Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Supervised by:
Dr.M.Larouz
Presented by:
Aabla BIQICHE
Theories of Language
Acquisition
Theories
Nativist
Chomsky
Non Nativist
Cognitive
Piaget
Behaviorist
Skinner
Linguistic Universals
Outline
1-History
2- Universal Grammar (UG)
3- UG and First Language
Acquisition
4- UG and (SLA) Second Language
Acquisition
History of UG
History of UG
Before the 1960s: Structuralism
Description of levels of procuction
Phonology
Morphology
Syntax
Semantics
Lexicon
History of UG (continued)
Skinner 1950s
Behaviorism
Sitmulus-response-reinforcement
Habit formation
History of UG (continued)
Chomsky 1960s viewed Skinners
work
Inadequate of describing the more complex
aspects of lge acquisition
like Grammar and Syntax
History of UG (continued)
1. Poverty-of-the-stimulus: the logical
problem of lge acquisition.
Ungrammatical and incomplete input.
Grammatically acceptable output.
Children hear only a finite number of stces
Abstract the rules and principles of the lge
Produce an infinite number of possible
stces
No formal training or correction
History of UG (continued)
2. Constraints and principles cannot be learned:
Primary lge= L1
Children are very young when learning L1
Single words around age 1
Basic grammar around 6
At age 6 no one has cognitive ability to understand the
principles of grammar as a system
But because of some innate capacity, the child is
capable of using it
History of UG (continued)
3. Patterns of development are
universal
Children learn the various aspects of lge in
a very similar order.
If children only learned what they were
taught the order of what they learned
would vary in different learning
environment
But that is not the case
History of UG (continued)
Brown 1973
Found a very specific order of MORPHEME
acquisition for children learning English as their
first lge:
1. Present progressive-ing ( Daddy jump-ing)
2. Plural-s ( Many book-s)
3. The irregular past forms ( I run- I ran)
History of UG (continued)
Chomsky attributed all this to what he
calls:
Language Acquisition Device
A function of the brain that is specifically for learning lge
An INNATE biological function common to human
beings.
History of UG (continued)
Chomsky later added two concepts:
1. The Minimalist Program:A distinction
between
Lexical
Functional category development
Learners need to learn only the lexical
information of words.
Syntactic function develops automatically.
History of UG (continued)
2. The prinicples and parameters model:
Is more complicated since we all have LAD
independent of lge ( same across lges).
We also have built in rules for grammar
modification of target lge.
These are the princples
History of UG (continued)
This means according to Chomsky that when
learning a lge whether 1st, 2nd or 3rd , while
learning the grammar your mind
automatically adjust the already existing
rules so that they fit the target lge
In that case the parameter would be set so that
in Arabic comes after the noun t describes
whereas in English it comes before.
History of UG (continued)
Chomsky and his followers combined all the
theories into one framework for lge
acquisition and called it
GRAMMAR;
UNIVERSAL
UG
UG is unique to humans
A set of principles and parameters that
constrain
all human lges
A set of highly abstract, unconscious rules that
are common to all languages (Noam Chomsky)
UG is a framework and a theory of how people
learn a lge.
Questions to Linguists
Chomskys
Chomskys answer
answer to
to the
the 11
question
question
1 Knowledge of lge
The LA task: input
Linguistic competence
Grammar
( knowledge of lge)
The LA problem:
All (normal)children acquire this linguistic competence, which extends beyond the
primary input.
Children and adults can understand and produce stces which they have never heard
before
Input
UG
Grammar
1. Underdetermined input
2. Degenerate input
3. Lack of negative evidence
Degeneracy
The language that the child hears is not always
perfect; adults make mistakes, hesitate, change their
minds about what they are going to say.
This kind of input, that is, input which includes
ungrammatical or partial forms as well as grammatical
ones, is sometimes referred to as degenerate.
