Thursday 26 March 2015
Theories
Chomsky’s LAD-
First proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s, the LAD concept
is an instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and
produce language. This theory asserts that humans are born with the instinct or
"innate facility" for acquiring language.
Deb Roy-
Professor Deb Roy of Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) is recording his son's development to shed light on how babies acquire
language. The Human Speechome Project, as it is known, uses cameras and
microphones installed in the scientist's home. The project will eventually
gather 400,000 hours of material. There is still a considerable amount of
debate about how infants acquire language. Although listening to the cooing of
parents is thought to play an important part, most scientists believe it cannot
be solely responsible for the rapid progress seen in most children. Instead,
language-specific genes and environmental factors have both been put forward as
additional factors that help children to learn to speak. Until now, the
environmental influences on development have been very difficult to test
because scientists have been unable to observe a baby for long enough in its
home environment. The Speechome Project will change that by generating and
analysing vast tracts of recorded material. For example, to understand how
Professor Roy's son learnt his first words, the scientists will be able to mine
their records to see who used those words around the child, where they were and
what the child was doing at the time. Frank Moss, director of MIT's Media Lab,
believes the project has close parallels to the Human Genome Project.
"Just as the Human Genome Project illuminates the innate genetic code that
shapes us, the Speechome Project is an important first step toward creating a
map of how the environment shapes human development and learning," he
said.
How ‘gaga’ became ‘water’
Skinners operant conditioning-
Behaviour which is reinforced tends to be repeated (i.e.
strengthened); behaviour which is not reinforced tends to die out-or be
extinguished (i.e. weakened). B.F. Skinner (1938) coined the term operant
conditioning; it means roughly changing of behaviour by the use of
reinforcement which is given after the desired response. Skinner identified three
types of responses or operant that can follow behaviour.
• Neutral operants: responses from the environment that
neither increase nor decrease the probability of a behaviour being repeated.
• Reinforcers: Responses from the environment that increase
the probability of a behaviour being repeated. Reinforcers can be either
positive or negative.
• Punishers: Responses from the environment that decrease the
likelihood of a behaviour being repeated. Punishment weakens behaviour.
Michael Halliday-
Halliday functions of child language:
·
Representational - "I've got something to show
you" - language showing how they feel, declarative
·
Regulatory - "Do as I tell you" -
requesting/asking for things
·
Instrumental - "I want"- expressing
needs/wants
·
Interactional - "Me and you" - speaking to
other, establishing personal contact
·
Imaginative - "Let's pretend" - imaginative
language, used with play, to create imaginary world. Crystal talks of
'phonological' function as playing with sound.
·
Personal - "Here I come"- child expresses
their feelings/expressing personal preferences
·
Heuristic - "Tell me why"- uses language to
explore environment/ seeking information
Most commonly used in children's language is instrumental and
regulatory, which are learnt, along with interactional and personal, at a young
age. Representational is used by 6-8+ year olds.
Jean Berko ‘Wug test’-
The Wug theory: Berko drew a picture of an imaginary creature
and called it a 'wug'. She asked children what more than one wug would be
called. 3/4 of them said 'wugs', applying a rule to a word they could never
have heard before. It was designed as a way to investigate the acquisition of
the plural and other inflectional morphemes in English-speaking children.
Piaget-
Interactionalism: Linked linguistic development with an
understanding of the concepts surrounding the words' meanings, meaning that
speech development is linked to the development of the brain (cognitive
capacity). The stages were: sensorimotor, pre-operational, concrete
operational, formal operational. He also talked about egocentricism in children
and the idea of games such as peekaboo demonstrating the idea of object
permanence.
David Crystal-
Addition to negatives: once pragmatic competence is achieved,
youngsters learn to copy parents' use of words like 'maybe' when they really
mean 'no'.
Lenneburg-
Critical Period: Furthered Chomsky's nativist argument by
saying that there was a 'critical period' during which children should pick up
language. He argued that is they did not evolve language skills by the age of
five, full grammatical fluency is never achieved. He tested on feral children.
One example to look at is Genie. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_%28feral_child%29)
Bruner-
Bruner created and argued for the Language Acquisition Support
System (LASS). Bruner states through LASS that parents often use books and
images to develop their child’s naming abilities and their ability to get
involved in conversation.
·
Gaining attention- drawing the babies attention to a
picture
·
Query- asking the baby to identify the picture
·
Label- telling the baby what the object is
·
Feedback- responding to the babies utterances
This is also called SCAFFOLDING, where the child is supported
in their learning of language by carers and once they have learnt it, the
support is taken away.
TED talks
Anne Curzan- What makes a word real?
One could argue that slang words like ‘hangry,’ ‘defriend’
and ‘adorkable’ fill crucial meaning gaps in the English language, even if they
don't appear in the dictionary. After all, who actually decides which words
make it into those pages? Language historian Anne Curzan gives a charming look
at the humans behind dictionaries, and the choices they make.
John Mcwhorter- Is texting killing the English Language? (language change)
Does texting mean the death of good writing skills? John
McWhorter posits that there’s much more to texting — linguistically, culturally
— than it seems, and it’s all good news.
Deb Roy- The birth of a word (CLA)
Debroys speechome project with his son. How the word 'gaga'
develops into 'water' over a three year period.
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