ENGLISH STUDY GUIDE

Types of phrases
A phrase is a small group of words that forms a meaningful unit within a clause. There are
several different types, as follows:

Noun phrase
A noun phrase is built around a single noun, for example:
A vase of roses stood on the table.
She was reading a book about the emancipation of women.

Verb phrase
A verb phrase is the verbal part of a clause, for example:
She had been living in London.
I will be going to college next year.

Adjective phrase
An adjective phrase is built around an adjective, for example:
He’s led a very interesting life.
A lot of the kids are really keen on football.

Adverbial phrase
An adverbial phrase is built round an adverb by adding words before and/or after it, for example:
The economy recovered very slowly.
They wanted to leave the country as fast as possible.

USE OF CLAUSES ADVERBIAL, ADJECTIVAL AND NOMINAL CLAUSES

Dependent Clauses: Adverbial, Adjectival, Nominal
Dependent clauses may work like adverbs, adjectives, or nouns in complex sentences.

1. Adverbial clauses
Like a single-word adverb, an adverbial clause describes a verb (in the sentence's main
clause) and answers one of these questions
 where? why? how? when? to what degree?
An adverbial clause begins with a subordinating conjunction, which makes the clause
subordinate (dependent).

Common subordinating conjunctions:

after in order (that) unless

although insofar as until
as in that when
as far as lest whenever
as soon as no matter how where
as if now that wherever
as though once whether
because provided (that) while
before since why
even if so that
even though supposing (that)
how than
if that
inasmuch as though
in case (that) till
Example of adverbial clause answering when?

When will the flowers bloom? Answer: when spring arrives

Example of adverbial clause answering why?

Why didn't the poor woman have money? Answer: because she had lost her job

Example of adverbial clause answering where?

 Where is there fire? Answer: where there is smoke

Example of adverbial clause answering how?

How did he answer the question? Answer: as if he knew the subject quite well

Example of adverbial clause answering to what degree?

To what degree of lateness will Jones arrive? Answer: (later) than Smith (will arrive)

Another example of an adverbial clause answering to what degree?

To what degree is he young? Answer: (younger) than his brother (is)

Comma use with adverbial clauses

Comma use with adverbial clauses depends upon placement of the adverbial clause.
If the adverbial clause introduces the sentence, place a comma between it and the main
clause.
If the adverbial clause follows the main clause in a sentence, do not place a comma between
the two.

2. Adjectival clauses
Like a single-word adjective, an adjectival clause describes a noun (in the sentence's main
clause) and answers one of these questions
which one? what kind?
An adjectival clause usually begins with a relative pronoun, which makes the clause
subordinate (dependent).
Common relative pronouns:
that which who whom whose
NOTE: Use who, whom, and whose to describe people.
Use that and which to describe things.
Adjectival clauses always follow the person, place, or thing they describe, usually immediately.

Example of adjectival clause answering which one?

Which book did Joe read? Answer: the one that I gave him

Example of adjectival clause answering what kind?

 What kind of politician has the support of the people? Answer: one who is trustworthy

Adjectival clauses may also begin with selected subordinating conjunctions:

when - to describe a time

where - to describe a place

why - to describe a reason

Comma use with adjectival clauses

Comma use with adjectival clauses depends upon essentiality of the adjectival clause.
If the adjectival clause is essential (or "needed"), no commas should be used to separate it
from the main clause.
Generally, essential adjectival clauses should not begin with which.
 Examples

Since the adjectival clauses in the above examples are needed to clarify the noun that they
describe, they are essential and should not be separated from the rest of the sentence with
commas.

If the adjectival clause is nonessential (or "not needed"), commas should separate it from the
main clause.
Nonessential adjectival clauses should not begin with that.
Examples

Since the adjectival clauses in the above examples are not needed to clarify the noun that
they describe, they are nonessential and should be separated from the rest of the sentence
with commas.
Note the difference between the sentences in each pair:
3. Nominal Clauses
Like a noun, a nominal clause names a person, place, thing, or idea. A nominal clause may
function in a sentence as any of the following:
subject subjective complement appositive object of
preposition direct object indirect object retained
object

Nominal clauses may begin with interrogatives:

who whom what which whoever whomever whatever when where
how why
An interrogative beginning a nominal clause has a function within the nominal clause.
Each of the following examples illustrates
 a nominal clause
 the function of the nominal clause within the sentence
 the function of the interrogative within the nominal clause
Nominal clause as subject in sentence

Nominal clause as subjective complement in sentence

Nominal clause as object of preposition in sentence

Nominal clause as direct object in sentence

 Nominal clause as indirect object in sentence

Nominal clause as retained object in sentence

Nominal clauses may also begin with expletives:

that whether if
An expletive beginning a nominal clause has no function within the nominal clause.
Nominal clause beginning with expletive that

Nominal clause beginning with expletive whether

Nominal clause beginning with expletive if

 Comparison and contrast
To compare is to tell how two or more things are similar or the same.

The men all have blue shirts and red vests.

The men are all wearing brown hats.
The men all have mustaches.

Contrast
To contrast is to tell how two or more things are different.

Three people are taller than the others.

Two people are shorter than the others.
Only one person has blond hair.
Only one man has red hair.
There are three women but only two men.
Words and phrases that compare
You can use these words and phrases to compare (tell similarities):

 also

 as well as

 both

 in common

 in comparison

 like

 too

 same as

 similar

 similarly

Read this paragraph using comparison words and phrases.

Lisa and Janet have many things in common. They are very similar. They are both good
athletes. Lisa likes to play basketball. Janet also likes to play basketball. Lisa has a dog, and
Janet has a dog too. Janet enjoys playing piano. Similarly, Lisa also studies piano. Lisa has
three brothers. Janet has three brothers as well.
Words and phrases that contrast
You can use these words or phrases to contrast (tell differences):

 as opposed to

 but

 contrary to

 differ

 different from

 however
  on the other hand

 unlike

 while
Read this paragraph that uses contrasting words and phrases.

Mrs. Smith has three children. They are each different. Tommy and John are the boys. Tommy
likes to be outside and play baseball or football. John is different from Tommy because he enjoys
staying inside playing video games. On the other hand, Mary does not like baseball, football, or
video games. Mary enjoys studying and reading. The two boys have birthdays in
December, while Mary’s birthday is in July. Mary loves chocolate ice cream, but Tommy loves
vanilla ice cream. John is unlike the other two because he doesn’t even like ice cream!
Compare and contrast in English
This paragraph compares and contrasts the American Flag and the British Flag. The comparison
words and phrases are red. The contrasting words and phrases are blue.

The American Flag and the British Flag are similar in some ways. They have the same colors:
blue, red, and white. They are also the same size. However, the American Flag differs from the
British Flag because the American Flag has 50 stars. The American Flag has 13 red and white
stripes and a blue square and stars in the corner. Contrary to the American Flag, the British Flag
has a red cross on a white field with the Union Flag in the background.

Comparatives and Superlatives

Comparatives and superlatives are types of adjectives and adverbs that can be used to compare
two or more things or people.

R ecognize a participle w hen yo u find one.

Participles come in two varieties: past and present. They are two of the five forms—or principal
parts—that every verb has.

Consider the charts below.

