Language and

Linguistics
Project no 1

Submitted by: Rabbia Arshad

Farasha Fazal
Rabia Faheem

Submitted to: Dr Fakhira Riaz

Subject: Language and Linguistics
M.Phil. Linguistics I
11-1-2017
 Language Acquisition Theories

During the 20th century there have been two major theories of language learning by
children. These are two theories form the two major schools of thought known as,
'Behaviorists' and 'Mentalists'. Behaviorist school is of the view that language learning
is entirely the product of experience and that our environment affects all of us.
Mentalist school have suggested that everybody has an innate language learning
mechanism.

Behaviorism

B.F. Skinner is the founding father of Behaviorist school. Skinner and his followers are
known as behaviorist. According to them language learning process is known as
operant conditioning. Conditioned behavior is behavior which is the result of repeated
training. Operant conditioning means the behaviors of humans and animals that
operate on environmental factors that create negative or positive consequences. Also
known as response-stimulus, operant conditioning allows the participant to associate
certain behaviors with either positive or negative consequences and learn from these
consequences.

Experiment:

To prove their theory, they conducted an experiment. They put a rat in a box containing
a bar. If it presses a bar, it is rewarded with a pellet of food. Nothing forces it to press
the bar. The first time it probably does so accidentally. When the rat finds that the food
arrives, it presses the bar again. Eventually it finds that if it is hungry it can obtain food
by pressing the bar. Then task is made more difficult. The rat only gets rewarded if it
presses the bar while a light is flashing. At first rat is puzzled. Eventually it learns the
trick. Then the task is made more difficult again. This time the rat only receives food if it
presses the bar a certain number of times. After initial confusion it learns to do this also.
And so on, and so on.

In operant conditioned, reinforcement plays a vital role. There are two kinds of
reinforcement:

A) Positive Reinforcement: Praise and rewards are positive reinforcement. Experiments

have shown that positive reinforcement works much better in bringing about good
learning.

B) Negative Reinforcement: Rebukes and punishments are negative reinforcement. The

behaviorists also claim that we learn language by imitation and association.

Chomsky Take on Behaviorism: Noam Chomsky explicitly rejects the behaviorists'

position that language should be thought of as verbal behavior, arguing that it should be
thought of as knowledge held by those who use language. Chomsky suggests that the
learner of any language has an inbuilt learning capacity for language that enables each
learner to construct a kind of personal theory or set of rules about the language based
on very limited exposure to language.

Mentalism

Noam Chomsky is the founding father of Mentalist School. Chomsky and his mentalist
followers claim that a child learns his first language through cognitive learning. They
claim that language is governed by rules, and is not a haphazard thing, as Skinner and
his followers would claim. According to Chomsky, the child is born with a mental
capacity for working out the underlying system to the jumble of sounds which he hears.
He constructs his own grammar' and imposes it on all the sounds reaching his brain. This
mental grammar is part of his cognitive framework, and nothing he hears is stored in his
brain until he has matched it against what he already knows and found a 'correct' place
for it within this framework. Chomsky argues that language is so complex that it is
almost incredible that it can be acquired by a child in so short a time. He says that a
child is born with some innate mental capacity which helps the child to process all the
language which he hears. This is called the Language Acquisition Device, and he saws it
as comprising a special area of the brain whose only function was the processing of
language. This function, he argues, is quite separate from any other mental capacity
which the child has.

When Chomsky talks about 'rules', he means the unconscious rules in a child's mind
these rules enables him to make grammatical sentences in his own language. Chomsky
calls these grammatical rules, Universal Grammar, which is same for every child
irrespective of their mother tongues. Though Chomsky does not mean that a child can
describes these rules explicitly. For example, a four or five-year-old child can produce a
sentence like I have done my work; he can do that because he has a 'mental grammar'
which enables him to form correct present perfect structures and to use such structures
in the right and appropriate situations. But he is unable to define the formation of
present perfect tense.

BEHAVIOURISTS APPROACH MENTALIST APPROACH

1) Language acquisition is a stimulus- Language is an innate, in-born process.

response process.
2) Language is a behavior conditioned.
3) Children learn language by imitation
and analogy.
4) Language learning is based on practice.
Language is not a behavior like other
behaviors, but a specific mental process.
Children learn language by application.
Language learning is analytical,
generative and creation.
 5) The role of imitation, repetition, The role of exposure to language quite
reinforcement and motivation are very vital.
significant in language learning.
6) Language acquisition is the result of Language acquisition is the result of
nature. nurture.

