Friday, May 19, 2023
Adquisition Language Theory
In this theory, language acquisition isn’t limited to children; many people learn a second language later un life, however, second language acquisition can differ from first language acquisition in many aspects.
All children go through the same stages of language development while acquiring one or more native languages: they start by babbling, then they learn their first word, go through a so called one-word stage when they can utter one word at a time. Then enter the two-word stage and finally learn the more complex structure of their language.
The stages mentioned by Piaget:
Sensorimotor stage (0-2 years old)
Babies in this stage “assimilate” information about the world. It is during this stage that children use egocentric language, as they talk about themselves or simply when they have a necessity.
Preoperational stage (2-7 years old)
In this stage, mental development oof schemas allows them to quickly “accommodate” new words and situations. They develop simple sentences based on their social interactions.
Concrete operational stage (7- 11 years old)
During this period, children develop the ability to think more logically and begin to overcome some of the egocentrism characteristics of the preoperational stage. They learn that is possible to transform reality through language and perform mental operations such as classifying concepts. Their language becomes more complete stably.
Formal operational stage (11 years and beyond)
In this stage, there are no major differences in the language people speak, but thinking is what goes under chances. When a person meets this stage, they become capable of elaborating theories and hypotheses to explain the world, systematically focusing on problems, and over time sharpening the ability of thinking and reason.
Chomsky concluded that children must have an inborn faculty for language acquisition. According to this theory, the process is biologically determined - the human species has evolved a brain whose neural circuits contain linguistic information at birth. The child's natural predisposition to learn language is triggered by hearing speech and the child's brain is able to interpret what s/he hears according to the underlying principles or structures it already contains. This natural faculty has become known as the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). Chomsky did not suggest that an English child is born knowing anything specific about English, of course. He stated that all human languages share common principles. (For example, they all have words for things and actions - nouns and verbs.) It is the child's task to establish how the specific language s/he hears expresses these underlying principles. The theory relies on children being exposed to language but takes no account of the interaction between children and their carers. Nor does it recognise the reasons why a child might want to speak, the functions of language.
Costley, K. C. (s/f). Avram Noam Chomsky and his cognitive development theory. Eric.ed.gov. Recuperado el 19 de mayo de 2023, de https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED543301.pdf
Moreno Mojica, J. A., (2016). La lingüística cognitiva: una aproximación al abordaje del lenguaje como fenómeno cognitivo integrado. Análisis. Revista Colombiana de Humanidades, 48(88), 41-51.
Cognitive Theory. (s. f.). StudySmarter US. https://www.studysmarter.us/explanations/english/language-acquisition/cognitive-theory/
EL PROCESAMIENTO DEL LENGUAJE · GitBook. (s. f.). https://catedu.github.io/intef-neuropsicologia-dificultades-aprendizaje/index0.html
An article based on Noam Chomsky's work
Introduction
During the past decades, scientist have wondered how do we (as humans) learn a language. Many researches had shown that in fact, we have di...