Drawbacks of the Behaviorist Approaches
1 The abstract nature of language and integral relationship between meaning and utterance were unresolved. 2 It does not account satisfactorily for the generalization process that is inferred in the theory. 3 It does not account for the creativity evident in even a young child’s ability to comprehend and produce novel utterance.
Four steps for a child to acquire his/her L1:
Imitation →reinforcement →repetition →habituation 模仿 强化 重复 成形 positive negative good habit bad habit
positive reinforcement: praise or reward negative reinforcement: corrections good habit: correct performance bad habit: errors
Criticisms of behaviorist learning theory
It can not adequately accounts for the capacity to acquire language; for language development itself; for the abstract nature of language; for a theory of meaning.
In his classic, Verbal Behavior, Skinner was commonly known for his experiments with animal behavior in “Skinner boxes,” but he also gained recognition for his contributions to education through teaching machines and programmed learning.
Chapter 2 First Language Acquisition
Presenter:Tory
Questions:
Do children learn their L1 only through imitation? Why a young child is more sensitive for words like ‘apple, dog, doll’ than words like ‘atomic bomb, clone, embassy’?
Seven language functions (by Halliday) a. instrumental function b. regulatory function c. interactional function d. personal function e. heuristic function f. imaginative function g. representative function
Functional Approaches
1.This approach probes LA not from the angle of language structure, but from the angle of language communication. 2. viewpoint: Children can learn a language successfully for the reason that they realize language could help do things.
Weakness of The Nativist Approach
It is hard to find out the nature of LAD; It is difficult to observe LAD.
Contributions of The Nativist Approach
1) Freedom from the restrictions of the so-called “scientific method” to explore the unseen, unobservable, underlying, abstract linguistic structures being developed in the field; 2) Systematic description of the child’s liguisitic repertoire as either rule-governed or operating out of a parallel distributed processing capacities; 3) The construction of a number of potential properties of Universal Grammar.
McNeil
According to McNeil, LAD has four innate properties: the ability to distinguish speech sounds from other sounds in the environment; the ability to organize linguistic events into various classes which can later be refined; knowledge that only certain kind of linguistic system is possible and that others are not; the ability to engage in constant evaluation of the developing linguistic system so as to construct the simplest possible system out of the linguistic data that are encountered.
N. Chomsky
A. N. Chomsky (1928-) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, and activist. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics” and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as computer science, mathematics, and psychology.
Dan Slobin(1971, 1986), demonstrated that in all language, semantic learning depends on cognitive development and that sequences of development are determined more by semantic complexity than by structural complexity.
The generative model My cap That horsie Allgone milk Mommy sock
pivot
open word
First rule of the generative grammar
Sentence
Pivot word＋Open word ＋
Summary of The Native Approach
The Nativist Approach Viewpoint:
Children’s ability to tatives of this approach
Eric Lenneberg N. Chomsky McNeil
The Nativist Approach
language learning is species specific; language learning is determined by LAD; language learning is internalization of linguistic rules; the role of environment is not significant.
Functional Approaches e.g. A child says “Mommy sock”
Meanings: 1 agent-action( Mommy is putting the sock on) 2 agent-object (Mommy sees the sock) 3 prossessor-prossessed (Mommy’s sock) …
Behaviorist learning theory
(popular in the 1950s and 60s)
Viewpoint: Language learning is a kind of behavior similar to other human behaviors. Language is learnt in much the same way as anything else is learnt. stimulus → organism → response ↓ ↓ ↓ input the learner imitation e.g. ‘This is a pencil → ‘This is a pencil’.