Language Development of Children - Essay Example

?To what extent can a Nativist perspective successfully explain children’s early language development? Overview of Language Acquisition in Humans Theability of humans to produce sounds of different forms is one of the most distinctive features that they have from other animate beings. In fact, the human system of sound production has been described as a language because of how structured and systematic it is. Because the ability of a human to acquire language comes with almost all human beings, people who are not able to learn language or produce sufficient sounds are said to possess some levels of deficiency or disability. From the perspective of the language of psychology, what seems to be the greatest point of discussion has to do with the manner, in which humans learn how to produce the varying sounds, normally referred to as language. This is because it is almost obvious that the possibility that a human being would acquire language is almost automatic. But as to how the anatomy and functioning of the human body comes together to make this automatic process possible is what normally generates some levels of controversy. In this paper, a critical attention is paid to the Navitist perspective of language development and tries to examine some of the merits in the theory to come to terms with how successfully the Nativist perspective can explain children’s early language development. Developmental Phenomena of Language Development Theories Before delving very deep into the Nativist perspective of language acquisition, it is important to have a general background of the different kinds of approaches to language acquisition so that we can establish the place of the Nativist perspective in the midst of the other approaches. To this end, three major approaches are briefly discussed. Social interactionism Psychologists who belong to the social interactionism approach of language acquisition hold the view that language acquisition is a social process that happens as a result of the kind of social interaction that takes place between a child and his or her social environment (Mercer, 1995). It is not for nothing therefore that the theory that guides this school of thought is dubbed the Social interactionist theory. Some of the highlighted concepts of the Social interactionist theory include the fact that children first learn languages that they are raised with. This is a clear indication of how the environment (social environment for that matter) of a child affects his or her ability to possess language. Again, the fact that children do not always acquire the languages of their parents as their first language: but acquires the language of the area from where they were brought up means that language acquisition is indeed not hereditary but social. Finally, Social interactionist theory highlights the fact that when a child is born in an environment where he or she would never hear any language, there is no tendency that the child will speak any language because of the absence of the social interaction of language. Relational frame theory Debaters in school of thought also support the fact that the environment plays very key role in language acquisition. They however do not give so much emphasis to the social environment as the social interactionism do. Instead, the relational frame theory of language acquisition is built on the fact that there could be some key psychological features of the environment that could affect the chances and success rate of acquiring language. The relational frame theory is led by Hayes, Barnes-Holmes and Roche and is based on the Skinnerian behaviourism (Oates and Grayson, 2004). Under this approach, there is a very shape contrast to the Nativist perspective because there is not subscription to the fact that humans have a definitive inner reinforcement that propels children to speak. Rather, it is expected that psychological factors that include thoughts, feelings and behaviours would go very long ways in influencing how children acquire language. This theory would thus be a major reference point in the present paper as it serves as the direct critic to the Nativist perspective, which is the focal point in this essay. Emergentism Unlike the first two, the emergentism approach to language acquisition bases more on the biological makeup of a person. This is because reviewers who belong to this school of thought hold the view that language acquisition is a cognitive process. From this perspective, a person must have certain key biological abilities to be able to access language. In essence, this is going to be a very keen approach for the present paper that looks more into the Nativist perspective of language acquisition. The only difference would however be from a point where the emergentism approach sees the act of language acquisition as coming from an emergence between both biological processes and environmental factors. As a matter of fact, psychologists who belong to the emergentism school of thought hold a very strong conviction that neither nurturing nor nature alone could be enough to make a person acquire language but that there ought to be a compbination of the two at an arguably equal pedestal (Hundeide, 1988). Claims of the Nativist Perspective of Language Development What makes the Nativist perspective of language development very peculiar is some of the empirical claims they seem to make on their school of thought. Generally, the Nativist perspective sides more to nature and biology as the basis of language acquisition in children. Two of their major claims are discussed below. Language as an innate Faculty The first claim of the Navitist perspective of language development and acquisition is that all person; if not disabled are born with an innate faculty that makes the acquisition of language possible. This innate faculty is actually referred to as the language acquisition device (LAD) (Long, 2003). Because all regular people are born with this language acquisition device, the ability to learn any language can only take place if the innate faculty of language acquisition functions correctly. As part of the claim on language as an innate faculty, the Navitist perspective argue that all necessary cognitive rules that needs to make the learning of language possible are naturally fed into the brains of children. They therefore see language acquisition as a natural cognitive process that takes place in the brain of children. To this effect, the developmental rate of a child is naturally going to affect the rate at which the child is going to learn language. LAD contains vocabulary to all languages Another major claim of the Navitist perspective is that the language acquisition device contains vocabulary to al languages. This is a key point that makes the claim of the Navitist perspective one of a natural and biological phenomenon. This is because if language acquisition and language development in children was merely a social or environmental phenomenon, then there was going to a lot of limitations and hindrances with learning certain languages. However, because the language acquisition device is programmed as a natural phenomenon, it makes it possible for any language at all that a person targets to learn possible to be learnt (Hundeide, 1988). In line with this claim, the process of acquiring language continues to take at all times in a person’s life. It is however worth noting that at the infant stage of development, a person has higher rates of learning language because at that stage of development, the language acquisition device functions at a rapid rate. Merits of the Nativist Perspective that successfully explain Children’s Early Language Development Chomsky, who is the world’s most acclaimed advocates of the Nativist perspective lays down some key scientific and psychological justifications that try to successfully explain children’s early language development as a biological process. Some of these points are considered below. Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct In his first argument Pinker (1994) raises the point that an indication that proves the fact that all people are born with a language acquisition device by natural biological provision is the rate at which children learn their mother tongue. In their defence, language learning is one of the first things all children do even at the time that their mental faculties have not developed well enough to comprehend other forms of cognitive activity. This indeed merits the Navitist perspective that explains that children learn language on a natural biological basis. If indeed the act of learning language had not been a biological process and merely an environmental factor, it would have taken children much more years to learn their mother tongue because children learn their mother tongue at a time that they have not adjusted to most environmental acquaintances (Pinker, 1994). U-shaped Pattern of Development of Morphology Ervin and Miller, 1963 Ervin and Miller (1963) attest that the acquisition of language in children is not limited to just one language but that series of artistic, cognitive and physical skills are all developed around the time of language acquisition. Consequently, children are also able to learn more than one language at a go. Ervin and Miller (1963) Chomsky puts up that, environmental factors that result in people’s ability to do certain things do not happen at the same rate and level with all people (Oates and Grayson, 2004). In his opinion, different people must have the ability to do separate things if the main cause is environmental because environmental conditions are varied and relative. However, because language acquisition is more of a biological process than an environmental process, every child who is exposed to more than one language is able to learn that language until perfection is reached. Special credence is given to the fact that children are better learners of language than adults. In their argument, the Navitists believe that at the early stages, children have a shaper and highly advanced language acquisition device that accommodates as many languages as possible. The vocabulary spurt of 18 – 24 months Another strong merit in the Navitist perspective of language acquisition is the fact that almost all children peak at the same time in their language acquisition effort. The Navitists state that even though children do not start learning language as perfectionists, they all make the attempt and give an indication that they are ready to learn language at a certain age. As such learning starts at those ages, children have their own way of manipulating the system to learn on a gradual basis till it comes to such a time that they can become perfect. This of course is a natural biological process that is why it happens with each other child, no matter where the child finds him or her self. Acquisition of grammatical rules In his build up to explaining how the whole complex act of language acquisition goes on, Pinker (1994) explains that all other the world, different languages have different grammar wholes that guides the language formation. Most of these rules are structured around the use of subject, verb and object in a sentence (Edwards and Mercer, 1987). But in a children’s attempt to learn language, the child has this natural capability to make out the rules for him or herself without any difficult assistance. This indeed also happens with cases where mentors from whom children learn language make a lot of mistakes in their word and sentence constructions. Despite some of these mistakes and differences in word and sentence construction from different teachers and mentors of language, children are always there to deduce rules from language they learn around them to become eventual perfectionists. Limitations to the Nativist Perspective In the face of all the merits given on the Navitist perspective in explaining how and why children acquire language, there remain some key weaknesses and limitations to that approach to language acquisition theory. Though psychologists like Chomsky insist on the all round nature of the approach, critics say there are major weaknesses and limitations such as the ones below. Reduction of Language to its Grammar In their first point, critics hold the view that the Navitist perspective of language acquisition put so much emphasis on grammar as the totality of language acquisition to the detriment of other key components of language development (Oates and Grayson, 2004). Indeed, it would be observed that language acquisition entails much more than the perfection of the grammar of a language. To this end, the fact that the Navitists base most of their argument on children’s ability to make up grammar and other language rules for themselves as evidence that language development takes place in a natural biological way is a major deficiency. The critics therefore expect that a lot more meaning and explanation could be given to language development situations such as non-verbal language development and other forms of language development that are not directly linked to grammar. Gradual pace of language Development Another major point held on by critics is the fact that if children learned language by natural biological processes, it would not have to take children going through a series of developmental stages of their language acquisition (Bruner, 1999). This argument is mostly held by environmentalists and behaviouralists who believe that language acquisition go through a series of stages because the act of learning from environmental factors takes place at the pace at which children are exposed to language learning enforcers. REFERENCES Bruner, J. S. 1990, Acts of Meaning, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. Edwards, D. and Mercer, N. 1987, Common Knowledge: the development of understanding in the classroom, London, Methuen. Hundeide, K. 1988, ‘Metacontracts for situational definitions and for presentation of cognitive skills’, Quarterly Newsletter of the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition, vol. 10, pp. 85–91. Kramsch, C. 2005, The applied linguist and the foreign language teacher: Can they talk to each other? In: Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 18, 1-16. Long, M. 2003, Native-speaker/non-native speaker conversation and the negotiation of comprehensible input. In: Applied Linguistics 4, 126-141. Mercer, N. 1995, The Guided Construction of Knowledge: talk amongst teachers and learner, Clevedon, Multilingual Matters. Oates J. and Grayson A. 2004, Cognitive and Language Development in Children. Blackwell Publication Read More