Language Acquisition
 Innate Programming in Children
 Children seem to know:
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how language look-like; substantial amount of innate
knowledge
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language is rule-governed; a finite number of principles govern
the enormous number of utterances
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languages are hierarchically structured; the knowledge that
several words can go in the same structural slot
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language makes use of operations which are structure
dependent; that each slot functions as a unit in a sentence which can
be moved around
Chomsky’s Content Approach
 Child’s brain naturally contains a considerable amount of specific
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information about language
Children come to language learning with certain expectations; they
know in advance the possible routes which language can take
Learners are pre-wired with knowledge of universal grammar
This knowledge is not ready waiting the moment child is born but
takes time to mature
When time is right the innate knowledge requires little exposure to
language for the knowledge to emerge
Pre-wired knowledge is specific to language and is independent of
general intelligence
Process Approach
 Children have inbuilt puzzle-solving equipment which
enables them to process the linguistic data they come across
 Instead of possessing advance information, children are born
with some sort of process mechanism to analyze the sort of
structures that characterize human language
 Not innate knowledge but processing information and
forming internal structures; when these capacities are
applied to the speech the child hears he succeeds in
constructing a grammar of his native language
Are children wired with knowledge of UG or with Puzzle solving
equipment?
Linguistic
knowledge
Grammar
Puzzle-solving
equipment
Grammar
 The two approaches are sometimes undistinguishable
but there is a crucial difference
 In both approaches the child may be end up with same
set of language universals and they are the result of
inbuilt analytic procedures but not there are at the
beginning
 Process Approach comes in two versions;
 the intelligent version-the child makes use of the
cognitive abilities as he would to cope with everything
else he comes across in the world
 The linguistic version- child’s processing mechanisms
are geared specifically for languge
Content, intelligent process or linguistic process? The
possibilities
 Evidence for content approach:
Children are aware of universal constraints; they never utter a sentence
impossible one for human languages
 Do children always obey universal constraints?
 Ex: Which dress has Charlie asked John to buy and some oranges
Which doll Anna knows who has stolen
 It means we are quite unlikely to find similar sentences in children
language
Various studies suggest that children are not pre-wired with absolute
information about language universals from the beginning
The universal constraints are acquired gradually
 Young children often do not pay attention to the syntax, and either
answer at random, or utilize a ‘probable world strategy’ that is interpret
sentences by arranging the words to give the most plausible meaning
 Whereas
Chomsky insisted on one structurally possible interpretation of the
utterances and that any other interpretation would go against universal
constraints
But
The most plausible conclusion is that children do not have any firm,
fixed beliefs about language as they acquire it; they do not seem to
know what they look for, or what to avoid- though some of this
knowledge clearly develops over the course of time
Chomsky’s switch-setting theory
 UG is partly like a switchboard with its switches in neutral position;
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children know in advance about the possible routes but they have to find
out which particular option has been selected by the language they are
learning
Once they discover this, they flick each switch and the system functions
Chomsky focuses on children’s omissions for evidence
Use of incomplete utterances
The brief type of utterance often alternates with longer ones
Leaving out the subject pronouns (I, he etc.) and auxiliary verbs (am, is
etc.)
Because: they have temporarily set a switch wrong
they have wrongly assume that English is a pro-drop language
Gradually children reach a point in maturation when they notice the
presence of such items
 Problems raise by Chomskyean proposal:
Children leave out numerous other things other than pronouns and auxiliaries- a good
theory would link all the omissions together
Setting or re-setting a switch should have ‘proliferating consequences’ according to
Chomsky such as in the case of re-switching of the pronouns and auxiliaries- but, in
fact, the auxiliaries creep in one by one over several months
Moreover, there are several possible explanations for children’s early omissions: leaving
out unstressed items, at early stage they cope with only full ‘lexical’ items not with
little grammatical items
Chomsky’s Head position-Switch
Children might know in advance that language structures have a head (key word), and
that languages tend to put the modifiers (words relating to the head) constantly
either before or after it.
But
 Children are consistent in their treatment of heads and modifiers may be because
they are sensitive to the order of the words they hear so there is no need to assume
that a child has a ‘set parameter’
 Furthermore, if a switch had been set, we would expect children to
iron out various inconsistencies. They should say:
Ex: ‘Ago two weeks’ instead of ‘Two weeks age’
Where the modifier occurs (exceptionally) after the words it modifies.