Criticism on Behaviorism

Behaviorism is a learning theory that emphasizes on the objectively observable

behaviors of human beings. For the first few decades of 20th century, Behaviorism had a
great impact over other theories of learning. After the mid of the twentieth century, the
bloom of Behaviorism faced a setback due to the emergence of some other schools of
thought like the cognitive revolution and mentalism. Behaviorism being a lens to study
human learning had a great influence for a span of time but ultimately it left some
loopholes that happened to be criticized and other approaches to learning and
acquisition emerged. Behaviorism was successful in explaining some aspects of the
language, but it turned out to have number of pitfalls.

The criticisms on the features of Behaviorism are discussed as follows:

Human reactions are unpredictable:

According to Noam Chomsky, Bloomfield could not explain the mechanisms that occur
between the different stimuli and reactions, i.e. it is not possible to foretell how a
person will react to a certain stimulus. Chomsky in his intensive review of behaviorism
gave a good example to show that point of weakness. He said if we have a picture and
many people are looking at it, it is not necessary to have the same response. On the
contrary, some people will like it some will hate it, and some will ignore it and so on.
Two theories that suppose different solutions to this problem:

1) The mentalist theory: It supposes that the variability of human conduct is due to the
interference of some non-physical factor, a will or mind that is present in every human
being. The reason why we cannot foretell a person’s actions is that this mind or will
does not follow cause-and-effect sequences of the material world.

2) The materialistic (mechanistic) theory: It supposes that the variability of human

conduct, including speech, is due only to the fact that the human body is a very complex
system. This theory argues that human actions are part of cause-and-effect sequences in
the same way as actions studied in physics or chemistry. However, due to the
complexity of the human body and especially of its nervous system one cannot foretell
human actions either.

Behaviorism lacks productivity

Another area of criticism is that by following Skinner' model, human beings would be
considered as parrots who simply repeat what they hear and maintain sentences
through reinforcement. This process can easily be refuted because one of the human
language properties is productivity. Productivity means that languages have infinite
number of utterances and sentences. Skinner chose to align his theory with Darwin's
ideas, but Darwin believes that humans are constantly improving themselves to gain
better self-control. Here again the theory of Skinner got criticized. This process also
excludes creative language. For example, in poetry, every day we listen to hundreds of
poems which were produced without following the process of stimulus – response and
reinforcement.
Internal factors cannot be excluded:

As contested by other proponents like Albert Bandura, everything cannot be explained

by outside influence. Behaviorism is against anything that has to do with mental issues
and internal factors. They lack adequate description of how language is processed in the
brain excluding notion of meaning in that sense. The brain is no mere passive memory
bank of behavior/environment interactions (Roediger and Goff 1998). They also exclude
mental issues like consciousness, intuition, concept formation, and so on.
Behaviorism does not account for other types of learning, especially learning that occurs
without the use of reinforcement and punishment.

Human and animal behavior cannot be compared

Behaviorism points out that there is no difference between human behavior and
animal behavior. K. Boulding (1984) questions Skinner's application of principles of
animal behavior to the much more complex human behavior. In using animals as
substitutes for humans in the exploration of human behavior, Skinner makes a big
assumption that general laws relating to the behavior of animals can be applied to
describe the complex relations in the human world. If this assumption proves false,
then the entire foundation upon which behaviorism rests will come fall apart.

Unprepared behaviors cannot be generalized:

According to Seligman, the problem with behaviorists, is that they have mainly
concentrated their experiments on small amount of input needed for the unprepared
association to take place and then create laws that generalize unprepared behavior to
all types of behaviors. Language is composed of well-prepared stimuli that are easily
able to create relationships between verbal words and ideas or objects.
Behaviorism does not account for semantics

Skinner believed that language is acquired by stimulus – response association and then
reinforcement. For example, if a child feels hungry (stimulus), the child will say, "want
milk" (response) and then his or her parent will give him or her some milk. As a result,
the child will store the utterance "want milk" in his or her memory because it fulfills the
child's need and finally, the utterance becomes a part of the child's habit formation. This
brings the idea of rewarding and punishing. As a result, behaviorism does not account
for semantics which is an important component of the language.

