Overview

• • The Behaviorist Interpretation
  • The Nativist Interpretation
  • Nature vs. Nurture
  • The Social Interactionist Interpretation *
  • Is Theory Important?

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  The Behaviorist Interpretation
  • Stimulus -> Response (S -> R) view of all behavior
  • Classical conditioning explains word meaning acquisition (new meanings to old stimuli)
    • Watson's research on Little Albert
  • Operant conditioning explains language acquisition and behavior (behavior controlled by consequences; power of reinforcement)
    • Skinner's Verbal Behavior
  • Problems (among others)
    • language is creative
    • knowledge of language is very complex (show language puzzles from intro notes)
    • no clear evidence that parents consistently reward "good" language and not "bad" language

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  The Nativist Interpretation
  • Noam Chomsky most famous language nativist
  • Transformational Generative Grammar
    • attempts to explain how we can produce and understand an unlimited number of sentences
    • universal grammar (UG) as innate
      • child does need to learn what all human languages have in common (UG); only needs to learn what is unique to his or her specific language
    • principles (innate) and parameters (acquired quickly)
    • language acquisition device (LAD)
      • innate ability to acquire language
  • The Nativist Perspective in Review
    • 031.2 "we have not ruled out the nativists' basis contention, which is that human beings are born with an innate capacity for language. What remains in the debate is to determine the relative importance of this innate capacity in comparison to the influence of environmental factors."

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  Team Discussion: nature vs. nurture
  • Much debate has taken place concerning the importance of nature (what is innate) and nurture (environmental factors) in the acquisition of language.
  • Consider the following questions.
    • 1. You have started a retirement account in to which you will invest a fixed amount of money every month. Which is more important in determining how much money you will have in the account when you retire: (a) the amount of money you invest each month, or (b) the number of months you make an investment.
    • 2. What is more important in determining how much paint you will need to cover a wall: (a) the length of the wall, or (b) the height of the wall?
  • Now consider what you believe the relative importance of nature and nurture to be in the acquisition of language, given the finding that the human genome contains only about 26,000 to 30,000 genes, less than the number of genes in some plants.
    • nature (innate factors) is more important
    • nurture (environmental and learning factors) is more important
    • other (explain)

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• Examples of Interaction of Genes (Nature) and Environment (Nurture, Learning)
  • phenylketonuria (PKU)
  • sexuality (twins)
  • Alzheimer's (twins)
  • fear of snakes & spiders vs. electricity & cars

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  The Cognitive Interpretation
  • to be discussed next week/chapter

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  The Social Interactionist Interpretation
  • stresses importance of child's interaction with parents and other caregivers
  • importance of "motherese"
  • Child Talk model of Chapman et al. (1992)
    • contributions of context and world knowledge for figuring out language
    • importance of goals
      • 047.2 "The child's developing knowledge of everything in the life that swirls around him helps him establish goals for getting things done and develop strategies for successfully meeting these goals. According to the Child Talk view, the child formulates utterances because he has goals in mind that can be best met by using these utterances. Drawing upon the linguistic and nonlinguistic experiences of his own past, however brief that past is, the child uses his language knowledge in combination with his knowledge about other relevant aspects of his world to formulate utterances that will serve as a means to today's ends."