But children show no real signs of behaving like this
Biggest weakness of switch-setting theory:
No one can agree how many switches there are or how exactly they are
set for language acquisition is just too messy a process to be
explained by the flick of a switch
Conclusions about Content Approach
 Does not seem to be borne out by evidence
 Children do not appear to have firm advance expectations about
language
 Children do not necessarily steer clear of sentences which are
prohibited by language universals
 Children do not acquire chunks of language by flicking a switch
 Chomskyean ‘universals’ may still exist but triggered by simple data,
requiring very little effort on child’s part and develop gradually
Process approach is better than Content?
 Offers various non-linguistic factors critical for guiding the child forward
through the thickets of language
 The most important are:
 Children’s needs; at two-word stage children all over the world seem to
talk about similar things, concerned primarily with the external worldboth with finding out about it and with getting what they want
General mental development
Parental speech
 But these factors address only ‘what propels children onwards’ and not
‘why there are certain broad outline similarities in the way children acquire
language’
 Undoubtedly, children talk about everyday needs but it cannot account for
similarities in the development of language structure
 No explanation why we find parallel structural developments in different
children
 No justification why children proceed to further stages of language
development when their own primitive structures have the desired effect
 Secondly, if a child uses language creatively and have a firm grip of
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linguistic structure but dislikes interacting with others so much that
never speaks to his parents directly, he provides evidence against the
view that children are social beings who cater for their needs through
communication
Cognitive development: commonly held notion that language
acquisition is both dependent on it and caused by it
The development of comparative constructions occurs at a time when
a child start recognizing the things
But, the simultaneous development of different abilities does not
prove that one is dependent on the other for in a normal child many
aspects of growth take place at around the same time
In many children general cognitive development is unrelated to their
grasp of language structure
Man studies suggest that cognitive development can not provide the
definite key to acquisition of language structure- even though it is
clearly important for meaningful communication
I got it
My disability
Not never to walk from it
It shares my space, breathes the same air
I can not have the day off
I lost the Me
I got under everything
That was not poems
( by Kate)
Language can not only be spared, but even enriched, when
other cognitive abilities are impaired
 Statistically there is a link between items produced frequently by parents, and
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those acquired early by the child
Fine-tuning hypothesis (Cross 1977): parents gradually increase the complexity
of their speech as the child becomes ready for each new stage
Parents subconsciously attune their output to their child’s needs
Other than children’s innate ability, mothers posses an inner language teaching
device
But
No doubt, parents attune to their child’s interests but not language structure
No step by step programming
Motherese is not a syntax-teaching language children are selective due to their
inbuilt filter
Parental speech is more coherent
“language can not really be taught. One can only offer the thread along which
language develops on its own (Humboldt, cited in Slobin 1975)
A linguistic process?
 Bootstrapping approach: like computer giving some preliminary
commands which then allow to cope with more detailed programmes
 Linguistic bootstrapping might work as follows
children learn words which correlate well with actors, actions and
objects building these up in various semantic relationships
Ex: Kitty Drink
Drink Milk
Then they switch over to syntax
They start discovering that there is not necessarily a direct correlation
between types of word and the world
Some have a naming-insight which triggers a surge forward in vocabulary
and some may acquire a syntactic-insight which triggers an innate
processing device
 But
Language does not correlate sufficiently with the world
around so children can not persist in using meaning to
guide them
By classifying verbs as actions children can make strange
over-generalizations
Ex: She is noising
She is busying
Children can fail to recognize words such as love, hate, got
as verbs for they do not involve an action, but they do not
seem to have such problem
Properties of Language
 Language, the most flexible and versatile system of communication,
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human or non-human
Natural languages are codes and may be compared with other codes in
all sort of ways
The problem to decide what properties of the codes or communication
systems in which they operate is significant
Properties are a way to compare languages and analyze what properties
are either insignificant or of less importance
It is important to compares codes in terms of the degree to which a
certain property is present than in terms simply of whether the property
is present or not
Looking Backward
 Noam Chomsky's linguistic research in the late 1950s and 1960s was
one of the first to use the work in formal theories of computation to
illuminate some of the properties of the human mind
 The emphasis was on the learning of 'verbal materials' - nonsense
syllables, randomly constructed lists of words, and the like
 From the behaviorist point of view, to the extent that a theory might
be required; the ideal theory was one that predicted 'observed
behavior‘
 Chomsky argued that the number of sentences in any natural
language is, in principle, infinite
 In 1956 article (Chomsky, N. Three models for the description of
language. IRE Transactions on Information Theory, 1956, IT-2(3),
113-124.) defined a new game
 In this game, a theory is not asked to predict specific
behaviors in a specific context. Rather the theory is asked to
'generate all syntactically correct strings of words (and only)
the syntactically correct strings of words of some language
 ' That is, the theory should capture the essential properties of
all language behavior.