The existence of degenerate data has constituted
another argument for UG; knowing that children have
built-in knowledge of what a grammar must be like,
then the presence of degenerate data zill not mislead
them.
Child:
he falled down
Mom:
Child:
Positive evidence
Consists of things that are actually
present in the input (as to what is possible
in a lge)
The word order parameter for English may be
triggered by hearing stces such as:
Use of lge
Chomsky makes a distinction between
competence and performance.
Between theories of our underlying
knowledge and theories which account
for our use of that knowledge.
1-The content of UG
1-1-Levels of representation
S-structure:
*
S
VP
D-structure:
*
S
Comp
i
NP
INFL
present
VP
V
ti
Comp
INFL
present
V
NP
NP
NP
1-2-Subsystems of UG
UG is
assumed to
consist of a
number of
different
principles, or
constraints
which form
different
subsystems
of UG
theory
D-structure
X bar
theory
S-structure
Subjacency
L.Form
The E.C.P
X bar theory
An approach to
syntax
Based on 4 main
lexical categories
V N Adj Prep
These categories
become heads
of phrases
Bar notation is
a device used
to give a more
detailed and
consistent analysis
of constituents
*
Ex. The noun Pirate
becomes the head
of the following
phrase:
Det
the
N
PP
pirate
of the
Caribbean
The substance of the change is that the black box now has
definite contents; it produces the grammar of the language
through instantiating principles and setting values for
parameters
Input
UG
Principles and
parameters
L1 Grammar
UG and SLA
L1 Input
UG
principles
and parameters
L2 Input
L2 Grammar
L2 knowledge of Lge
1- ILge Grammars: refer to the learners internalized
competence which underlie the ILge hypothesis.
2- L2 Knowledge of lge:
1-1- Competence;
Knowledge of a particular speaker
Embodied in the mind\brain
Systematic
1-2- Performance;
Utterance in a particular situation
Acoustically perceptible
Subject to accidental and non-linguistic
constraints
L2 Input
UG
L2 Grammar
Step A
A native speaker of a
particular lge knows
a particular aspect of syntax.
E.g. Binding principle
Step B
This aspect of syntax could
not have been learnt from the
lge input typically available
to children.., the input to
the black box is not sufficient
To show the children that the
Binding principles are necessary
Step C
This aspect of syntax is not
learnt from outside.
If binding principles are present
(step A), but are not learnt
(step B), they can not come
from outside the childs mind
Step D
This aspect of syntax is built
in to the mind
binding
principles are part of the
black box it self.
Access to UG in SLA
*
UG
Other Mental
Faculties
L1
Grammar
Ac
ce
ss
Indirect Access
No Access
Di
re
ct
L2
Grammar
Implications of UG
Implications for the classroom can only be drawn for core areas of
grammatical competence. Classroom acquisition depends crucially on
the provision of appropriate syntactic evidence to trigger parametersetting; certain aspects of vocabulary are also crucial.
Existing textbooks already supply appropriate evidence for parametersetting; the grammatical component of syllabuses may be improved by
use of principles and parameters, even if this reveals what does not
need to be taught, as may the teachers awareness of language.
As the principles of UG are built-in to the mind, they do not have to be
learnt; the learner automatically applies them to whatever language he
or she encounters. It does not matter whether the learner is faced with
Japanese or English; the same principles of phrase structure apply.
Implications of UG
(continued)
The settings for parameters are not constant but vary from one
language to another; the crucial aspects of a language for the learner
to master are the appropriate settings for the parameters; since the
learner already knows the principles as they are part of his or her
mind, all that is needed is sufficient evidence to set the values for the
parameters.
Given the learner knows the phrase structure principles, all that has
to be learnt is whether the setting for the head parameter is headfirst or head-last.
For this the learner needs linguistic evidence in the form of actual
sentences spoken by the people around him or her; hearing John ate
an apple the child learns it is head-first in English. The learner needs
to hear relevant evidence for setting the parameters of the grammar.