The question:
In a small group, discuss why it is that behavioral theories can account
sufficiently well for the earliest utterances of the child, but not for utterances
at the sentence and discourse level. Do nativist and functional approaches
provide the necessary tools for accounting for those later, more complex
utterances?
★Class: E3A
★Number:495415189
★Name: 林政言
From the following situations, we can see that behavioral theories can account
sufficiently well for the earliest utterances of the child. In the earliest days of learning
utterance, the child can learn and mimic utterance by hearing people talking around
him or her and by looking at people’s observable performances that is the approach
adhered to behavioral theories. Besides, operant conditioning, the typical model of
behavioral theories, shows a more sufficiently account for the earliest utterance. For
example, as the child says“want food”to his or hers parents, parents understand and
give the child food. With the desired consequence, the child knows and will say the
same words as he or she is hungry next time; that is, the behavior of the child is
controlled by the consequence and is reinforced to become conditioned. However, if
the earliest utterance of the child is based on behavioral theories without explaining
the abstract language, meanings, and creativity, the child only learns the surface of the
language instead of inner parts. Clearly, behavioral theories can’t account for
utterances at the sentence and discourse level.
In contrast to the behavioral, native theories are free from the limit of science
method to explore the unobservable, invisible, and abstract linguistic structural
development of the child. Nativist asserts that the child gets into the language
acquisition with the genetic capacity. A language acquisition device (LAD),
Chomsky claimed, is described as consisting of innate linguistic properties explaining
why the child can be master of the language with the highly abstract nature in a short
time. The child has the ability to distinguish sounds from different environment,
organize and classify linguistic data, know only a particular linguistic system is
possible and other kinds are not, and to evaluate the developing linguistic system by
acquired data to construct the simplest one. From the description above, aspects of
meaning, abstractness, and creativity can be account for more sufficiently. Moreover,
Universal Grammar (UG) expanded from the notion of LAD accounts for the
earliest utterance of the child sufficiently by exploring question formation, negation,
word order, discontinuity of embedded clauses, subject deletion, and so on. Most
importantly, nativist admits that the child’s language is systematic at any stage.
Therefore, the child forms hypotheses based on the received information of language
and tests these hypotheses by talking. Then the child can comprehend the later, more
complex, and abstract grammar rules and structures of language.
Functional approaches affirm that the ability of language will be improved through
the social interaction. The theories support that language is a tool that we use it in our
daily life. Furthermore, language is neither the ability of grammar nor knowledge of
language. Through Piaget’s point, we can find that learning language for children is
determined by the cognitive development. He thinks that children have the conceptual
interpretive abilities. As the cognitive development becomes mature, language follows
it and grows up. According to the reciprocal model, the rule of teaching must exist in
it. In that way, nurturing will appear. This theories show that the discourse and
functions of language have enough reasons to explain why children can create new
sentences.