 This eventually led psychologists to shift there attention from
the memorization of linguistically related materials to
questions about the kind of capacities that the human mind
must possess in order to use language
 The properties of natural language became more important
than some specific linguistic utterance
 There are four significant properties that have frequently
been singled out for mention:
 Arbitrariness
 Duality
 Discreteness
 Productivity
However, in a broader sense, language universals, grammar,
cultural transmission, and displacement also stand for the
common properties of language
Arbitrariness
 Another property of language is that the symbols used are arbitrary. Any concept
or grammatical rule can be mapped onto a symbol
 Directly related to the link between form and meaning, the signal and the message
 By arbitrariness Saussure (200) means that there is no internal connexion between
the signifier and the signified
 It implies simply that the signifier is unmotivated: that is to say arbitrary in relation
to its signified, with which it has no natural connexion in reality
For Ex Compare the animal pictured to either the word "cat” or to its
pronunciation kæt
 There are sporadic instances in all languages of what is traditionally referred to as
onomatopoeia- the non arbitrary connection between the meaning and the form
 Most languages make use of sound, but the combinations of sounds used do not have any
inherent meaning - they are merely an agreed-upon convention to represent a certain thing by
users of that language.
For instance
 there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to
mean "nothing". Another set of sounds - for example, English nothing - could equally be used
to represent the same concept. Nevertheless, all Spanish speakers have memorized that
meaning for that sound pattern. But for Croatian, Serbian/Kosovan or Bosnian speakers, nada
means "hope“
 For Saussure, the traditional use of the word symbol to designate the linguistic sign is
awkward, for it is characteristic of symbols that they are never entirely arbitrary. They show at
least a vestige of natural connection between the signifier and its signified. For instance, the
scale could hardly be replaced by a chariot.
 Most languages make use of sound, but the combinations of sounds used do not have any
inherent meaning - they are merely an agreed-upon convention to represent a certain thing by
users of that language.
For instance
 there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to
mean "nothing". Another set of sounds - for example, English nothing - could equally be used
to represent the same concept. Nevertheless, all Spanish speakers have memorized that
meaning for that sound pattern. But for Croatian, Serbian/Kosovan or Bosnian speakers, nada
means "hope“
 though in principle the symbols are arbitrary, this does not mean that a language
cannot have symbols that are iconic of what they stand for. Words such as
"meow" sound similar to what they represent like Onomatopoeic words
 but they do not necessarily have to do so in order to be understood
 Many languages use different onomatopoeias as the agreed convention to
represent the sounds a cat makes.
 But vast majority of words are non-onomatopoeic: the connection between their
form and meaning is arbitrary; given the form it is impossible to predict the
meaning, and given the meaning its impossible to predict the form
 but they do not necessarily have to do so in order to be understood. Many
languages use different onomatopoeias as the agreed convention to represent the
sounds a cat makes. Arbitrariness increases the flexibility and versatility of
communication system
 The extension of vocabulary is not constrained by matching form and meaning
 A considerable burden upon memory in the language-acquisition process
 Arbitrariness makes the signals more difficult to interpret for one who does not
know the system
 In Chomskyean hypothesis that a good deal of principles including operation of
the structure-dependency in UG is also arbitrary
 For Chomsky, human beings are genetically endowed with a knowledge of
allegedly arbitrary general principles which determine the general structure of
all languages
 Absolute and Relative Arbitrariness
The fundamental principle of the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign does not
prevent us from distinguishing in any language between what is intrinsically
arbitrary---that is, unmotivated---and what is only relatively arbitrary. Not all
signs are absolutely arbitrary. In some cases, there are factors which allow us to
recognize different degrees of arbitrariness, although never to discard the notion
entirely. The sign may be motivated to a certain extent.
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the whole system of language is based on the irrational principle of the
arbitrariness of sign
 Diverse languages always include elements of both types; radically arbitrary and
relatively motivated
 But in proportions that vary greatly and this characteristic help to classify them
 There is no language in which nothing is motivated
 In any case motivation is never absolute
 Compound words and derivational forms are not absolutely arbitrary. They are
relatively arbitrary
 There is a certain connection between their sounds and meanings. With a particular
language, signs may be partially
motivated in a different way. For example (Saussure, 2001: 130), nineteen is not
absolutely arbitrary, but relatively arbitrary
 For Saussure, the process of combining nine and teen, to create new motivated
signs is fundamentally similar to the way in which we combine words to form
phrases.