Regular Verbs

SIMPLE SIMPLE PAST PRESENT

INFINITIVE
PRESENT PAST PARTICIPLE PARTICIPLE

to giggle giggle(s) giggled giggled giggling

to help help(s) helped helped helping

to jump jump(s) jumped jumped jumping

Irregular Verbs

SIMPLE SIMPLE PAST PRESENT

INFINITIVE
PRESENT PAST PARTICIPLE PARTICIPLE

to bring bring(s) brought brought bringing

to sing sing(s) sang sung singing

to swim swim(s) swam swum swimming

Notice that each present participle ends in ing. This is the case 100 percent of the time.
Past participles, on the other hand, do not have a consistent ending. The past participles of
all regular verbs end in ed, but the past participles of irregular verbs vary considerably. Bring and sing,
for example, have brought and sung—with wildly different endings—as past participles.
Consult a dictionary whenever you question the past participle form of an irregular verb.
Know the functions of participles.
Participles have three functions in sentences. They can be components of verb phrases, or they can
function as adjectives or nouns.
Participles in Verb Phrases
A verb can have as many as four parts. When you form a multipart verb—a verb phrase—you use a
combination of auxiliary verbs and participles.
Read these examples:
Our pet alligator ate Mrs. Olsen's poodle.
Ate = simple past tense (no participle).
When we arrived, Mrs. Olsen was beating our alligator over the head with a
broom.
Was = auxiliary verb; beating = present participle.
Our pet alligator has been stalking neighborhood pets because my brother
Billy forgets to feed the poor reptile.
Has = auxiliary verb; been = past participle; stalking = present participle.
Our pet alligator should have been eating Gator Chow, crunchy nuggets that
Billy leaves for him in a bowl.
Should, have = auxiliary verbs; been = past participle; eating = present participle.
Participles as Adjectives
Past and present participles often function as adjectives that describe nouns.
Here are examples:
The crying baby drew a deep breath and sucked in a spider crouching in the
corner of the crib.
Which baby? The crying baby. Which spider? The one that was crouching in the corner.
The mangled pair of sunglasses, bruised face, broken arm, and bleeding knees
meant Genette had taken another spill on her mountain bike.
Which pair of sunglasses? The mangled pair. Which face? The bruised one. Which arm?
The broken one. Which knees? The bleeding ones.
Participles as Nouns
Present participles can function as nouns—the subjects, direct objects, indirect objects, objects of
prepositions, and subject complements in sentences. Whenever a present participle functions as a
noun, you call it a gerund.
Consider these examples:
Sneezing exhausts Steve, who requires eight tissues and twenty -seven
Gesundheits before he is done.
Sneezing = subject of the action verb exhausts.
Valerie hates cooking because scraping burnt gunk out of pans alway s
undermines her enjoyment of the food.
Cooking = direct object of the action verb hates.
We gave bungee jumping a chance.
Bungee jumping = indirect object of the action verb gave.
 Joelle bit her tongue instead of criticizing her prom date's powder blue
tuxedo.
Criticizing = object of the preposition instead of.
Omar's least favorite sport is water-skiing because a bad spill once caused him
to lose his swim trunks.
Water-skiing = subject complement of the linking verb is.

What is a paragraph?
A paragraph is a group of related sentences that support one main idea.
Paragraph Structure
A useful way of understanding paragraph structure is to think of it as a block that is divided into three
sections: the beginning, the middle, and the end.
A basic paragraph follows this structure:

Topic Sentence (TS) - the beginning

Introduction: the first section of a paragraph; should include the topic sentence and any other sentences

at the beginning of the paragraph that give background information or provide a transition.

 Needs to state ONE idea clearly

 Useful Tip: Always put the most important information first!

Supporting Sentences (SS) - the middle

 Elaborates and explains the idea introduced in the topic sentence

 Provides evidence and examples
 Explains the evidence or example included - why is it relevant?
Body: follows the introduction; discusses the controlling idea, using facts, arguments, analysis, examples
, and other information.
oncluding Sentence (CS) - the end
 Makes links: back to the main idea of the paragraph; back to research question or topic
of the assignment; to the next paragraph
Conclusion: the final section; summarizes the connections between the information discussed in
the body of the paragraph and the paragraph’s controlling idea.

ORGANIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT

every paragraph in a paper should be:
Unified—All of the sentences in a single paragraph should be related to a single controlling idea
[often expressed in the topic sentence of the paragraph].
Clearly related to the research problem—The sentences should all refer to the central idea, or the thesis,
of the paper.
Coherent—The sentences should be arranged in a logical manner and should follow a definite plan
for development.
Well-developed—Every idea discussed in the paragraph should be adequately explained and supported
through evidence and details that work together to explain the paragraph's controlling idea.
There are many different ways you can organize a paragraph. However, the organization you
choose will depend on the controlling idea of the paragraph. Ways to organize a paragraph in academic
writing include:

Narrative: Tell a story. Go chronologically, from start to finish.

Descriptive: Provide specific details about what something looks or feels like. Organize spatially,
in order of appearance, or by topic.
Process: Explain step by step how something works. Perhaps follow a sequence —first, second, third.
Classification: Separate into groups or explain the various parts of a topic.
Illustrative: Give examples and explain how those examples prove your point.
The 8 parts of speech

1. Nouns

A noun is a person, place, concept, or object. Basically, anything that’s a “thing” is a noun,
whether you’re talking about a basketball court, San Francisco, Cleopatra, or self-
preservation.

Nouns fall into two categories: common nouns and proper nouns. Common nouns are
general names for things, like planet and game show. Proper nouns are specific names for
individual things, like Jupiter and Jeopardy!

2. Pronouns

Pronouns are the words you substitute for specific nouns when the reader or listener knows
which specific noun you’re referring to.

You might say “Jennifer was supposed to be here at eight,” then follow it with “she’s always
late; next time I’ll tell her to be here a half-hour earlier.”

Instead of saying Jennifer’s name three times in a row, you substituted she and her and your
sentences remained grammatically correct. Pronouns are divided into a range of categories,
and we cover them all in our guide to pronouns:
3. Adjectives

Adjectives are the words that describe nouns. Think about your favorite movie. How would you
describe it to a friend who’s never seen it?

You might say the movie was funny, engaging, well-written, or suspenseful. When you’re
describing the movie with these words, you’re using adjectives. An adjective can go right
before the noun it’s describing (I have a black dog), but it doesn’t have to. Sometimes,
adjectives are at the end of a sentence (my dog is black).

4. Verbs

Go! Be amazing! Run as fast as you can! Win the race! Congratulate every participant
for putting in the work to compete!

These bolded words are verbs. Verbs are words that describe specific actions,
like running, winning, and being amazing.

Not all verbs refer to literal actions, though. Verbs that refer to feelings or states of being,
like to love and to be, are known as nonaction verbs. Conversely, the verbs that do refer to
literal actions are known as action verbs.

5. Adverbs

An adverb is a word that describes an adjective, a verb, or another adverb. Take a look at
these examples:

Here’s an example: I entered the room quietly. Quietly is describing how you entered (verb)
the room.

Here’s another example: A cheetah is always faster than a lion. Always is describing how
frequently a cheetah is faster (adjective) than a lion.

6. Prepositions

Prepositions tell you the relationship between the other words in a sentence.

Here’s an example: I left my bike leaning against the garage. In this sentence, against is the
preposition because it tells us where I left my bike.

Here’s another example: She put the pizza in the oven. Without the preposition in, we don’t
know where the pizza is.
 7. Conjunctions

Conjunctions make it possible to build complex sentences that express multiple ideas.

I like marinara sauce. I like alfredo sauce. I don’t like puttanesca sauce. Each of these three
sentences expresses a clear idea. There’s nothing wrong with listing your preferences like this,
but it’s not the most efficient way to do it.

Consider instead: I like marinara sauce and alfredo sauce, but I don’t like puttanesca sauce.

8. Articles

A pear. The brick house. An exciting experience. These bolded words are known as articles.

Like nouns, articles come in two flavors: definite articles and indefinite articles. And just like the
two types of nouns, the type of article you use depends on how specific you need to be about
the thing you’re discussing.

A definite article describes one specific noun, like the and this. Example: Did you buy the car?

Now swap in an indefinite article: Did you buy a car?

See how the implication is gone and you’re asking a much more general question?

Figuring out parts of speech

Sometimes, it’s not easy to tell which part of speech a word is. Here are a few easy “hacks” to
quickly figure out what part of speech you’re dealing with:

 If it’s an adjective plus the ending “-ly,” it’s an adverb. Examples: commonly, quickly.

