Universal Grammar: Evidence from Language Acquisition - Assignment Example

Running head: UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR Universal Grammar: Evidence from Language Acquisition your school Though I realize you have provided Chapter 7 to your company, I still only have pages 140-153. Missing only the beginning might be a problem since I couldn't provide Trask's definition of Universal Grammar (I assumed he defined it as others have). Also, in the first three paragraphs, using additional sources, I noted Trask's error in presenting the rejection of "imitation/reinforcement" theory as anything resembling recent. If you think this is unacceptable to your instructor (it really shouldn't be), just delete the first three paragraphs and all but the Trask reference (the paper will then be exactly three pages, which was required). As usual, "the company" now has an earlier deadline than they had given me, despite them still not having given me the entire chapter, so I hope you're not late. Best, anon Abstract Trask (1995) presented two types of evidence in support of Chomsky's theory that the innate condition of the human brain at birth explained language acquisition, a process that occurs without effort or direct or indirect teaching in children. First, despite the differences in the experiences of children within and across cultures, in deaf and hearing children, and in those who are and are not mentally retarded, the same stages in the same order occur in acquiring language. Second, in support of the role of the human brain at birth, there is evidence that those who have not been exposed to a language past a "critical period" of 12 or 13 years have not been able to learn the rules of a language. Universal Grammar: Evidence from Language Acquisition Trask (1995) reviewed evidence supporting "universal grammar," a phrase describing Chomsky's revolutionary theory of psycholinguistics, i.e., there are linguistic universals (commonalities among all languages), the human brain is equipped at birth for the acquisition of language, and thus children acquire language without either direct or indirect instruction. It would be an insult to "the greatest linguist" in history, i.e., Chomsky (Rondal, 1994), not to note that while more than a quarter of a century ago may be a dot over the history of human existence, it is disingenuous to describe the demise of the Skinnerian operant-conditioning model (referred to by Trask as the "imitation-and reinforcement model,", p. 140) as occurring "not so many years ago" or, more dramatically, "in recent years" (p. 140). One could provide pages of citations to support recognition of the brief time course of Chomsky's "revolution," but Pinker, himself a giant in psycholinguistic theory (Rondal, 1993), should suffice (interview, Rondal, 1993). Chomsky's theory of language acquisition (beginning in 1959, cited in Pinker's interview, Rondal, 1993) quickly relegated (unusual in the social sciences) to a chapter in the history of psychology the then-accepted Skinnerian operant-conditioning theory that babies learn language by reinforcement of language imitations. Because most humans have observed babies and young children, it is understandable that social scientists, among others, would have recognized the essential correctness of implicating the brain at birth - by comparing, for example, their own struggles in learning a second language, even if in surroundings where the second language was spoken, with the ease with which children not only acquire a first language, but with the ease with which immigrant children, compared to their parents, acquire a second language. Understanding why the theory that language developed as a function only of experience was accepted in the first place requires recognizing the virtual destruction of experimental psychology caused by the prior "behaviorist revolution" - which virtually outlawed even the thought of innate dispositions (Watson, 1919, as cited in Hunt & Ellis, 2004). In this way, one might think of Chomsky, not to minimize his genius, trained in linguistics, not psychology, as the boy who recognized that "the emperor had no clothes." Chomsky's general method was to use observations of language behavior to draw inferences about unobservable mental processes, e.g., errors in regularizing irregular verbs, such as saying "goed", provided evidence that rules, rather than imitation, guided acquisition, and thus his work became one of the major contributions to the "cognitive revolution" in experimental psychology, where the same basic method is used: "The fact that language plays a central part in the study of the mind - and perhaps even the fact that we now pay real attention to the scientific study of the mind at all - is a consequence of [Chomsky's Syntactic Structures, 1965]" (Anderson, 2004, p. B4). Trask (1995) presented two kinds of evidence that has supported and extended Chomsky's theory of language acquisition as a function of innate properties of the human brain at birth. First, the ordering of the stages of acquiring language are the same both within and across cultures. Second, disruptions in the usual course of language acquisition have resulted in losing the ability to acquire language in the way that was enabled by the state of the brain at birth. Stages in Language Acquisition (Trask, 1995) Prior to speech (associating sounds with meaning), across all cultures, by around the second month of birth, babies begin making "cooing" (lips parted) sounds and by around six months, they are babbling (consonant/vowel sounds). Two phenomena rule out the role of experience. First, at this point, deaf babies, i.e., who have had no experience hearing sounds, are at the same stage as hearing babies. Second, different languages have different numbers of permissible phonemes, but