 The meaning of the new phrase is related to the combined meanings of individual
words.
 all languages have as their basic elements arbitrary signs first, and then they have various
processes for combining these signs. In spite of the various processes of combining new
signs, the essential nature of language and its elementary constituents are never altered
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Arbitrariness is absolute, and motivation is relative
 There are two reasons for the claim:
 One is that the elements of a motivated sign themselves are arbitrary
 The other reason is that the value of the term as a whole is never equal to the sum of the
values of its parts
 For Saussure (ibid), “relative motivation implies:
(i) the analysis of the term in question, and hence a syntagmatic relation
(ii) appeal to one or more other terms, and hence an associative relation”,
 Languages always exhibit features of both kinds---intrinsically arbitrary and relatively
motivated--- but in varying proportions.
 Not only are the elements of a motivated sign themselves unmotivated, but the
value of the whole term is never equal to the sum of the value of parts
 Pain+ful is not equal to pain ful
 The unit is a product, a combination of two interdependent elements that are
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simply lumped together
They acquire value only through their reciprocal action in a higher unit pain
ful
The whole has value only through its parts, and the parts have value by virtue of
their place in the whole
That is why syntagmatic relation of the part to the whole is just as important as
the relation of the parts to each other
Relative motivation implies:
analysis of a given term, hence a syntagmatic relation
the summoning of one or more other terms; an associative relation
 Absolute arbitrariness and relative arbitrariness are an
important characteristic of all languages
 According to which, two types of language can be
classified in the world (ibid: 131-132). One is lexico-logical
languages, in which, absence of motivation reaches a
maximum. Chinese is claimed by him to be the typical
lexico-logical language
 The other is grammatical languages, in which, absence of
motivation falls into a minimum
Proto-Indo-European and Sanskrit are prototypical
examples for him.
Duality
 The property of having two levels of structure
 Distinct sounds – consonant and vowel
Organized in multiple ways to produce infinite meaning
combinations
 Never one sound = one meaning throughout a language
 The units of the primary level are composed of elements of the
secondary level and each of the two levels has its own principles of
organization
 The smaller, lower level elements are meaningless whereas larger
higher-level units have a distinct identifiable meaning
 All communication systems have such primary units but these units
are not necessarily made up of elements
 Advantage:
a large number of different units can be formed out of a small number
of elements
Discreteness
 is opposed to continuity or continuous variation
 Property of secondary elements
 Sounds used to produce language are distinct from one another (in
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our minds)
Contrast voiced bilabial b with voiceless bilabial p
Not logically dependent upon arbitrariness, it interacts with it to
increase the flexibility and efficiency of the system
Reduces the possibility of misunderstanding in poor conditions of
signal-transmission
In animal communication systems non-discreteness is associated
with non-arbitrariness
Productivity
 Makes possible the construction and interpretation of new signals
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and allows speakers to use linguistic signs in new combinations to
generate wholly new thoughts.
Allows to say that which has never been said, as in “I want to marry
you even though you’re a giraffe,” and be understood.
All language systems enable their users to construct and understand
indefinitely many utterances that they have never heard or read
before
Language is not learned solely by imitation and memorization
It manifests through grammatical structures
Interconnected with other properties in various ways
Language Universals
 A linguistic universal is a statement that is true for all natural
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languages
For example, All languages have nouns and verbs, or All spoken
languages have consonants and vowels
Research in this area of linguistics is closely tied to linguistic typology,
and intends to reveal information about how the human brain
processes language
The field was largely pioneered by the linguist Joseph Greenberg, who
from a set of some thirty languages derived a set of basic universals,
mostly dealing with syntax
Linguistic universals in syntax are sometimes held up as evidence for
universal grammar though epistemological arguments are more
common
linguistic universals tend to be properties of language which aid
communication
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absolute
Language Universals
implicational
 Absolute universals apply to every known language and are quite few in
number; an example would be All languages have pronouns
 An implicational universal applies to languages which have a particular
feature that is always accompanied by another feature, such as If a
language has trial grammatical number, it also has dual grammatical
number, while non-implicational universals just state the existence (or
non-existence) of one particular feature
 Also in contrast to absolute universals are tendencies, statements that may
not be true for all languages, but nevertheless are far too common to be the
result of chance
 They also have implicational and non-implicational forms
 EX: The vast majority of languages have nasal consonants
 However, most tendencies, like their universal counterparts, are
implicational
 For example, With overwhelmingly greater than chance frequency, languages
with normal SOV order are postpositional