 If you can swap it out for a noun and the sentence still makes sense, it’s a pronoun. Example:
We played basketball. / Steve and I played basketball.

 If it’s something you do, and you can modify the sentence to include the word do, it’s a verb.
Examples: I have an umbrella. / I do have an umbrella.

 If you can remove the word and the sentence still makes sense, but you lose a detail, the word
is most likely an adjective. Example: She drives a red van. / She drives a van.

 If you can remove the word and the sentence doesn’t make sense, it’s likely a preposition.
Example: I left my notebook on the desk. / I left my notebook the desk.

And if you’re ever really stumped, just look the word up. Dictionaries typically list the part of
speech a word fits in its entry, and if it fits more than one part of speech, both are listed with
examples.
 That brings us to another common issue that can confuse writers and language learners:

When a word is two different kinds of speech

Just like Y is sometimes a vowel but sometimes a consonant, there are words that
are sometimes one part of speech and other times another. Here are a few examples:

 Work

o I went to work (noun).

o I work in the garden (verb).

 Well

o She paints very well (adverb).

o He’s well-liked in his community (adjective).

o I dropped a penny in the well (noun).

 But

o I cooked breakfast and lunch, but Steve cooked dinner (conjunction).

o I brought everything but the pens you asked for (preposition).

And sometimes, words evolve to fit into new parts of speech. One recent example is the word
“adult.” Before the 2010s, adult was primarily a noun that referred to a fully grown person. It
could also be used as an adjective to refer to specific types of media, like adult contemporary
music. But then, at right about the turn of the 2010s, the word adulting, a brand-new verb,
appeared in the internet lexicon. As a verb, adulting is the act of doing tasks like paying bills
and grocery shopping.

Parts of Speech Table

This is a summary of the 9 parts of speech*. You can find more detail if you click on each part of
speech.

part of function or "job" example words example sentences

speech

Verb action or state (to) be, have, do, EnglishClub is a web site.
like, work, sing, I like EnglishClub.
can, must
 part of function or "job" example words example sentences
speech

Noun thing or person pen, dog, work, This is my dog. He lives in my house.
music, town, We live in London.
London, teacher,
John

Adjective describes a noun good, big, red, My dogs are big. I like big dogs.
well, interesting

Determiner limits or a/an, the, 2, some, I have two dogs and some rabbits.
"determines" a noun many

Adverb describes a verb, quickly, silently, My dog eats quickly. When he

adjective or adverb well, badly, very, is very hungry, he eats really quickly.
really

Pronoun replaces a noun I, you, he, she, Tara is Indian. She is beautiful.
some

Preposition links a noun to to, at, after, on, We went to school on Monday.
another word but

Conjunction joins clauses or and, but, when I like dogs and I like cats. I like
sentences or words cats and dogs. I like dogs but I don't
like cats.

Interjection short exclamation, oh!, ouch!, hi!, Ouch! That hurts! Hi! How are
sometimes inserted well you? Well, I don't know.
into a sentence

* Some grammar sources traditionally categorize English into 8 parts of speech. Others say 10. At
EnglishClub, we use the more recent categorization of 9 parts of speech. Examples of other
categorizations are:
 Verbs may be treated as two different parts of speech:

o lexical Verbs (work, like, run)

 o auxiliary Verbs (be, have, must)
 Determiners may be treated as adjectives, instead of being a separate part of speech.
Parts of Speech Examples
Here are some examples of sentences made with different English parts of speech:

verb

Stop!

noun verb

John works.

noun verb verb

John is working.

pronoun verb noun

She loves animals.

noun verb noun adverb

Tara speaks English well.

noun verb adjective noun

Tara speaks good English.

pronoun verb preposition determiner noun adverb

 She ran to the station quickly.

pron. verb adj. noun conjunction pron. verb pron.

She likes big snakes but I hate them.

Here is a sentence that contains every part of speech:

interjection pron. conj. det. adj. noun verb prep. noun adverb

Well, she and my young John walk to school slowly.

Words with More Than One Job

Many words in English can have more than one job, or be more than one part of
speech. For example, "work" can be a verb and a noun; "but" can be a conjunction
and a preposition; "well" can be an adjective, an adverb and an interjection. In
addition, many nouns can act as adjectives.

To analyze the part of speech, ask yourself: "What job is this word doing in this
sentence?"

In the table below you can see a few examples. Of course, there are more, even for
some of the words in the table. In fact, if you look in a good dictionary you will see
that the word "but" has six jobs to do:

 verb, noun, adverb, pronoun, preposition and conjunction!

word part of speech example

work noun My work is easy.

verb I work in London.

but conjunction John came but Mary didn't come.

preposition Everyone came but Mary.

 word part of speech example

well adjective Are you well?

adverb She speaks well.

interjection Well! That's expensive!

afternoon noun We ate in the afternoon.

noun acting as adjective We had afternoon tea.

● Language learning theories.

EARLY CHILDHOOD BILINGUALISM

Crystal (2003: 11) asserts that “young children acquire

Assaiqeli 35
more than one language with unselfconscious ease”.
Many other linguists and researches in the area of
language acquisition have unanimously agreed that
children have the capacity to acquire their native
languages with ease and success. This unselfconscious
ease and marvellous capacity of young children for
acquiring language within a remarkably short time are
indeed phenomenal. This becomes even more
phenomenal when children who are exposed to two or
three or more languages can acquire them with the same
ease and success. According to Crystal (2003: 17),
“children are born ready for bilingualism”. He further
adduces that “some two-thirds of the children on earth
grow up in a bilingual environment, and develop
competence in it”.
Bilingual acquisition or the acquisition of two languages
simultaneously or sequentially is a marvel that concerns
linguists, language teachers, and parents who speak two
different languages or who can provide a bilingual
environment for the child since birth. Typically, this could
be the case of a spouse of different extraction or even
two spouses of the same origin but one is capable of
speaking a foreign or a second language. This is typical,
for example, of Arabic or French or Malay language
teachers teaching English as a second or foreign
language.
People and even some language teachers and
researchers are divided as whether the child should be
exposed at an early age to more than one language
simultaneously, or that focus should be on the first
language first alone, and only after the child has
mastered the syntactic structures of the first language
can he be exposed to a second language. Each side has
its own battery of reasons why simultaneous bilingualism
or the simultaneous introduction of a second or third
language should or should not be encouraged.
Opponents of early bilingualism believe that
simultaneity of language acquisition right since birth is
detrimental in three respects. First, it slows down or
retards the learning of the first native language.
Secondly, it would affect the child’s cognitive
development and his abilities of reading, arithmetic and
other mental processes (Steinberg et al., 2001). Thirdly, it
would confuse the child and thus, affect his mastery of
either language due to the child’s inability to distinguish
between two different and complex emerging
grammars/systems. Besides these concerns or
reservations or (mis) conceptions levelled against early
bilingualism is the fear of subtractive bilingualism, a case
in which the child’s native language may completely or
partially get lost as another system is taking hold when
the child’s first language skills have not yet been fully
mastered (Lightbown and Spada, 1999).
Proponents of early bilingualism, however, state that
what may sound or look for an adult as confusion or
retardation is not as it actually seems and that the child is
aware of the presence of two grammars or systems or

languages operating simultaneously and differently; but

that he is in need of some time to sort them out.
Lightbown and Spada (1999: 4), along with those who
share their view, as noted earlier, conclude that “children
who have the opportunity to learn multiple languages
from early childhood and to maintain them throughout
their lives are fortunate indeed, and families that can offer
this opportunity to their children should be encouraged to
do so”.
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

