Describe the first language acquisition theories of Noam Chomsky and B. F. Skinner; how does each of these theoretical frameworks account for child language acquisition? Which of these two theories, in your opinion, can shed more light on the mechanisms underlying children's language development? Provide relevant evidence and examples to support your answer.

Child language acquisition has been a central topic in psychology and linguistics for many years. The rate at

which this phenomenon occurs (as well as the apparent ease with which language is mastered) has led to a

debate to try and answer the question of how children are able to accomplish this. (Yule, 2010, p.175;

Crystal, 2010, p.244; Saffran & Thiessen, 2009, p.68) During the 1950s two key theories were proposed -

one by the psychologist B. F. Skinner (published in his book 'Verbal Behavior'), in which it is suggested that

language is a learned behaviour; and another by the linguist Noam Chomsky (published in his review of

Verbal Behavior), in which he critisised the ideas of Skinner, whilst simultaneously providing his own that

could account for child language acquisition. (Peccei, 2006, p.2; Kuhl, 2000, p.11850; Garnham, 1985, p.21)

This essay will describe the theories of Skinner and Chomsky, as well as the arguments for and against. It

will then provide an argument in favour of Chomsky's theories, which can better explain the mechanisms

behind children's language development, with evidence and examples to support this.

From the 1920s to the 1950s, Behaviourism was a popular approach in the field of psychology that based its

theories on the observation of how people behave, rather than the mental processes behind this behaviour. It

was thought at the time by Skinner that language was (like that of animal behaviour) an 'operant' - i.e. the

result of spontaneous stimuli occurring in the child's immediate environment, which then leads to a

reinforcement of behaviour (Kuhl, 2000, p.11850; Cook & Newson, 2007, p.51). Skinner was one of the

leaders in this field, and suggested that the principles behind this theory could be applied to child language

acquisition. (Fromkin et al, 2011, p.325; McLeod, 2013) Skinner went on to apply the observations he had

made with animals onto humans, suggesting that language is a learned behaviour, much in the same way that

an animal learns to perform a task through repetition, reinforcement, and reward (Kuhl, 2000, p.11850;

Saffran & Thiessen, 2009, p.69). In 1957, Skinner published his book entitled 'Verbal Behavior', in which he

put forward his theories (Cook & Newson, 2007, p.51). He proposed that the 'input/output laws' could be

applied to language acquisition - in other words, when a child (referred to by Skinner as an 'organism')

observed something happening in the physical world (input), the child would likely respond (output). For

example, this means that if a mother uttered something to the child, this input would then cause the child or

'organism' to produce a response. The thought processes behind this response, however, did not concern

Skinner. (Garnham, 1985, p.21; Cook & Newson, 2007, p.51) This is evident in the title of his book,

whereby it is clear that the driving force behind his theory was that language was perceived as a 'verbal

habit' acquired passively, rather than as an active thought process (Peccei, 2006, p.2). The key principle

behind these verbal habits (and behaviourism in general) is that the child (or organism) will learn through

imitation - which is then either positively reinforced (through reward) or negatively reinforced (through

correction) - it was thought that the positive reinforcement would assist in teaching the child the meaning of

words, as well as the significance in terms of communication and reward. (Fromkin et al, 2011, p.326;

Lemetyinen, 2012)

In 1959, Noam Chomsky wrote a review of Skinner's book, in which he criticised the behaviourist approach,

and made his own proposal as to how children acquire language. In contrast to the Behaviourist view of

language being acquired through interaction with the environment, Chomsky focused on the role of the

mind. Chomsky's theory (generally referred to as 'nativism') is based on the idea that 'the grammars for

human language are too complex and abstract to be learned on the basis of the type of experience to which

children have access'. (O'Grady et al, 2011. p.387; Cook & Newson, 2007, p.4) He proposed that there must

be a language acquisition device (LAD) that is present from birth that can account for the automatic

operations that are triggered when an infant is exposed to language (Crystal, 2010, p.244; Cook & Newson,

2007, p.52). Chomsky explained that children acquire language by means of an innate 'language faculty' that

enables them to understand the rules particular to their native tongue (Peccei, 2006, p.3; Kuhl, 2000,

p.11850). The language faculty can be thought of as a uniquely human 'mental organ', which has the

capacity to grow (Cook & Newson, 2007, p.49). Chomsky proposed the idea of the existence of a 'Universal