babies' babbling consists of phonemes not in their own languages, i.e., ruling out imitation. Indicating a role experience does have, deaf babies soon stop babbling (discussed below) and hearing babies begin to confine their babbling to the phonemes of their own language. At around ten to twenty months, babies enter the one-word stage (though the "word" at first typically is a consonant/vowel repetition, e.g., "mama," heard in babbling but now associated with meaning - e.g., consistently using "mama" to refer to the baby's mother - suggesting parent reports of age of first word may be in the eye of the beholder). Content words (i.e., nouns and verbs), rather than function words (e.g., articles, prepositions), are used. At around 18- to 24 months, the two-word stage begins. As a sign of the acquisition of syntax, babies are consistent in their word orderings, e.g., always using the order "want juice," but not "juice want." At this stage, without any of the effort that would be required in an adult learning a language, on average, babies have a vocabulary of about 10,000 words. Rule governed errors, such as regularizing irregular verbs, noted above, and plurals, e.g., "childrens eat," provide evidence against imitation. After several months, the stage ends and is not followed by a three- or four-word stage. Instead, utterances may be as short as three words or as long as ten or more. The remarkable consistency of stages in word orderings also is evidence that babies are acquiring rules. Negatives, for example, proceed from using "no" at the beginning of a declarative sentence, e.g., "No I want juice" to "I no want juice" to "I don't want juice" (p. 144). By the age of 5 years, the acquisition of syntax, with very few exceptions, is complete. (Obviously, vocabulary continues to develop, over the lifespan if one remains both healthy and receptive.) Returning to deaf babies, if parents use even crude sign language, the babies begin to babble in signs, and go through the same stages in the same order as hearing babies in acquiring sign language. The fluency and consistent correctness of their parents is irrelevant - the babies acquire perfect sign language. (The fate of babies who receive no exposure to sign language is discussed below.) There are hearing babies born in cultures where adults use a Pidgin language - formed in cultures where adults speaking different languages take parts of the different languages to form a Pidgin - not rule-governed and efficient only for simple purposes. These babies interact with each other and effortlessly create a Creole, a rule-governed language based on the Pidgin, and go through the same stages as babies learning established languages. Disruptions in Language Acquisition (Trask, 1995) Deaf babies who are not exposed to any form of signing, pick up on gestures their parents make and try to create their own sign language, but with only very limited success. There is evidence in support of Lenneberg (1967, cited in Trask, 1995) that there is a "critical period" for language acquisition, ending at about 12 or 13, after which the brain loses its original capacity for facilitating language acquisition. Thus, if children are deprived of access to sign language past this age (in misguided futile attempts to foster speech), they are being deprived of potential acquisition. It should be noted that the aspect of language lost after the critical period is mainly the acquisition of syntax, the rules of a language. In the examples presented by Trask (1995), though difficult, vocabulary can be learned. When 31 years old, a woman who had been mistakenly diagnosed as retarded when she didn't begin to speak as a baby, was diagnosed as almost deaf by a doctor and given a hearing aid. Although she was then able to hear and most clearly not retarded, and she was able to learn spoken and written vocabulary, she was not able to learn the rules of a language beyond the stage of an approximately 2 -year-old child. "Genie," deprived of exposure to language until the age of 13, reached the same stage of development, although, unlike the 31-year-old-woman, Genie never advanced beyond 7- or 8 years in other areas (her mental capacity at birth can't be known). However, persons with the genetic disorder, Williams Syndrome, who suffer severe mental retardation and are virtually helpless, acquire language as quickly and as well as children in general, indicating that passing the "critical period," rather than mental retardation, accounted for "Genie's" inability to acquire language rules. Conclusion Evidence based on children within- and across-cultures, deaf or hearing, mentally retarded or not, going through the same stages in language acquisition clearly has supported the theory that we are born with an innate capacity to acquire language. Clearly, there is evidence that we lose this capacity as we pass puberty, but it is important that researchers continue to try to investigate the brain processes and mechanisms responsible for this loss in hopes of some day being able to work in new ways with those who have suffered irreparable damage to areas of the brain essential for language. References Anderson, S. R. (2004). The cognitive revolution: Most influential books. Chronicle of Higher Education, 51, B4. Hunt, R. R., & Ellis, H. C. (2004). Fundamentals of cognitive psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill. Rondal, J. A. (1993). Pieces of minds in psycholinguistics: Steven Pinker, Kenneth Wexler, and Noam Chomsky (Pinker interview). International Journal of Psychology, 28. 459-480. Rondal, J. A. (1994). Pieces of minds in psycholinguistics: Steven Pinker, Kenneth Wexler, and Noam Chomsky (Chomsky interview). International Journal of Psychology, 29, 85-104. Trask, R. L. (1995). Language: The basics. London: Routledge. Read More