How does language acquisition occur? This is a question

or rather a conundrum that has puzzled and intrigued
many minds for generations. Early language acquisition,
this seemingly effortless, indeed far from being operose,
extraordinary feat, common to all children brought up in
normal environments, is not only a perplexing puzzle but
also an impressive fact of the marvellous innate
capacities the Almighty Allah has endowed the rational
animal with. Indeed, as Dan (1994, quoted in Fromkin
and Rodman, 1998: 317) states, “the capacity to learn
language is deeply ingrained in us as a species, just as
the capacity to walk, grasp objects and recognize faces.
We do not find any serious differences in children
growing up in congested urban slums, isolated mountain
villages, or in privileged suburban villas”. Indeed, nothing
can actually be thought of as more remarkable than the
child’s extraordinary ability to construct his or her
“meaning potential”, (Halliday, 1975), the potential of
“what can be meant”, (Halliday, 1975: 124) the potential
of the semantic system, the semantic options or
paradigms that make up this meaning potential. In lucid
terms, Brown (2000) describes eloquently the capacity of
children to acquire language as follows:

Everyone at some time has witnessed the remarkable

ability of children to communicate. As small babies,
children babble and coo and cry and vocally or non-
vocally send an extraordinary number of messages and
receive even more messages. As they reach the end of
their first year, children make specific attempts to imitate
words and speech sounds they hear around them, and
about this time they utter their first “words.” By about 18
months of age, these words have multiplied considerably
and are beginning to appear in two-word and three word
“sentences”-commonly referred to as “telegraphic” (or
“holophrastic”) utterances- such as “allgone milk,” “bye-
bye Daddy,” “gimme toy,” and so forth. The production
tempo now begins to increase as more and more words
are spoken every day and more and more combinations
of two- and three-word sentences are uttered. By about
age three, children can comprehend an incredible
quantity of linguistic input; their speech capacity
mushrooms as they become the generators of nonstop
chattering and incessant conversation, language thereby,

becoming a mixed blessing for those around them. This

fluency continues into school age as children internalize
increasingly complex structures, expand their vocabulary,
and sharpen communicative skills. At school age,
children not only learn what to say but what not to say as
they learn the social functions of their language (Brown,
2000: 21).
Towards the end of this vivid discription of the universal
pattern that children go through in their process of
language acquisition, Brown (2000: 21) asks, “How can
we explain this fantastic journey from that first anguished
cry at birth to adult competence in a language? Is it from
the first word to tens of thousands? From telegraphese at
eighteen months to the compound complex, cognitively
precise, socio-culturally appropriate sentences just a few
short years later?” These are the sorts of questions to be
addressed in this paper.
As stated earlier in this preamble or orientating
background, a number of theories of language acquisition
have been put forth to explain this extraordinary aptitude
of children for acquiring languages. Besides the role of
the social milieu or environment, what all such theories
are in a way or another meant to account for is “the
working of the human mind”. They all “use metaphors to
represent this invisible reality” (Lightbown and Spada,
1999: 45). For example, “some theories give primary
importance to learners’ innate characteristics; some
emphasize the role of the environment in shaping
language learning; still, others seek to integrate learner
characteristics and environmental factors in an
explanation for how language acquisition takes place”
(Lightbown and Spada, 1999: 31). The difference, for
example, between the position of the innatists and that of
the connectionists is that while the former view “language
input in the environment as a ‘trigger’ to activate innate
knowledge”, the latter see such input as “the principal
source of linguistic knowledge” (Lightbown and Spada,
1999: 42). Interactionists, another group of theorists of
laguage acquisition, on the other hand, “emphasize the
role of the modification of interaction in conversations”
(Lightbown and Spada, 1999: 45) as the primary means
to language acquistion. As such, connectionists and
“interactionists attribute considerably more importance to
the environment than the innatists do” (Lightbown and
Spada, 1999: 22).
Thus, and apart from Halliday’s socio-linguistic
conception of language learning, theorists are either
mentalist or environmentalist in their approaches about
language learning. Consequently, Halliday (1975) states
that from the mid 1960 are onwards, two conceptions of
language learning dominated the scene: that viewing
language learning as “genetically endowed and
readymade” and that viewing language learning as
“environmentally fashioned and evolving” (Halliday, 1975:
139).
In the following pages, following a brief section on the key
linguist whose work has revolutionized, linguistic thought
Scholarly J. Sci. Res. and Essay 36

by breaking with tradition and heralding a new era of

linguistic inquiry, we shall shed light on four of these
positions or theories of language acquisition and
language learning: structuralism, behaviourism, innatism,
and Halliday’s socio-linguistic approach.

Ferdinand de Saussure

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 to 1913), “the father of

modern linguistics”, the linguist whose work was
described as a “Copernican revolution in Western
linguistic thought” (Harris and Taylor, 1989: 177), the
terminus ad quem for a certain long-held view of the
focus of linguistic research, the one who viewed
language as a “stable, structured system” (Harris and
Taylor, 1989: xviii), and the linguist from whom we date
the era of structural or descriptive linguistics, made a
useful distinction between two levels of language whose
usefulness gave birth to structuralism, behaviourism,
innatism, and other schools of thought.
Saussure, “whose posthumously published Cours de
th
linguistique générale (1916) launched 20 century
structuralism on its course”, (: xviii), claimed that “there
was a difference between parole (what Skinner
“observes”, and what Chomsky”, though with some
difference, “called performance) and langue (akin to the
concept of competence, or our underlying and
unobservable language ability)” (Brown, 2000: 10). So,
while parole or speech/speaking or what Chomsky later
called performance or E-language (Chomsky, 1986) is
the external or “outward manifestation of language
(Brown, 2000: 10.), langue or language or what Chomsky
called competence or I-language (Chomsky, 1986) is the
internal hidden “abstract system” of language (Aitchison,
1974: 30). “The distinction is a useful one, since it
recognizes the need for idealisation and abstraction, as
well as, concern with actual data” (Aitchison, 1974: 30).
Saussure stated the importance of langue, the deep
abstract structure that generates parole. However, as
mentioned in the following paragraph, examination of
langue has to be done through the examination of parole,
though this was not Saussure’s focus:
Saussure focused not on the use of language (parole,
or speech), but rather on the underlying system of
language (langue) and called his theory semiology.
However, the discovery of the underlying system had to
be done through examination of the parole (speech). As
such, Structural Linguistics is (sic) actually an early form
of corpus linguistics (quantification). This approach
focused on examining how the elements of language
related to each other as a system of signs, that is,
'synchronically' rather than how language develops over
time, that is, 'diachronically'. Finally, he argued that
linguistic signs were composed of two parts, a signifier
(the sound pattern of a word, either in mental projection,
as when we silently recite lines from a poem to ourselves
Assaiqeli 37
or in actual, physical realization as part of a speech act)
and a signified (the concept or meaning of the word). This
was quite different from previous approaches which
focused on the relationship between words and the things
in the world that they designate (Wikipedia).
As we shall see in our discussion of structuralism,
behaviourism, and innatism, in later years, different
schools of thought gave more importance to one of those
two levels of logos: parole and langue, at the expense of
the other.
Structuralism: An overview

Structuralism can be defined or described as “an

approach in academic disciplines in general that explores
the relationships between fundamental principal elements
in language, literature, and other fields upon which some
higher mental, linguistic, social, or cultural "structures"
and "structural networks" are built. Through these
networks the meaning is produced within a particular
person, system, or culture” (Wikipedia). “This meaning
then frames and motivates the actions of individuals and
groups. In its most recent manifestation, structuralism as
a field of academic interest began around 1958 and
peaked in the late 1960s and early 1970s” (Wikipedia).
Before we move to structuralism in linguistics, and
Bloomfield’s version of structuralism, it is important that
we make clear what Saussure meant by the term
‘structural’ or “structural linguistics”. According to
Saussure, as put in the words of Aitchison (1974: 21),
structural linguistics “does not refer to a separate branch
or school of linguistics. All linguistics since de Saussure
is structural, as structural in this sense merely means the
recognition that language is a patterned system
composed of interdependent elements rather than a
collection of unconnected individual items”. Thus,
Saussure’s conception of “structural” is far more
comprehensive than that of Bloomfield as we shall see
subsequently.

