PSYCH 250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Patricia K. Kuhl, Language Acquisition, Baby Talk
Document Summary
Grand theories of language acquisition: behaviorist perspectives (skinner): Problem: language acquisition occurs w extreme speed and efficiency with minimum parental feedback. Direct drilling is not a feature characteristic of early child: nativist perspective: children are born with innate grammar development. Innate property (in the genes): language acquisition device (lad) Learning is a matter of mapping input onto innate linguistic knowledge. Problem: no one is born speaking english or chinese. Biological system must be open enough to learn any language: interactionist perspective: language achievements emerge through an interaction of innate abilities and environmental influences. Linguistic levels of language organization: phonology sounds of language/hand shapes of sign language, semantics meaning, grammar sentence structure, pragmatics conventional meaning, discourse conversation structure, non-linguistic communicative knowledge (face-hand gesturing) 0-12 months - prelinguistic stage in child development: are babies pre-linguistic, learning the sounds of language. New borns already know their language or are aware of it: infant language acquisition.
