “mummy go out”). Within the concrete operational stage
(seven to eleven years) children’s language shows a shift from illogical to logical thinking and
from egocentric to socialised. At this stage children can use intuitive thought. Last but not least,
within the formal operational stage of cognitive development (eleven to fifteen years of age),
children’s language indicates the ability to understand abstract and theoretical concepts.
Piaget’s theory further suggests that when learning language, children use both
assimilation and accommodation where the former is the process of changing one’s
environment to place information into an already existing schema and the latter represents the
process of changing one’s schema to adapt to the new environment. There has been a debate in
the literature between Chomsky and Piaget about the existence of a “fixed nucleus”, the
innateness of human language. One the one hand Chomsky defends the idea that the “nucleus”
is innate, specific to us humans. Piaget denies the idea of innateness of any cognitive structure,
claiming that “the function of intelligence alone is hereditary” (1953:23) and that language
represents the outcome of a gradual process of construction. Another advocate of the “fixed
nucleus” idea is Bruner (1983) who agrees that language is innate but also emphasises the idea
that the environment and the social interaction are also important in the acquisition of language.
He calls his theory the interactionist theory and the next section addresses it.

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 1.4.4. The interactionist theory (Bruner 1983)

Bruner (1983) suggests that apart from the innate ability to learn language, there is also a
social perspective to it, as children require direct interaction with the world around them and
support from caregivers. Caregivers provide the linguistic support that helps a child learn to
master language and this can be referred to as the “Language acquisition support system”
(LASS). Building on Chomsky’s (1957) theory of language, the interactionist theory holds that
both social and biological components are necessary for the development of language. It further
proposes that children learn language as their desire is to communicate with the world around
them. As language depends on social interactions, the social environment in which a child
grows up affects the development of their language skills, to a positive or negative extent. In
line with Bruner (op cit) caregivers provide support in social interactions (LASS) by adjusting
the language to suit the child’s needs, sometimes referred to as “caregiver speech”,
“motherese”, “baby talk” or “Child-Directed Speech” (CDS). Active support is also given
through collaborative learning, where an adult points out key vocabulary while looking at a
picture book together with a child. By encouraging children, providing examples for them to
imitate and by playing games, caregivers actively participate in early language development.
The LASS is gradually removed as the child’s linguistic and other cognitive abilities develop.
The interactionist theory is also supported by other empirical studies who point towards
the importance of interaction in language learning. Tomasello et al (1988) argue that there is a
correlation between parent-child social interactions and language skills which points towards
the idea that interaction plays an important role in child’s development of language.

Let’s remember

The literature distinguishes between: the Behavioural theory of language

acquisition (Skinner 1957), the Innateness Theory (Chomsky 1957), the
Cognitive theory (Piaget1923) and the Interactionist theory (Bruner 1982), each
with opposing views.

1.5. Major periods of child language acquisition studies

When it comes to the history of child acquisition studies, the literature distinguishes three
major historical periods of time, as follows: the period of diary studies (1876-1926), the period
of large sample studies (1926-1957) and the period of longitudinal studies (1957- to present);

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the main focus of these studies is to determine the way in which child language development
occurs. Let us not forget that long before the emergence of empirical methods for testing
language acquisition, some early ideas on language were proposed by Plato who argued that
word-meaning mapping was innate.
Within the period of diary studies (1876-1926), the methodological approach was that of
parental diary which involved keeping and recording the child’s learning experiences during a
certain period of time. Parents who were linguists or psychologists kept diaries of their children
and the observations were made on their linguistic and motor development. One major
advantage of these studies is that they provide a rich descriptive basis for child language
acquisition. The observer knows the child well and as major milestones may appear and be
acquired in a matter of days, the parent is able to spot these and note their characteristics.
However, data may be biased as the parent records what s/he sees to be an important
development, and, in the same line of thought, it is difficult to get reliable data from a diarist
with no phonetic skills. One major study conducted in this period was Taine’s (1876) work who
offered a report on the close observation of his daughter’s linguistic output, from the moment
she was born up to two years old. In his study he made the observation that a child is capable
of discovering the structure of language from the environment. Similarly, Preyer (1889)
conducted a study of his son’s linguistic development which was followed by Wilhelm and
Clara Stern’s (1907) observation of their own children in which they argue that language
acquisition occurs in stages which all children are supposed to follow. Further studies can be
found in the work of Hogan (1898), Baterman (1916), Chamberlain and Chamberlain (1904,
1905, 1909) among others.
The period of large sample studies (1926-1957) experienced a major shift as a result of
the emergence of behaviourism (Skiner 1957). The methodological approach was that of
keeping observations and diaries of children’s linguistic behaviour across time. The emphasis
was on the observable events in the interaction of the child and on its linguistic community.
Following the theory, the child is not seen as an active player in the language acquisition
process, but as a passive one, controlled by the environment and other external factors. In line
with Ingram (1989), this model of study was cross-sectional, designed for different children at
different ages, on a large number of subjects. Subjects were carefully selected, from similar
socio-economic classes, by incorporating an equal number of both sexes. The data collection
was performed by the same experimenter and for data analysis numerous tables full or
proportions and percentages were used; the measures were given for grouped data, rather than
for individual children.

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 One of the weaknesses of these studies was that they lacked linguistic sophistication, that
is why they were later rejected by modern linguistics. They focused on children’s superficial
knowledge of vocabulary, sentence length or correct production of speech sounds, but they
ignored the structure of rules which are at the core of language acquisition studies. Another
weakness was the focus on group data rather than on the patterns of individual children. When
it comes to the methodological procedure, no modern recording equipment was used; children’s
sentences were written down as fast as possible and some aspect may have been left out.
Some of the most important large sample studies that are worth remembering are: Smith’s
(1926) study which focused on aspects such as vocabulary growth, sentence length and
correctness of articulation, followed by McCarthy (1930), Day (1932), who focused on
language acquisition in twins, Fisher (1934), Davis (1937), Young (1941) among others.
The period of longitudinal studies (1957- to present) involves visiting and observing
children’s behaviour at pre-set intervals, for a specific length of time, with the aim of collecting
a longitudinal language sample. For data collection, two visitors are selected and as for the
methodology used, the sessions are tape-recorded and further transcribed. One key feature of
these studies is the selection of several children, instead of one. As compared to previous
periods in child language acquisition studies, longitudinal studies followed the paradigmatic
change that took place in linguistics, proposed by Chomsky (1957), with a theory of grammar
that places syntax at its centre. Thus, the focus was on the emergence of rules and on the
description of the child’s developing grammar.

So far, we have seen that in all these three major periods of time in which language
studies were and still are conducted, the experiments have focused on continuity
in development, innateness in language, comprehension and production, which
are milestones for a general theory on language acquisition.

1.6. Summary

In this unit we have discussed the theories of language acquisition and we have
introduced the three major periods of time in CLA studies. Throughout the unit
we have seen that the study of CLA reveals the complex principles of
language, in an intricate way.

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1.7. Evaluation test

Take some time to answer the following questions:

1. How can you describe the faculty of language, following Chomsky’s view?
2. What is the elementary property of language and how can it be described?
3. What is different about the period of normative studies, as compared to
previous studies?
4. What are the major characteristics of the Innateness theory?
5. What is the difference between the period of diary studies and the
period of large sample studies?

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