Bloomfieldian structuralism

Influenced by Saussure, Leonard Bloomfield, in his

notable work Language (1933), endeavoured, through
the creation of his own version of structuralism, to “lay
down a rigorous framework for the description of
languages” (Aitchison, 1974: 33). According to Brown
(2000: 8), Bloomfield stated that ‘only the “publically
observable responses” could be subject to investigation.
The linguist’s task, according to the structuralist, was to
describe human languages and to identify the structural
characteristics of those languages’. Thus, Bloomfield’s
focus was on parole or speech: the observable or
“outward manifestation of language”. He, along with other
structural or descriptive linguists of the 1940s and 1950s,

“chose largely to ignore langue and to study parole”

(Brown, 2000: 10). As noted by Aitchison (1974):

Bloomfield considered that linguistics should deal

objectively and systematically with observable data. So
he was more interested in the forms of a language than in
meaning. The study of meaning was not amenable to
rigorous methods of analysis and was therefore, he
concluded, ‘the weak point in language study, and will
remain so until human knowledge advances very far
beyond its present state’ (Aitchison, 1974: 33).

Due to Bloomfield’s negligence of meaning and his

description of it as something that is beyond
investigation, “the influence of Bloomfieldian structural
linguistics declined in the late 1950s and 1960s”
(Wikipedia). In its place, “the theory of Generative
Grammar developed by Noam Chomsky came to
predominate” (Wikipedia).
Brown (2000: 10) mentions that the “revolution brought
about by generative linguistics broke with the descriptivist
preoccupation with performance of the outward
manifestation of language-and capitalized on the
important distinction between the overtly observable
aspects of language and the hidden levels of meaning
and thought that give birth to and generate observable
linguistic performance”.
Parole or speech or performance or simply meaning, as
noted earlier, had no place in Bloomfield’s work. His
preoccupation was “with the way items were arranged to
form a total structure, to the exclusion of all other aspects
of linguistics” (Aitchison, 1974: 21-22). In other words,
Bloomfield was concerned with grammar in its narrow
sense.
Chomsky, however, as we shall see when we discuss
innatism, has been concerned more with langue or what
he calls I-language or competence, which refers to
“speakers’ linguistic knowledge” (Fromkin and Rodman,
1998: 12) of the languages they speak. He has shifted
attention away from detailed descriptions of actual
utterances, and started asking questions about the nature
of the system which produces the output (Aitchison,
1974). Thus, in his 1986 book: Knowledge of Language:
Its nature, origin, and use, Chomsky, according to
Grundy (2000: 183) “describes how generative linguistics
shifted the focus in language study ‘from the study of
language regarded as an externalized object to the study
of the system of knowledge attained and internally
represented in the mind/brain’”. Chomsky’s central,
thought-provoking question, according to Fromkin and
Rodman (1998: 340) was: “What accounts for the ease,
rapidity and uniformity of language acquisition in the face
of impoverished data?”
In other words, Chomsky is more intrigued by langue,
the hidden abstract system or structure or mechanism
which gives birth to parole. He takes the marvel of parole
of children as a catalyst or a galvanizing epiphany to dig

deep in the human brain to investigate this underlying

hidden system that exponentially generates parole or the
enviable and amazing inborn human predisposition to
speech that in a relatively short period of time makes
young children veritable chatterboxes.
Bloomfieldian linguistics concentrated on describing
sets of utterances which happened to have been spoken.
As mentioned by Aitchison (1974: 78), Chomsky criticized
Bloomfieldian linguistics by stating that it was “both far
too ambitious and far too limited in scope. It was too
ambitious in that it was unrealistic to expect to be able to
lay down foolproof rules for extracting a perfect
description of a language from a mass of data. It was too
limited because such grammars had no predictive power.
They catalogued what had happened, but did not predict
what would happen”.
Behaviourism

Behaviourism, “a psychological theory of learning”, was

advocated by Skinner (1904-1990) in his Verbal
Behavior, published in 1957. In his highly criticized Verbal
Behavior, Skinner attributed learning to imitation,
practice, reinforcement or positive feedback and habit
formation.
Behaviourism is “behaviour that can be observed and
measured”. In this sense, behaviourism is close to
Bloomfieldian structuralism. Just like structuralism,
behaviourism’s focus is on parole, performance, and on
the outward observable aspects of language, not langue,
the holistic, internal, abstract and unobservable system of
language.
Lightbown and Spada (1999: 9) mentioned that
“children imitate the sounds and patterns which they hear
around them and receive positive reinforcement (which
could take the form of praise or just successful
communication) for doing so. Thus, encouraged by their
environment, they continue to imitate and practise these
sounds and patterns until they form ‘habits’ of correct
language use”. Thus, for the behaviourists, imitation and
practice are the essential mechanisms for the language
to be acquired or learned.
While Skinner’s view of language learning does
actually, at least on the intuitive level, explain some
aspects of language acquisition, the fact remains that it is
short of giving an adequate explanation for the
complexities of language acquisition. As Lightbown and
Spada (1999: 15) point out, “imitation and practice alone
cannot explain some of the forms created by the children.
They are not sentences that they heard from adults.
Rather, children appear to pick out patterns and then
generalize them to new contexts”.
My own child, Muhammad, at the age of 23 months, for
example, knowing how a spider looks like, once at the
sight of my hairy chest, pointed to my chest, and much to
my delight, excitedly exclaimed, “Spider!” In another
Scholarly J. Sci. Res. and Essay 38
incident, I discovered that he used to refer to his carrycot
as “ship”, which indeed looked like a ship. No one had
ever told him that that was a ship, but he creatively, and
because of a vocabulary gap, thought of it as a ship.
Likewise, the over generalization of the hair of my chest,
which to him, resembled the tiny and many feet (eight
actually in number) of a spider was never made by any
adult around him. On another occasion, at the age of 2
and 10, at the sight of a boat sailing in the sea,
Muhammad jubilantly shouted, “The boat is swimming”.
His choice of the word “swimming”, though, inappropriate
due to an age-induced vocabulary gap, is nonetheless
creative and novel. His word choice is creative in the
sense that it serves the communicative purpose; and
novel in the sense that no adult had previously said that.
Such sui generis productions, frequently produced by
children, and creativity and novelty on their part, render
the behaviourist theory for language acquisition at best
insufficient.
Furthermore, it has been observed that “the rules
children construct are structure-dependent. That is,
children use syntactic rules that depend on more than
their knowledge of words and also relied on their
knowledge of syntactic structures which are not overtly
marked in the sentences they hear” (Fromkin and
Rodman, 1998: 340). It has also been observed that
“child grammar is rule governed at every stage”
(Aitchison, 1974: 153). That is, the grammar of a child is
systematic rather than haphazard. An “example of the
rule-governed nature of child language are forms such as
mans, foots, gooses, which children produce frequently.
Such plurals occur even when a child understands and
responds correctly to the adult forms, men, feet and
geese; this is a proof that a child’s own rules of grammar
are more important to him than mere imitation” (Aitchison,
1974: 154).
According to Fromkin and Rodman (1998: 329), “the
‘imitation’ theory cannot account for another important
phenomenon. Children who are unable to speak for
neurological or physiological reasons learn language
spoken to them and understand what is said. When they
overcome their speech impairment they immediately use
the language for speaking”. In the words of Lightbown
and Spada (1999: 36), “for second language acquisition,
as for first language acquisition, the behaviourist account
has proven to be at best an incomplete explanation for
language learning”. Now, we turn our attention to another
more complex theory of language acquisition. That is, the
theory of the innatists or innatism as advocated by Noam
Chomsky whose critical views of Skinner’s Verbal
Behavior cannot be more vehement.

