COMPARATIVE PAPER ANALYSIS OF THEORIES ON

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND LEARNING

Presented to
The College of Teacher Education
Ramon Magsaysay Memorial Colleges – Marbel, Inc.

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirement for the Degree
Bachelor of Secondary Education Major in English

Little Kaye S. Catunao

Adelen A. Operio
Ana Rose E. Hornales

October 2021
 COMPARARATIVE ANALYSIS PAPER

The mystery on what is the process of language acquisition and learning has been studied by many

researchers. There are lots of theories presented about the mentioned topic that resulted to many kinds

of results. As the researchers debates about the nurture versus nature ways of learning, numerous studies

have been undertaken to prove their claims. This paper will give a comparison and contrasting points

about the study of Carl G. de Marcken and Uri Zernik.

Uri Zernik (2003) study Language Acquisition: Learning Hierarchy of Phrases. The hierarchical

lexicon, in contrast to the traditional flat lexicon, enables a linguistic model to perform even in situations of

incomplete knowledge. In his research, he also describes the learning algorithm that is based on two

existing machine-learning models: g algorithm which is based on two existing machine-learning models:

learning in a version space [Mitchell82], and learning by accumulating specific episodes in a dynamic

memory [Kolodner84, Schank82] in the examination of understanding the lexicon of syntaxes and

semantics. His research investigated the two aspects of problems in learning the hierarchical lexicon:

performance-parsing and generation and acquisition.

According to the result of the study lexicon both encompassed specific and general phrases through

the hierarchy, general phrases can fill in for missing specific ones. The algorithm which constructs the

hierarchy or the step step-by-step process must require inputs only in the particular events that reflect

human learning behavior when communicating, a person does not exchange synt ax and semantics

inform of rules. A speaker’s process of the statement could be analyzed initially.

The study of Carl G. de Marcken entitled “Unsupervised Language Acquisition” presents a

computational theory of language acquisition . This computational theory examine how language

acquisition can operate without the teacher's explicit involvement, relying mostly on exposure to daily

spoken or written utterances. The theory just demands a minimal learning environment. Chomsky [41]

uses the term E-language (externalized language) to refer to this notion. He viewed languages this way,

learning language means to acquire knowledge adequate to produce and interpret new utterances in the
same manner as the rest of the speech community. This theory presented a broad computational theory

of unsupervised language that resulted into grammars accord very well into human properties of language

mechanism in terms of language acquisition and learning.

In summary, Uri Kernik and Carl G. de Marcken were both similar in the sense of attaching

algorithms in their studies and aligned under Noam Chomsky theory: universal grammar and involves

Jean Piaget cognitivism in acquiring and learning language. Also, their studies emphasize knowledge of

how words are being connected and by understanding their meanings. However, unsupervised language

acquisition focuses on the computational theory on how language learning can take place with no explicit

help from teacher. It explains also the detailed points of the use of lexicon and grammar rules. On the

other hand, Language Acquisition: Learning a Hierarchy of Phrases of Uri Zernik tackles about the step-

by-step process of learning language acquisition in the particular use of hierarchy of phrases.

Therefore, we conclude that these theories which is the study of Uri Zernik (2003) entitled

“Language Acquisition: Learning Hierarchy of Phrases, is related to Noam Chomsky theory that presents

about the universal grammar rules and cognitivism of Jean Piaget in learning process of language in

hierarchy of phrases, as well as the study of Carl G. de Marcken entitled “Unsupervised Language

Acquisition”
 References

de Marcken/ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, C. G. (1996, September 6).

Unsupervised Language Acquisition. GoogleScholar. https://www.ijcai.org/Proceedings/87-

1/Papers/024.pdf

Zernik/ Computer Science Department, U. (2003). Language Acquisition: Learning a Hierarchical of

Phrases. GoogleScholor. https://arxiv.org/pdf/cmp-lg/9611002.pdf