 Strictly speaking, a tendency is not a kind of universal, but exceptions to
most statements called universals can be found
 For example, Latin is an SOV language with prepositions. Often it turns out
that these exceptional languages are undergoing a shift from one type of
language to another. In the case of Latin, its descendant Romance languages
switched to SVO, which is a much more common order among prepositional
languages
Language Universals
Unidirectional bidirectional
• In a bidirectional universal two features each imply the existence of each other
• For example, languages with postpositions usually have SOV order, and
likewise SOV languages usually have postpositions
• The implication works both ways, and thus the universal is bidirectional
• In a unidirectional universal the implication only works one way
• Languages which place relative clauses before the noun they modify again
usually have SOV order, so prenominal relative clauses imply SOV
• On the other hand, worldwide SOV languages show little preference for
prenominal relative clauses, and thus SOV implies little about the order of
relative clauses
• As the implication only works one way, the proposed universal is a
unidirectional one
Grammatical Backbone
 All languages must define the structural relationships
between these symbols in a system of grammar
 The grammar of language is simply the way it combines
smaller elements into larger elements
 Rules of grammar are what distinguish language from other
forms of communication
 They allow a finite set of symbols to be manipulated to create
a potentially infinite number of grammatical utterances
 Grammar is a complex and highly structured affair, and
operates in terms of concepts and categories, which
themselves have to be defined in the same way
 The technical terms are essential only for stating the
rules of grammar
 The grammar of any language is articulated in terms of
a sizeable number of classes of items and forms; the
categories of grammar
Cultural Dependence and transmission
 Language is learned (in a certain age window) because we have an innate
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predisposition (not an instinct) to learn it
When language is used in the contexts of communication, it is bound up
with culture in multiple and complex ways
The words people utter refer to common experience; the stock of knowledge
about the world other people share
Words also reflect their author’s attitudes and beliefs, their point of view,
that are also those of others
But
experiences are also created through language, by giving meaning to
it through the medium they choose to communicate that is
understandable to the group they belong to
Through all its verbal and non-verbal aspects, language embodies cultural
identity
Language as a system of signs is seen as having a cultural value
Speakers identify their language as a symbol of their social identity
 The word culture evokes the traditional nature vs.
nurture debate
 Are human beings mainly what nature determines
them to be from birth or what culture enables
them to become through socialization process?
 Essential Oils – are wrung –
 The Attar from the Rose
 Be not Expressed by Suns – alone –
 It is the gift of Screws –
 The General Rose – Decay –
 But this – in Lady’s Drawer
 Make Summer – When the Lady lie
 In Ceaseless Rosemary -
 Culture is not bound by biological time
 Culture refers to what has been grown and groomed
 Through a sophisticated technological procedure, developed especially
to extract the essence of existent species, culture forces nature to reveal
its ‘essential’ potentialities
 The technology of the word, printed syntax and vocabulary is analyzed,
among the many potential meanings that a word or utterance might
have, only those that best express its innermost truth and serve best for
the purpose
 The biological existence is not permanent but through the process of
language the essence becomes immortal and brings both back the
people and culture to life in the imagination of its readers and speakers;
the cultural transmission
 The word and the technology of the word have immortalized nature
 The nature and culture both need each other
 The use of written language is also shaped and
socialized through language
 Language Registers and text genres are also sanctioned
by cultural conventions, and these ways with language,
or norms of interaction and interpretation, form part
of the invisible ritual imposed by culture on language
users
 This is culture’s way of bringing order and
predictability into people’s use of language
So The Relationship Between Language And Culture Illuminate
Several Key Points
 1- culture is always the result of human intervention in the biological
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process of nature
2- culture both liberates and constrains
3- Culture is the product of socially and historically situated
discourse communities, that are to a large extent imagined
communities, created and shaped by language
4- A community’s language and its material achievements represent a
social patrimony and a symbolic capital that serve to perpetuate
relationships of power and domination; they distinguish insiders
from outsiders
5- Cultures are fundamentally heterogeneous and changing and a
constant site of struggle fro recognition and legitimation
6- Cultural encodings can also change over time in the same language
7- Linguistic Relativism and Semantic Cohesion
 8- Linguistic signs do not signify in social vacuum
 9- Sign-making and sign-interpreting practices are the result of
socio-cultural motivation
 10- Linguistic signs can be emptied of the fullness of their meaning
and used as symbolic shorthand in the context of situation or
culture
Minor traits of Human Language
 Uses voice-auditory channel (for most speakers)
 Reciprocity – speakers can both produce and receive
language
 Specialization – language symbols not used for much
else than language
 Rapid fade – must be nearby to hear
 Non-directionality – cannot easily direct speech to one
listener only