Principles of language deny Habit formation:

Mere habit formation cannot be the basis of, for instance, language acquisition.
According to linguists the proper use of a language system needs a dynamic mastery of
the rules and principles of the language system in terms of input and output and ability
to apply rules. This mastery of the rules is often called knowledge or competence.

Behaviors can be changed/adapted

People and animals can adapt their behavior when new information is introduced, even
if a previous behavior pattern has been established through reinforcement. It only says
that regardless of what behavior an individual learned in the past through the system of
reinforcement, he can still be able to modify and/or change it when new circumstances
offer new information.

Grammar of a language is too complex

Bloomfield is of the view that a practical stimulus received by one person leads to a
linguistic substitute reaction. This linguistic substitute reaction is the linguistic substitute
stimulus for another person who reacts to this kind of stimulus with a practical reaction.
Whereas, Mentalists consider that language and its grammar is too complex in nature to
be learnt or acquired consciously or unconsciously.
Conclusion

There are gaps left by the framework of Behaviorism as it can only examine observable
response. Behaviorism views language as stimulus – response method of acquisition
whereas human beings can say millions of words without observable stimulus and this is
against behaviorism. Behaviorism can be criticized because they lack adequacy at
certain points of how language is acquired by human beings.

Criticism on Mentalism
Chomsky’s ideas have profoundly affected linguistics and mind-science in general. Critics
attacked his theories from the get-go and are still attacking, paradoxically
demonstrating his enduring dominance.
Problem with the claim that Chomsky’s theory of language “is being overturned” (as if it
had ever been accepted, which is not true), is that it’s not clear what “Chomsky’s theory
of language” refers to. He has proposed a succession of technical theories in syntax, and
at the same time has made decades of informal remarks about language being innate,
which have changed over the decades, and have never been precise enough to confirm
or disconfirm. And it’s not so easy to say what “Universal Grammar” or an innate
“language faculty” consists of; it’s necessarily abstract, since the details of any
language, like Japanese or English, are uncontroversial learned.

John Locke’s criticism on innatism (mentalism)

John Locke was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the
most influential of enlightenment thinkers. Locke understands innate ideas as ‘thoughts
printed on to the soul at the point of existence, which it brings into the world with it’. As
examples of potential innate knowledge, taken from the debate at the time, he offers
‘Whatever is, is’ and ‘It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be’.
(Empiricists can accept that these claims are a priori if they are analytic – which
arguably, they are. However, Locke’s target here is specifically with the claim that they
are innate.) He assumes that innate knowledge must be universal – every human being
has it. However, he immediately objects, that just because some claim is universally
accepted, that doesn’t mean it is innate – it may be that we could explain in some
other way why everyone agrees.

His arguments against innate knowledge are:

1. If there is innate knowledge, it is universal.

2. For an idea to be part of the mind, Locke says, the mind (the person) must know or
be conscious of it: ‘it seems to me nearly a contradiction to say that there are truths
imprinted on the soul that it doesn’t perceive or understand. No proposition can be
said to be in the mind which it has never known or been conscious of.’

3. Therefore, innate knowledge is knowledge that every human being is or has been
conscious of. 4. Children and ‘idiots’ do not know theorems in geometry or ‘It is
impossible for the same thing to be and not to be’. (They do not know these claims,
because they do not understand them.) (By ‘idiots’, Locke means people with severe
learning disabilities.)

5. Therefore, these claims are not innate.

6. There are no claims that are universally accepted, including by children and ‘idiots’.

7. Therefore, there is no innate knowledge.

Some of the Locke’s arguments are given below:

“It is an established opinion amongst some men, that there are in the understanding
certain ‘innate principles’; some primary notions … characters, as it were stamped upon
the mind of man; which the soul receives in its very first being, and brings into the world
with it.”
Locke argues that we have the faculties to attain knowledge without these innate
principles. We have eyes, for example, which perceive color, and it would seem strange
for us to have this capacity and to still require innate knowledge of color.