Grammar' (UG) as 'a system of principles and parameters' - the idea being that all languages have

grammatical features in common that are 'general properties' (for example, sounds that are used to construct

words, and word categories such as noun, verb and adjective), which would be considered principles; and

specific grammatical features that are particular to a certain language (such as rules for the positions of

subject, object, and verb within a sentence), which would be considered a parameter (Fromkin et al, 2011,

p.331; Cook & Newson, 2007, p.58-9; Peccei, 2006, p.114). It is the general properties that are considered

the linguistic knowledge that all children are born with. (Cook & Newson, 2007, p.5; Fromkin et al, 2014,

p.13; Lemetyinen, 2012) Another aspect of Chomsky's theory is the idea that the child's innate ability to

acquire language is independent from its surrounding environment. Further evidence to support his theory of

an innate 'language faculty' is the 'poverty-of-the-stimulus' argument, whereby even if the stimulus is prone

to errors (i.e. a parent or caregiver producing errors in their speech, such as hesitations, slips of the tongue,

and errors within the syntax) then the child is still able to construct a grammar, and acquire language

(Peccei, 2006, p.4; Cook & Newson, 2007, p.58).

Skinner's book 'Verbal Behavior' has been critised by Garnham (1985, p.21-2) as 'almost entirely

speculative' with 'no attempt to show how these claims might be tested, let alone any attempt to test them'.

The key principles behind Skinner's Behaviourist approach suggest that children acquire language through

imitation, reinforcement (correction and reward), and analogy. However, studies conducted on parent and

child interactions have brought about several interesting findings that seem to suggest much of what Skinner

proposed is incorrect. (Fromkin et al, 2011, p.326) The idea of imitation is, to some extent, correct in that it

has been observed that children do indeed imitate, however, this only goes so far as to account for the

repetition of sounds and vocabulary (Crystal, 2010, p.244). Fromkin (et al, 2011, p.326) gives an example of

this:

ADULT: He's going out. CHILD: He go out. ADULT: That's an old-time train. CHILD: Old-time train. ADULT: Adam, say what I say: CHILD: Where I can put them? 'Where can I put them?'

As we can see from this interaction, the child does indeed attempt to repeat or imitate what the adult has

said, but cannot yet reproduce this with the same level of grammar. (Fromkin, 2011, p.326) Roger Brown (of

Harvard University), along with his colleagues, observed conversations between parents and their children,

and noticed that there was rarely a correction concerning grammar. For example, when a child uttered 'her

curl my hair', the mother made no attempt to correct the grammar; however, when the child went on to say

'Walt Disney comes on Tuesday', the mother corrected the day to Wednesday, because the child had made a

factual error. (Fromkin et al, 2011, p.326) In the instances where we do observe adults attempting to correct

children's grammar, we see that any efforts are hopeless, as the child will, for the most part, be oblivious to

the errors they produce, as can be seen in the following conversation (Peccei, 2006, p.2):

Child: Nobody don't like me. Parent: No, say: "nobody likes me." Child: Nobody don't like me. (the above sequence is repeated eight times) Parent: No, now listen carefully; say: "nobody likes me." Child: Oh! Nobody don't likes me.

Stemming from the idea of imitation is analogy - whereby a child would use a phrase it has heard as a

template for the creation of others. Lila Gleitman (cited in Fromkin et al, 2011, p.327-8) explains that if a

child has heard the phrase 'I painted a red barn', then he or she would be able to use that as a template to

form a new sentence - 'I painted a blue barn'. Whilst this sounds like a plausible hypothesis, a fundamental

problem arises with the formation of questions. Let us suppose that a child hears the two phrases - 'The boy

was sleeping' and 'Was the boy sleeping?' - by analogy, the child would assume that if he or she wanted to

form a question, they would need to apply a rule: 'Move the auxiliary to the position preceding the subject.

