PSYC1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Language Development, Essentialism, Steven Pinker

• School: University of Sydney
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC1001
• Professor: Caleb Owens

Document Summary

Language development: language development: nature or nurture. 4 aspects of language: phonology: the sounds used by the speakers of a language. Sensory motor skills: semantics: the meaning of words and utterances, grammar/syntax: the form or structure of a language rules for combining words into meaningful sentences. Where biggest debate about the nature of language development have focused: pragmatics: the principles specifying how language is used in conversation; how discourse is structured. 3 approaches: empiricists / behaviourists (e. g. skinner, bandura) learning approach (nurture) Skinner: acquisition via positive reinforcement for saying words and sentences. imitation and reinforcement. social beings. Frequency of maternal responsiveness at 9 month predicts language acquisition at 17 months. Bandura: social learning perspective learning by. For instance, children have an innate ability. Chomsky: children are pre-wired with a universal. Humans have an inborn capacity for language could not have been learnt from adults as learning, a language acquisition device abilities that analyse linguistic input. learning guidelines (nature). grammar. everything.