Locke then attacks what he perceives to be one of the common arguments for innate
knowledge: the argument “that there are certain principles, both speculative and
practical, (for they speak of both), universally agreed upon by all mankind “. If is the
case, so the argument goes, then is seems reasonable to suppose that all people share
certain innate principles.
Locke says that this argument is flawed on two counts. First, even if certain principles are
universally held if does not follow that these principles are innate. There could be other
explanations why certain principles are universally held. Second, Locke argues that there
are no such universally held principles. He points to two principles that he thinks are the
most likely candidates for universal acceptance:

“I shall begin with the speculative, and instance in those magnified principles of
demonstration, “Whatsoever is, is,” and “It is impossible for the same thing to be and
not to be”; which, of all others, I think have the most allowed title to innate. These have
so settled a reputation of maxims universally received, that it will no doubt be thought
strange if anyone should seem to question it. But I take liberty to say, that these
propositions are so far from having a universal assent, that there is a great part of
mankind to whom they are not so much as known. “
Locke argues that even the law of identity and the law of non-contradiction are not
universal held. He claims that “children and idiots have not the least apprehension or
thought of them “. Certain people will then (on the innate view) have principles in their
minds which never become knowledge. But if these principles are innate then they must
become knowledge, says Locke. He puts it this way: “it seeming to me near a
contradiction to say, that there are truths imprinted on the soul, which it perceives or
understands not”

B.F Skinner’s arguments against mentalism:

1- We may object first to the predilection for unfinished causal sequences.

With this argument he points out that mentalist explanations are never complete.
Putative explanations of behavior may be based on mental events such as pain or
pleasure, but only rarely is any attempt made to define what these subjective
experiences are or how they can or do affect behavior.

2- … a preoccupation with mental way stations burdens a science with all the problems
raised by the limitations and inaccuracies of self-descriptive repertoires.

With this statement Skinner points out that even without rejecting the value of
introspective observations, we are still faced with the problem of unconscious
processing and the tenuous link between observer’s evaluation of their own mental
processes and actual processes that led to emission of a response to both present and
previous stimuli.

3- Observations of one’s own behavior necessarily follows the behavior.

Here Skinner alludes to the fact that even if one could introspect or interpret what one’s
mental states and processes were when a decision was made to produce some
response, the self-interpretations must necessarily be elicited after the behavior. The
behavior itself would thus become a component of the interpretation and the original
state and causal relations would probably be modified. This is the general “chicken and
the egg” problem instantiated in the specifics of mentalist thinking.
Most of the objections are closely interrelated, so for Skinner, mentalism is to be
rejected because—

(1) It lacks “explanatory power.”

(2) It involves the employment of “theories.”

(3) It tends to invoke “homunculi” or “inner agents”, regarding man as an

“autonomous agent”.

(4) It distracts our attention from the study of behavior.

(5) It involves a dualistic ontology of the “mental” and the “physical”.

The psychologist Jerome Bruner also concluded that language acquisition not only
depends on LAD but also LASS or Language Acquisition Support System. The
environment a child grows up can also have a major effect on language acquisition.

One frequently cited idea of Bruner’s is the LASS, or Language Acquisition Support
System, a term coined in response to Chomsky’s LAD, or Language Acquisition
Device. The LASS refers to the importance of a child’s social support network, which
works in conjunction with innate mechanisms to encourage or suppress language
development.

Chomsky’s Innate Theory is criticized for the following reasons:

-The role of adult speech cannot be ruled out in providing a means of enabling children
to work out the regularities of language for themselves.

-It has proved difficult to formulate the detailed properties of LAD in an uncontroversial
manner, in the light of the changes in generative linguistic theory that have taken place
in later years, and meanwhile, alternative accounts of the acquisition process have
evolved.
-That there are principles of grammar that cannot be learned based on positive input
alone.

-The concept of LAD is unsupported by evolutionary anthropology which shows a

gradual adaptation of the human body to the use of language, rather than a sudden
appearance of a complete set of binary parameters (which are common to digital
computers but not to neurological systems such as a human brain) delineating the
whole spectrum of possible grammars ever to have existed and ever to exist.

-The theory has several hypothetical constructs, such as movement, empty categories,
complex underlying structures, and strict binary branching that cannot possibly be
acquired from any amount of input.