Theories of Language

Development
 Humans, especially children, have an
amazing ability to learn language. Within the
first year of life, children will have learned
many of the necessary concepts to have
functional language, although it will still take
years for their capabilities to develop fully.
Some people learn two or more
languages fluently and are bilingual or
multilingual. Here is a recap of the theorists
and theories that have been proposed to
explain the development of language, and
related brain structures, in children.
Skinner: Operant Conditioning
B. F. Skinner believed that children learn
language through operant conditioning; in
other words, children receive “rewards” for
using language in a functional manner.

For example, a child learns to say the word

“drink” when she is thirsty; she receives
something to drink, which reinforces her use of
the word for getting a drink, and thus she will
continue to do so. This follows
the four-term contingency that Skinner believed
was the basis of language development—
motivating operations, discriminative stimuli,
response, and reinforcing stimuli.
Skinner also suggested that children learn
language through imitation of others,
prompting, and shaping.
Examples of Positive 1. Homework Completion
Reinforcement

In Positive reinforcement,
one gets rewarded for a
certain kind of behavior;
with this, the probability A student tends to
of continuing good complete his/her
behavior increases. Let’s homework daily;
have some relevant because he/she
examples of positive knows that he/she
reinforcement: will be rewarded
with a candy
(action) or praise
(behavior).
2. Incentives and Bonuses 3. Discounts and Benefits

Workers are often offered with the

incentives and bonus in return of Sales Person often give Discounts and prizes to their
completing their targets in time or for customer in return for their assurance to shop with them
regular attendance. It makes the workers to again in the future. Similarly, most of the gyms also offer
perform better, so that, they can certain discounts to their customers, if they work out a
continuously get those incentives and certain number of times and use their diet products.
bonus.
Examples of Negative Reinforcement 6. Class Presentation

Negative reinforcement tends to take away something

unpleasant, which is acceptable and helps in
strengthening the behavior. Let’s have some relevant
examples for Negative reinforcements:

5. Following Rules

Class presentations are daily parts of student

life. If a student is praised or complimented,
he/she will be encouraged to do well, but if
Students or children will follow rules strictly to avoid
the student is laughed on or criticized in front
being nagged by the teachers or parents. So, to avoid
of everyone, the presentation will be nothing
nagging, the child might end up following the rules
more than just a formality in future.
strictly. Similarly, army personnel also have to follow
the strict routine to avoid disciplinary actions against
them; it shapes them into a disciplined individual.
Chomsky: Language Acquisition Device

• Noam Chomsky’s work discusses the biological basis for language and claims that
children have innate abilities to learn language. Chomsky terms this innate ability the
“language acquisition device.”
• He believes children instinctively learn language without any formal instruction.
• He also believes children have a natural need to use language, and that in the absence
of formal language children will develop a system of communication to meet their
needs.
• He has observed that all children make the same type of language errors, regardless of
the language they are taught.
• Chomsky also believes in the existence of a “universal grammar,” which posits that
there are certain grammatical rules all human languages share.
• However, his research does not identify areas of the brain or a genetic basis that
enables humans’ innate ability for language.
An innate capacity for language
There’s no doubt that we acquire our native languages,
complete with their vocabularies and grammatical patterns.

But is there an inherited ability underlying our individual

languages — a structural framework that enables us to
grasp, retain, and develop language so easily?

In 1957, linguist Noam Chomsky published a groundbreaking

book called “Syntactic Structures.” It proposed a novel idea:
All human beings may be born with an innate understanding
of how language works.

Whether we learn Arabic, English, Chinese, or sign language

is determined, of course, by the circumstances of our lives.

But according to Chomsky, we can acquire

language because we’re genetically encoded with a universal
grammar — a basic understanding of how communication is
structured.
Chomsky’s idea has since become widely accepted.
We learn language almost effortlessly

Linguists like Chomsky have argued for a universal grammar in

part because children everywhere develop language in very
similar ways in short periods of time with little assistance.
Children show awareness of language categories at extremely
early ages, long before any overt instruction occurs.
For example, one study showed that 18-month-old children
recognized “a doke” referred to a thing and “praching”
referred to an action, showing they understood the form of the
word.
Having the article “a” before it or ending with “-ing”
determined whether the word was an object or an event.
It’s possible they had learned these ideas from listening to
people talk, but those who espouse the idea of a universal
grammar say it’s more likely that they have an innate
understanding of how words function, even if they don’t know
the words themselves.
And we learn in the same sequence
Proponents of universal grammar say children the world over naturally
develop language in the same sequence of steps.