Innatism

Chomsky’s idea about the existence of innate properties

of language to explain the child’s mastery of languages in
Assaiqeli 39
a remarkably short time despite the highly abstract nature
of the rules of language has rocketed linguistics and child
language acquisition research to the sky (Aitchison,
1974). For Chomsky, linguistic behaviour is innate, not
learned. He argues that children are “biologically
programmed for language and that language develops in
the child in just the same way that other biological
functions develop” (Lightbown and Spada, 1999: 15).
According to Brown (2000: 24), Chomsky argues “that we
are born with a genetic capacity that predisposes us to a
systematic perception of language around us, resulting in
the construction of an internalized system of language”.
So “while behaviorism looks at what can be observed and
measured, cognitivism is about what occurs in the head
of the learner”. Such Chomskyan view of language
acquisition has given birth since the late 1950s to what
has come to be known as generative linguistics, “the
programme of linguistics investigating language as a
biologically endowed cognitive faculty (Cook, 2003: 128).
The notion of innateness with its proposition of the LAD
(Language Acquisition Device) and its much later
developed hypothesis of Universal Grammar has
successfully managed in casting strong doubts about the
sufficiency of Skinner’s theories of operant conditioning
and imitation in his Verbal Behavior. It showed, as we
have seen and as Brown (2000), and Aitchison (1974)
pointed out how limited the behaviouristic, stimulus-
response (S-R) theory is in accounting for the generativity
or productivity of child language; aspects of meaning,
abstractness, child’s creativity and the remarkably short
period for acquiring a huge mammoth task like language
acquisition which Chomsky’s seminal nativist approach or
model has accounted for more adequately child language
acquisition and the ‘innateness hypothesis’
According to Aitchison (1974:151), “few people in the
1950s queried the processes by which language was
acquired. Most assumed that children imitated the adults
around them, and that their speech gradually became
more accurate as it moved closer to the models they
were copying. There seemed to be little mystery attached
to this straightforward process”. Aitchison (1974),
however, further states that Chomsky and his disciples:
drew attention to several interesting points-points that are
so obvious and had been overlooked in many previous
studies. Firstly, children acquire language in a remarkably
short time. The major part of acquisition is crammed into
approximately eighteen months (eighteenth-thirty-sixth
month). And all children, even relatively stupid ones, do
this seemingly effortlessly and competently. Secondly,
adult speech is the only apparent source of data from
which a child works in achieving this mammoth task. Yet,
adult speech is extremely confusing. There are numerous
unfinished sentences and semi grammatical utterances
as to how children extract a grammar from this jumble
(Aitchison, 1974: 151).
It is possible here to argue that the presumed idea of
adults’ ungrammaticality or semi-grammaticality is a myth
as Labov’s (1970) studies showed; and that some other
linguists such as Bellugi and Brown (1964) had found that
the speech addressed to children is carefully
orchestrated and grammatically precise. This is to a great
extent true but the question to be addressed here is
whether what mothers (or whoever takes care of the
child) utters to their children enough to make them speak
fluently in a few years later. According to Chomsky and
his followers as mentioned by Aitchison (1974):

‘Children must be born with some innate knowledge of

the deep structure of the properties of language (for
example, LAD and UG)’. They acquire language so easily
and fast because they know, in outline, what it is they
have to learn. Every child has a ‘blueprint’ of language
universals in his brain. All he has to do is to discover how
his own language fits into these universal patterns. In
transformational terms, a child has innate knowledge of
universal deep structures. All he has to learn are the
relevant transformations for converting this deep
structure into the surface realization of his own language
(Aitchison, 1974: 151-152).

As mentioned by Lightbown and Spada (1999: 36),

“Chomsky’s theory of language acquisition is based on
the hypothesis that innate knowledge of the principles of
Universal Grammar (UG) permits all children to acquire
the language of their environment, during a critical period
in their development”. Thus, they further state that
according to Chomsky, “children’s minds are not blank
slates to be filled merely by imitating language they hear
in the environment; instead, he claimed that children are
born with a special ability to discover for themselves the
underlying rules of a language system” (Lightbown and
Spada, 1999: 16).
This genetic capacity or this innate knowledge of
language, however, can only be harnassed in the
presence of a social milieu in which the child can have
the opportunity to engage in personal conversations and
social interaction. Absence of such social milieu will
forego the opportunity for the child to acquire language. A
child who is brought up in isolation of any social contact,
for example, will not acquire language. Therefore, for
such innate linguistic knowledge to be activated, the child
must be brought up in a normal environment. The role of
the environment in activating such innate knowledge can
be likened to the trigger of a gun. A gun that is loaded
with bullets cannot be made use of unless the trigger is
pulled. Only then can bullets be fired.
Thus, as Lightbown and Spada (1999: 15) mentioned,
“the environment makes a basic contribution-in this case,
the availability of people who speak to the child. The
child, or rather, the child’s biological endowment will do
the rest. This is known as the innatist position. Chomsky
proposed his theory in reaction to what he saw as the
inadequacy of the behaviourist theory of learning on
imitation and habit formation (Chomsky, 1959)”.

Indeed, the ease, creativity, novelty, rapidity, uniformity,

systematicity, regularity, structure-dependence, the rule-
governed nature of child grammar, and a host of other
characteristics of child language make the theories of
imitation, reinforcement, and analogy obsolete as
accounts accounting for this most extraordinary feat
every one of us in their early lives goes through
seemingly effortlessly and brilliantly. These views as
Fromkin and Rodman (1998: 331) states “cannot account
for the non-random mistakes children make, the speed
with which the basic rules of grammar are acquired, the
ability to learn language without any formal instruction,
and the regularity of the acquisition process across
diverse languages and environmental circumstances”.

HALLIDAY AND LANGUAGE AS A SOCIAL SEMIOTIC

Now, we begin to explore the Hallidayan conception of

language and language learning. With reference to the
aforementioned, this section seeks to explore Halliday’s
socio-linguistic approach to language learning, (b. 1925)
his elaborate work and view of language as a social
semiotic.
Besides the key words, ‘function’, ‘system’, and ‘choice’
in Halliday’s work on language and learning, which drive
the whole theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)
or simply functional grammar, ‘culture’, ‘text’, and
‘context’ also feature as significant terms in his writings
on language, particularly, in his theory of ‘language as a
social semiotic’. Language as a social semiotic is the
view that the semiotic system or language as a semiotic
system, away from “the language system itself” (Halliday,
1975: ix) operates within the social context of a culture,
and that culture is being learnt and transmitted through
language, on the one hand and produced by language on
the other. Thus, ‘a child, in the act of learning language,
is also learning the culture through language and the
semantic system which he is constructing becomes the
primary mode of transmission of the culture’ (Halliday,
1975: ix-x). Those terms, amongst others feature
especially, in this theory views language as a social
semiotic.
According to this view, language and culture are
brought together where language or semiotic meanings in
general are constituted by and interpreted within the
context of culture and where culture is constituted and
interpreted in turns through language or semiotic signs. In
the words of Halliday (1975: 139), “The social semiotic is
the system of meanings that defines or constitutes the
culture; and the linguistic system is one mode of
realization of these meanings”. Thus, when we talk about
language as a social semiotic, we talk about culture and
context, or what Halliday (1978) calls the socio-cultural
context. Therefore, language is interpreted within the
context of culture, and this culture is interpreted in terms
that are semiotic. Therefore, culture and language are
Scholarly J. Sci. Res. and Essay 40
bound together. Language takes shape in a particular
culture, and that culture is shaped and interpreted by a
particular language, hence, Halliday’s view of language
as a social semiotic.
Before we proceed any further, it is worthwhile to note
at this point that Halliday’s view of language as a or the
social semiotic comes within the context of language
learning and how a child learns his mother tongue, that
is, how he builds up what Halliday (1975) calls “meaning
potential, that is the potential of “what can be meant”, “the
potential of the semantic system”, the semantic options or
paradigms that make up this meaning potential (Halliday,
1975: 124).
Thus, following his aforementioned quoted definition of
the social semiotic, Halliday (1975: 124) states: “The
child’s task is to construct the system of meanings that
represents his own model of social reality. This process
takes place inside his head; it is a cognitive process. But
it takes place in contexts of social interaction, and there is
no way it can take place except in these contexts”.
Halliday (1975: 139-140) further states: “As well as being
a cognitive process, the learning of the mother tongue is
also an interactive process. It takes the form of the
continued exchange of meanings between self and
others. The act of meaning is a social act”. Therefore, for
Halliday, language learning is a process, not a capacity
that is both cognitive and interactive, that is, the social
semiotic of which the linguistic system is “one mode of
realization”, is a system or network of meanings that
develops gradually and progressively as the child
cognitively grows through (maturation and) social
interaction. “He builds the semiotic of his own society,
through interaction in family, peer group, and, later, in
school-as well as, in a host of other micro semiotic
encounters” (Halliday, 1975: 143-144).
Halliday’s description of language as a social semiotic
reflects the notion that it is through language that a social
system and a semantic system are constructed “In the
process of building up the social semiotic, the network of
meanings that constitutes the culture and the child
becoming a member of the species ‘social man’”
(Halliday, 1975: 121). Through language, the child learns
the culture, and culture is the receptacle in which
language and other semiotic systems take place and
operate. “The reality that the child constructs is that of his
culture and sub-culture, and the ways in which he learns
meanings and build up registers are also those of his
culture and sub-culture” (Halliday, 1975: 143). Thus, both
language and culture are semiotic systems which make
up the social system. “In principle, a child is learning one
semiotic system, the culture, and simultaneously,
learning the means of learning it and a second semiotic
system is the language” (Halliday, 1975: 122).
For Halliday, language is a social phenomenon; it
exists in a social context. Thus, language is social
because it takes place within the social context of culture;
and is semiotic because “the culture itself is interpreted in
Assaiqeli 41

