Overview
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- The Behaviorist Interpretation
- The Nativist Interpretation
- Nature vs. Nurture
- The Social Interactionist Interpretation *
- Is Theory Important?
The Behaviorist Interpretation
- Stimulus -> Response (S -> R) view of all behavior
- Classical conditioning explains word meaning acquisition (new meanings to old stimuli)
- Watson's research on Little Albert
- Operant conditioning explains language acquisition and behavior (behavior controlled by consequences; power of reinforcement)
- Skinner's Verbal Behavior
- Problems (among others)
- language is creative
- knowledge of language is very complex (show language puzzles from intro notes)
- no clear evidence that parents consistently reward "good" language and not "bad" language
The Nativist Interpretation
- Noam Chomsky most famous language nativist
- Transformational Generative Grammar
- attempts to explain how we can produce and understand an unlimited number of sentences
- universal grammar (UG) as innate
- child does need to learn what all human languages have in common (UG); only needs to learn what is unique to his or her specific language
- principles (innate) and parameters (acquired quickly)
- language acquisition device (LAD)
- innate ability to acquire language
- The Nativist Perspective in Review
- 031.2 "we have not ruled out the nativists' basis contention, which is that human beings are born with an innate capacity for language. What remains in the debate is to determine the relative importance of this innate capacity in comparison to the influence of environmental factors."