So, what does that shared developmental pattern look like? Many
linguists agree that there are three basic stages:
•learning sounds
•learning words
•learning sentences

More specifically:
•We perceive and produce speech sounds.
•We babble, usually with a consonant-then-vowel pattern.
•We speak our first rudimentary words.
•We grow our vocabularies, learning to classify things.
•We build two-word sentences, and then increase the complexity of our
sentences.

Different children proceed through these stages at different rates. But

the fact that we all share the same developmental sequence may show
we’re hardwired for language.
We learn despite a ‘poverty of stimulus’
Chomsky and others have also argued that we learn complex languages, with their intricate
grammatical rules and limitations, without receiving explicit instruction.

For example, children automatically grasp the correct way to arrange dependent sentence
structures without being taught.

We know to say “The boy who is swimming wants to eat lunch” instead of “The boy wants
to eat lunch who is swimming.”

Despite this lack of instructional stimulus, we still learn and use our native languages,
understanding the rules that govern them. We wind up knowing a lot more about how our
languages work than we’re ever overtly taught.
The bottom line
Noam Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar
says that we’re all born with an innate
understanding of the way language works.
Chomsky based his theory on the idea that all
languages contain similar structures and rules (a
universal grammar), and the fact that children
everywhere acquire language the same way, and
without much effort, seems to indicate that we’re
born wired with the basics already present in our
brains.
Although not everyone agrees with Chomsky’s
theory, it continues to have a profound influence
on how we think about language acquisition today.
Piaget: Assimilation and Accommodation

Jean Piaget’s theory of language development

suggests that children use both assimilation and
accommodation to learn language.

 According to him, children first create mental

structures within the mind (schemas) and from In assimilation, children make sense of the world by applying
these schemas, language development happens. what they already know. It involves fitting reality and what they
experience into their current cognitive structure. A child's
understanding of how the world works, therefore, filters and
Piaget believed that there are two basic ways that we influences how they interpret reality.
can adapt to new experiences and information:
assimilation and accommodation.

Assimilation is the easiest method because it does not Assimilation and accommodation both work in tandem as part of
require a great deal of adjustment. Through this the learning process.2 Some information is incorporated into our
process, we add new information to our existing existing schemas through the process of assimilation, while other
knowledge base, sometimes reinterpreting these new information leads to the development of new schemas or total
experiences so that they will fit in with previously transformations of existing ideas through the process of
existing information. accommodation.
• Examples of Assimilation
• Piaget did not believe that children just passively take in information.
He argued that they actively try to make sense of the world,
constantly forming new ideas and experimenting with those ideas.
Examples of assimilation include:

• A child sees a new type of dog that they've never seen before and
immediately points to the animal and says, "Dog!"
• A chef learns a new cooking technique
• A computer programmer learns a new programming language
• Another common example would be how children learn about
different types of animals. A child might begin with a schema for a
dog, which in the child's mind, is a small, four-legged animal. As the
child encounters new information in the world, the new information
can then be assimilated or accommodated into this existing schema.

• When the child encounters a horse, they might assimilate this

information and immediately call the animal a dog. The process of
accommodation then allows the child to adapt the existing schema to
incorporate the knowledge that some four-legged animals are horses.

• In each of these examples, the individual is adding information to their

existing schema. Remember, if new experiences cause the person to
alter or completely change their existing beliefs, then it is known as
accommodation.
Common accommodations

Presentation accommodations (changes the way information

is presented)
•Listen to audio recordings instead of reading text
•Learn content from audiobooks, movies, videos, and digital
media instead of reading print versions
•Work with fewer items per page or line
•Work with text in a larger print size
•Have a “designated reader” — someone who reads test
questions aloud to students
•Hear instructions spoken aloud
•Record a lesson, instead of taking notes
•Get class notes from another student
•See an outline of a lesson
•Use visual presentations of verbal material, such as word webs
•Get a written list of instructions
Vygotsky: Zone of Proximal
Development
Lev Vygotsky’s theory of language development
focused on social learning and the zone of
proximal development (ZPD).

The ZPD is a level of development obtained when

children engage in social interactions with others;
it is the distance between a child’s potential to
learn and the actual learning that takes place.

Vygotsky’s theory also demonstrated that Piaget

underestimated the importance of social
interactions in the development of language.

Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s theories are often

compared with each other, and both have been
used successfully in the field of education.