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THE LOGICAL PROBLEM OF LANGUAGE LEARNING

People used to think that children learn by imitating those around them.>> How is it possible for children who still have immature cognitive capacity to succeed in L1 development and acquire complex linguistic system quite easily?

>> What are the possible reasons of children’s success in developing their linguistic competence despite of their lack cognitive capacity?

>> How do you think it’s possible for children who still have immature cognitive capacity to succeed in L1 development and acquire complex linguistic system quite easily?

Most linguists and psychologists assume that children’s achievement (succeeding in L1 development with general ease) must be attributed to innate and spontaneous language-learning constructs and/or processes.

The supporting arguments for this view are as follows:

1. Children’s knowledge of language goes beyond what could be learned from the input they receive

Children often hear incomplete or ungrammatical utterances, yet they can filter the language they hear to not incorporate into their L1 system.

Children are commonly recipients of simplified input from adults.

Despite of only hearing a small number of possible grammatical sentence, children are able to abstract general principles and constraints which allow them to interpret and produce an infinite number of sentence which they have never heard before.

Children’s linguistic competence includes knowledge of which sentences are not possible, although input doesn’t provide them with this information.

e.g.L1 students’ input positive evidence or actual utterancesL2 students’ input negative evidence or correction

Chomsky (1980) argued that the child’s acquisition of grammar is ‘hopelessly underdetermined by the fragmentary evidence available.’ 

He attributed this indeterminacy to two major sources:the degenerate nature of the input. 

the problem of unavailability of negative evidence.

2. Constraint and principles cannot be learned

Children use language in accordance

with general universal rules of

language even though they haven’t yet

developed the cognitive ability

necessary to understand these rules.

Therefore, we will know that children

must learn those rules by using

something else, not imitating.

3. Universal pattern of development cannot be explained by language-specific input

The way how children develop their won linguistic competence is not directly determined by the input they receive.

Children have similar pattern of language development whether they live among African or Asian.

Example:All children in the world’s first production of speech is bilabial consonants such as “mom/ mommy” (English/ American), “mama/mak” (Indonesian), “umma” (Korean)

Thank you…