semiotic terms” (Halliday, 1978). It is interesting to note,

at this point, that this view differs from that of Saussure
(1857-1913) who views language as only semiotic.
Halliday’s conception of language as socio-semiotic or
socio-linguistic is more comprehensive and more in line
with language as operating only in a socio-cultural
context.
However, it seems that Halliday’s notion of language as
social is derived from Malinowski’s (1884-1942) concepts
of context of culture and context of situation, “as modified
and made explicit by Firth” (Halliday 1975: 125).
According to Firth (1968), for language to operate, a
context of culture, and that of situation are needed. One
can also say that the notion of language as semiotic, as
alluded to earlier, might have been inspired by Saussure
who viewed language as semiotic. However, whether
Halliday was influenced by Firth and Saussure is not an
issue. The fact remains that it was Halliday who
developed our conception of language through his
conception of language as social and semiotic together,
rather than social alone or semiotic alone, hence his
socio-semiotic or social semiotic which is a sophisticated
conception of language as stated in the following extract:
Halliday's theory of "language as a social semiotic" is a
very sophisticated, elaborate, "extravagant" (Halliday,
1994) socio-cultural theory of language, which really
builds upon, extends, earlier theories of language and
culture and language as social interaction. Its
sophistication is in the way Halliday specifies the
semiotics of the culture at the level of grammatical
constituent, at the level of clause
(http://golum.riv.csu.edu.au/~srelf/SOTE/EML504/Hallida
y.htm). So, in his formulation of his theory of language as
a social semiotic, it is clear that Halliday has built upon
other works that treated language from a socio-cultural
perspective.
A prominent figure, here, would be Lev Vygotsky
(1896-1934) whose socio-cultural theory of language and
learning was based on his Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD), or the level of language
development a child or learner is capable of when
interacting with an adult or a more advanced peer or
proficient learner. Thus, unlike Chomsky (1928) and the
innatists, and even Halliday to a certain extent, Vygotsky
concludes, as stated in Lightbown and Spada (1999: 23)
that “language develops entirely from social interaction”
While Chomsky views language as an innate capacity,
as being rooted in the human brain, Halliday views
language as a social semiotic, as “a set of systems of
semantic choices”
(http://golum.riv.csu.edu.au/~srelf/SOTE/EML504/Hallida
y.htm), based on the process of cognitive development
and human interaction with and experience of the world,
rather than the brain. Thus, “Unlike Chomsky’s view of
language as a syntactic system innate in the mind,
Halliday’s theory of language is as a set of finite
interlocking systems of semantic choices, which are

realised in wordings, or lexico grammatical structures: in

vocabulary and syntax” (Chomsky,1928).
Hasan also “argued that language is not a capacity we
carry around in our brains, rather, it is a resource, a
cultural resource (Hasan, 1996). Thus, Halliday’s theory
is not just a theory of language, it is a theory of
behaviour; not in the sense of Skinner’s theory of
behaviour, but in how, through interactions we become
cultural subjects, so that our lives embody our culture
with all its complexities, ambiguities and contradictions
(http://golum.riv.csu.edu.au/~srelf/SOTE/EML504/Hallida
y.htm). Thus, in Language as Social Semiotic, published
in 1978, Halliday (1994: 23) writes:

The child learns his mother tongue in the context of

behavioural settings where the norms of his culture are
acted out for him and enunciated for him in settings of
parental control, instruction, personal interaction and the
like; and, reciprocally he is ‘socialized’ into the value
systems and behaviour patterns of the culture through
the use of language at the same time as he is learning it.
Another prominent figure who can be thought of as
espousing the interactionist position as an explanation for
language acquisition and learning is the Swiss
psychologist, Piaget (1896-1980). Again, unlike the
innatists who view language as stemming primarily from
one particular localized region of the brain, as opposed to
social interaction, and thus, operating independently of
other cortical organs or encephalic, or brain functions, the
notion known as the modularity of the brain, (Fromkin and
Rodman, 1998: 35), Piaget views language learning and
development as stemming from social interaction. In the
words of Lightbown and Spada (1999: 23), “Unlike the
innatists, Piaget did not see language as based on a
separate module of the mind”.
Chomsky and the innatists see the role of the
environment or social interaction as only a trigger.
However, Halliday (besides cognitive development) and
interactionists, see it as everything. Therefore, while
Chomsky and the innatists see logos as originating
primarily from the mind, and hence their emphasis on
innatism, Halliday (also unlike interactionists who see
only interaction as the cause behind learning) sees logos
as operating in the mind but taking place in contexts of
social interaction, and hence, his emphasis on social
interaction. Hence, the notion of language as ‘social’ is
rooted in the research of interactionists or those holding
the interactionist position (Lightbown and Spada, 1999:
23) in language acquisition and language learning, those
who deem (modified) social interaction or the role of the
environment, as opposed to the brain or any innate
capacities, as the key in the process of language
acquisition and language development throughout life.
So, Halliday’s depiction of language as social and that
it is a social phenomenon, and exists in a social context
is not new. However, as we have seen in the
aforementioned extract, what is new and indeed

sophisticated is the combined notion of language as

social semiotic together, which brings “the semiotics of
the culture at the level of grammatical constituent, at the
level of clause” (Lightbown and Spada, 1999: 23). Hence,
it is not only the context of situation where semiotic signs
operate but also the socio-cultural context of culture
where socio-cultural signs operate as well. It is semiotics
within a socio-cultural context, it is the operation and
development of semiotic systems of which language is
one within the social context of culture and situation,
hence, again, Halliday’s sophisticated observation or
notion of language as the social semiotic, and the
network or system of meanings constitutes the culture.