Let us now suppose that the child has acquired the ability to form the more complex phrase - 'The boy who

is sleeping is dreaming about a new car' - by analogy, the child would move the auxiliary verb 'is', and place

it at the beginning of the sentence, forming '*Is the boy who sleeping is dreaming about a new car?'. This is

an ungrammatical utterance, and studies have shown that children never make grammatical errors like this.

(Fromkin et al, 2011, p.328) It could be thought therefore, that Skinner's ideas of imitations, reinforcement,

and analogy cannot live up to the recent studies that have been conducted.

However, with these findings in mind, it is worth mentioning that Chomsky (1959, p.43) acknowledged that

there is some validity in B. F. Skinner's original observations, when he wrote his review of 'Verbal

Behavior':

'As far as acquisition of language is concerned, it seems clear that reinforcement, casual observation, and natural inquisitiveness (coupled with a strong tendency to imitate) are important factors ...'

Indeed there is some evidence that we have seen that stands by this. Researchers have observed that adults

tend to adapt their language whilst speaking to children (known as either 'motherese' or 'child directed

speech'). Adults will generally raise the pitch in their voice, use exaggerated intonation, along with adapted

words (such as 'doggie'). (Crystal, 2010, p.245) Another key feature of child directed speech is that the adult

will tend to ask questions in order to interact with the child and elicit responses. This could be seen as

evidence in favour of Skinner's theory. But further studies have shown the possibility that motherese is not

that beneficial in terms of language development, but rather a tool that helps the adult in gaining the child's

attention. (Peccei, 2006, p.5)

In his review of Verbal Behavior, Chomsky argued that Skinner's theories cannot account for the

complexities concerning grammar:

'... the remarkable capacity of the child to generalize, hypothesize, and "process information" in a variety of very special and apparently highly complex ways which we cannot yet describe or begin to understand, and which may be largely innate, or may develop through some sort of learning or through maturation of the nervous system.' (Chomsky, 1959, p.43)

In recent times, researchers have been able to utilise modern techniques in order to investigate how infants

process information. A study conducted on the responses of eight-month-old babies who were given four

nonsense words to listen to in a randomised order, resulted in the discovery that the infants were taking

statistics on the frequency of sound patterns that they heard. (Fromkin et al, 2011, p.338; Kuhl, 2011) This

could support Chomsky's idea of there being an innate 'language faculty', which can be further evidenced by

the fact that there is a set number of stages within language development that progress in a particular order

in all normal infants. (Fromkin et al, 2014, p.14) The stages are as follows: cooing, followed by babbling,

the one-word stage, followed by two-word stage, then telegraphic speech, moving on to the development of

morphology and syntax, followed by question-forming, negation, and then the gradual understanding of

meaning (Yule, 2010, p.173-80). It is interesting to note that this same progression of stages has been

observed in deaf children, and that sign languages are similar in every respect to spoken languages with their

own vocabulary formed of gestures, as well as syntax (Fromkin et al 2014, p.15).

In conclusion, we have seen how the theories of B. F. Skinner and Noam Chomsky have both tried to

account for child language acquisition, as well as the logic behind each of their arguments that led to each of

their conclusions. Skinner believed that the behaviour of animals could be applied much in the same way to

humans - stating that it is due to process of stimulus and response, along with repetition and reinforcement

that could account for the development of language. Indeed on the surface, much of the interactions that take

place between adults and infants do appear to account for this idea. But the criticisms of Chomsky are too

great to ignore - Skinner's Behaviourist theory simply cannot account for the complexities of grammar, and

that children acquire language despite the fact that adults are prone to making mistakes, are perhaps the most

important observation that Chomsky made. Evidence from studies of adult-child interactions show us that

grammatical corrections are somewhat rare, and that if adults do correct the child in any way, it is generally

due to mispronunciations or factual errors. This is probably due to adults trying to correct grammar, and

children being unable to comprehend that they are making mistakes of this sort. Evidence from recent

research conducted has shown us that infants must be born with some form of language acquisition device.

The idea of innateness coincides with the biologically determined set of stages that occur within language

development - these stages are universal to all, including deaf infants. It is clear therefore, that the only

theory that could possibly shed more light on the underlying mechanisms of language development, would

have to be Chomsky's, as he sought to investigate the internal (the mind), rather than the external (the

environment).

List of References

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