CONCLUSION

Within the context of language acquisition and language

learning, this article explored and investigated the views
and philosophies of each of Bloomfield, Skinner,
Chomsky, and Halliday regarding important issues in
language, and linguistics. Put very briefly, the article
stated that children have a marvellous capacity for
acquiring competence in whatever language or
languages they get exposed to, and in a manner so rapid,
creative, uniform, systematic, regular, and easy
compared with the mammoth task that they, within a
remarkably short span of time accomplish victoriously.
In endeavours to account for this fantastic journey that
begins with an anguished cry at birth and culminates in
adult competence in language, linguists have offered a
number of theories or approaches to language
acquisition. Drawing on Saussure’s useful distinction
between what he called parole and langue, most
theories, apart from Halliday’s, gave paramount
importance to either the role of the environment, or
hidden innate properties. Thus, we have seen two major
approaches or polar positions regarding the source of
linguistic knowledge: the environmentalists who view
language as “environmentally fashioned and evolving”
and the mentalists who view language as “genetically
endowed and readymade” (Lightbown and Spada, 1999:
139). While behaviourists, connectionists, and
interactionists (with some variation) are examples of the
first position, the cognitivists or innatists are examples of
the second, the mentalists. Halliday, however, sees
language as taking place in the mind but shaped and
constructed in contexts of social interaction.
Within the scope of this article, we have seen that
Skinner and Bloomfield are examples of the former
position which is amenable to measurement and
observation, investigation and scrutiny. Chomsky and his
acolytes focus more on the latter position, the mentalist
or intraorganism approach, the langue or the hidden and
unobservable aspects of language.
Halliday, whose explanation, in my opinion, is the best
so far, on the other hand, views language or linguistic
knowledge as the product of both social interaction and
Scholarly J. Sci. Res. and Essay 42

cognitive development. Hence, Halliday seems to

acknowledge both langue and parole. However, unlike
Chomsky who looks at language from a psychological
point of view and is thus concerned with the question of
how language is stored and processed in the mind,
hence, his innatist account - Halliday who looks at
language from a sociological or socio-linguistic point of
view is more concerned with the questions of why and
how children learn language, and “what people do with
language and how language mediate meaning,” hence, is
his socio-linguistic or socio-semiotic view or account of
language. Thus, according to Chomsky, children learn
language because they are biologically programmed to
do so, the brain is programmed or predisposed
genetically in a way that would make them acquire it; and
they do that through the LAD or (the “core” or general
principles of) UG. For Halliday, however, children learn
language for the purposes of communication and
interaction; and they do that through using the resources
of the language: semantics, lexicogrammar, and
phonology. Thus, while Chomsky’s concern is about
structure, Halliday’s concern is about use or function
(“What people do with language and how languages
mediate meaning?”).
Language acquisition and language learning with all
their complexities “represent a puzzle for linguistic,
psychological, and neurological scientists which will not
soon be solved. Research which has development as its
goal has very important long-term significance for
language teaching and learning, but agreement on a
‘complete’ theory of language acquisition is probably, at
best, a long way off” (Lightbown and Spada, 1999: 45).
The complexities of language acquisition will possibly
continually remain a driving force for continuous attempts
at more adequate explanations for this marvellous human
feat with which Allah has distinguished the human being
from all other living species

AUDIO-LINGUAL LANGUAGE TEACHING METHOD

Audio-lingual language teaching method differs from grammar translation method in a way that it
looks at language as a human habit.Language is the speech spoken by speakers, not written. In this
method,
teachers are requirednot to teach the knowledge of the language but the language itself (Wen,
1999).There are
some major characteristics of the Audio-lingual language teaching method.First, the method’s most
essential
technique is drilling. Second, the process of the FL learning called habit formation. Learners need to
imitate
over and over again until they become ready to speak out a sentence naturally.Regarding written
materials,
learnersshould read a certain text repeatedly until they get familiar with it and could narrateit(Wen,
1999).
Teachers could also use communicative activities in class and there should be repetitive drills and
exercises.
However, the teacher is responsible for forbidding learners to make mistakesbecause mistakes become
habits.
Learners would look up to their teachers and mimic their pronunciation. For this reason, teachers should
use the
American Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Research (AJHSSR)
2019
target language perfectly; native-sound pronunciation and intonation (Xia, 2014).
The purpose of the Audio-lingual language teaching method is to assist learners form the habit while
trying to learn sentence patterns of a language (Wen, 1999). They would learn vocabulary after
sentence
structures while new vocabulary is introduced to them via dialogues. When teaching grammar,
grammatical
explanations are usually ignored (Xia, 2014). Teachers have a special technique where they ask another
question
immediately after learners answer the previous one. Thus, learners become able to answer
questions
automatically when they form its mechanism (Gao, 2006).
Foreign language study put language skills in a particular order, from most important to the least;
listening, speaking, reading, then writing (Xia, 2014). Though, cultural teaching is removed when
teaching a
language. Even though this method admires the significance of having a little knowledge of the target
language’
culture, teaching culture is not combined with teaching the target language.However, teachers may only
give a
brief introduction on the culture before getting into the lesson (Gao, 2006).

VI. CHOMSKY AND TRANSFORMATIONAL-GENERATIVE GRAMMAR

th
In the later half of the 20 century, Noam Chomskywasrecognized for making overwhelming
achievements in linguistics, intellectual history, philosophy and international politics.Yet, his most well
known
role is in the field of linguistics. Chomsky designed a new theory for structuralism because the
language
structure classification regarding distribution and arrangement has many boundaries. Thus, heinvented
a new
theory called Transformational-generative grammar(TGG).It is “a system of rules that in some explicit
and well-
defined way assigns structural descriptions to sentences” (Hu, 2002, p. 724). Chomsky thinks that
a child is
capabletoadopt a kind of generative grammar that evidences his knowledge of his mother tongue.
Chomsky offered an innateness hypothesis because there were some crucial facts that were not
analyzed sufficiently. The first fact is that children acquire language competence quickly without any
effort. It is
known that children speak their native language fluently when they reach five years old.
Oneremarkable
phenomenon is that acquiring the first language takes place entirely without an intentional teaching.
According
to the correctness of grammar, children can produce sentences he did not hear before.For this reason,
Chomsky
claimsthat all children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD) that helpsthem in language
learning
(Cook, 2000). However, Some scholars, such as Dell Hymes, have rejected this theory completely and
came up
with a new one.

Hymes’s Communicative Competence

In 1972, Dell Hymes said that Chomsky’s theory about language competence is not good enough to
understandthe wonder of acquiring a language (Xia, 2014). Then, he created the theory of
communicative
competence where he argued that language competence involves four points.First, probability, to what
degree
communicative competence is in agreement with grammar rules.Second, practicability,to what
degree a
languageis required in communication. Third, accuracy is when speech is suitable. Forth, effectiveness,
to what
degree speech is made (Wen, 1999).
Throughout the 1980s, Canale & Swain said that communicative competence contains four main
features of knowledge and skills.Alinguistic competence and a sociolinguistic competence is when
speakers are
able to speak appropriatelyaccording to the time, place and the person spoken to. Discourse
competenceand
Strategic competence is a speaker’sability to use different kinds of communication strategies
depending on
different discourse, such as avoidance or interpretation (Xu, 2002).

Functional-notional approach
The new functional-notional approach refers to language functions used in real-life.Learners needto be
part of everyday language activities, such as giving directions or buying a ticket. They shouldunderstand
the
functions and differentiate between them depending on the situations they face. Teachers have to
describe
certainrealistic situations that a learner might be in to have them well prepared.For example,
teaching the
functions of language that are commonly used (Chen, 2000).

Systemic-functional linguistics
M. A. K. Halliday is the leading creator of systemic-functional linguistics that reputes language as
foundational for experience building. His contributionsshape a new approach that is called systemic-
functional
linguistics (SFL). Halliday emphasizes on the fact that language and meaning are not separated.According
to
SFL, the source of language and communication is communicative function and semantics. SFL
linguists
believe that languagesare controlled and influenced by their social contexts (Halliday, 1985).

Communicative Approach of Language Teaching

In a communicative approach of language teaching, the focus is on the content rather than grammatical
● SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING THEORIES..
● LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORIES.