LANGUAGE: FROM

INTELLIGENCES OR
INNATE IDEAS
A Report in Introduction to Psycholinguistics ELT
6007
Professor: DR. MERLEA A. CABALQUINTO
2nd Sem. 2015
Presented by: Genevieve B. Garrido
CNU Graduate School
Osmena Boulevard, Cebu City

WHAT IS YOUR IDEA OF A CIRCLE ?

KWL CHART
Subject: Circle /Topic: Language Acquisition
KNOW

WHAT YOU WANT TO

KNOW?

LEARN

WHERE DO LANGUAGE IDEAS COME FROM?

Is there a perfect circle?/ What is a perfect circle?

How did the idea of a perfect circle get in our minds?
- direct sensory experience?
- learned in school?
a circle is a figure whose closed plane curve at any
point is equidistant to some fixed point (the centre)
Did people know what a perfect circle
was before they defined it?
How did the idea get in the mind then?
How did the ideas we have about
language (grammar) get into our minds?

Language:

from
intelligence
or
innate

No knowledge is innate.

Ideas come from

At birth our brain is a blank sheet.

experiences

VIEWS OF EMPIRICIST
LANGUAGE...Intelligence
.
develops with experience out of

undifferentiated schemas in the mind > with

intelligence develops grammar

language is the product of intelligence, which is innate and begins to

operate with experience Intelligence is means for acquiring knowledge

VIEWS OF EMPIRICISTS
The Empiricist view: no knowledge is innate
(Empiricist, empiricism, Lat. empiricus,
Gr.empeirikos = experienced)
Ideas come through experience
17th cent. John Locke at birth, the mind is a blank slate,
all ideas are derived from direct sensory experience.
Aristotle > 20th cent. psychologist Piaget and philosopher
Putnam
Piaget: intelligence develops with experience out of
undifferentiated schemas in the mind > with intelligence
develops grammar
Putnam: language is the product of intelligence, which is
innate and begins to operate with experience Intelligence
is means for acquiring knowledge (people are born with
General Multi-Purpose learning Strategies (GMPLS))

Basic knowledge is innate and

only with reason and the stimulus
of relevant experience it comes
alive in the mind .

Basic knowledge is already

in the mind at birth

Rationalist Point of View on Language Learning

Ideas of justice, God, perfection, triangle, circle etc. are
already in the mind and are brought to awareness through
reason

Emphasis on discovery

rather than invention.

THE RATIONALIST VIEW: BASIC KNOWLEDGE IS

INNATE

Basic knowledge is already in the mind at birth

Traditional view: Plato, 4th cent. BC. and
Descartes, 17th cent.
basic knowledge is innate and only with reason
and the stimulus of relevant experience it comes
alive in the mind

Ideas of justice, God, perfection, triangle,

circle etc. are already in the mind and are
brought to awareness through reason
Emphasis on discovery rather than invention.

RATIONALISTS: PLATO,
DESCARTES &
LEIBINITZ
Traditionaists believed that
basic knowledge is innate.

Faculties of the mind with their own

processing procedures

Language faculty = Universal grammar =

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Acquisition occurs independently of

intelligence, logic or reason
(mathematics?)

Experience is
necessary to
activate UG - to
provide the
child with a
grammar of
that language

CHOMSKYS UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR

(VIVIAN JAMES COOK AND MARK NEWSON, CHOMSKY'S UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR: AN INTRODUCTION, 3RD ED. BLACKWELL, 2007)

Faculties of the mind with their own processing

procedures
Logical, moral, ethical and language faculty with a set of
related ideas
Language ideas are innate to all human beings - universal
+ the basis on which grammars are constructed (infinite
number on finite set of ideas)
Language faculty = Universal grammar = Language
Acquisition Device (LAD)
Experience is necessary to activate UG - to provide the
child with a grammar of that language
Acquisition occurs independently of intelligence, logic or
reason (mathematics?)

CHOMSKYS 4 MAIN ARGUMENTS TO

SUPPORT THE EXISTENCE OF UG

1. The ease and speed of child acquisition

2. Exposure to inadequate language data
3. Poverty of stimulus
4. Irrelevance of intelligence

CHOMSKYS EASE AND SPEED OF CHILD ACQUISITION

ARGUMENT
Chomsky

(1960): children- great ease in acquiring the

language for a very short time- innate language
faculty (Universal grammar)
Objections: Putnam (1967)
- the child spends much more time learning the
language than would an adult

Child: 10 h. x 365d.=3650 h/y x 4 = 14400h.

Student: 5class. X 3h=15h/w x 18w = 270h./semester x 3 = 810h.
14400/810 = 17.8y.

Adults do not have the benefit of innate language

ideas? Universal grammar weakens or dies with
age? Empiricism? every language has essential
principles and functions that cannot be acquired
through experience.

CHOMSKYS INADEQUATE LANGUAGE DATA ARGUMENT

Imperfect language data as input + minute sample of the

linguistic material that has been thoroughly mastered.
Objections:
Labov (1970)
The ungrammaticality of every-day speech appears to be a
myth with no basis in actual fact. In the various empirical
studies which we have conducted the proportion of truly
ungrammatical and ill-formed sentences falls to less than
two percent.
propose any innate language ideas to try to deal with the
2% ungrammatical sentences
- Children probably disregard ungrammatical sentences
- Sentences the child experiences do contain in them an
adequate representation of the syntactic structures the
child has learned.

CHOMSKYS POVERTY OF STIMULUS ARGUMENT

Focus

on special linguistic problems > complex

structure-dependent rules
Question formation
(1) The man is here./Is the man here?;
(2) The man will leave. / Will the man leave?
- H1 - first occurrence of is/will (sequence of
words); H2 - (following the noun phrase)
- Only individual words appear in the world; the
grouping and labelling are done in our minds
(3) The man who is here is tall. Is the man who
is here tall? Is the man who here is tall?

Definition:
The argument that the linguistic input received by young
children is in itself insufficient to explain children's detailed
knowledge of their first language.
An influential advocate of this controversial theory has been linguist
Noam Chomsky, who introduced the expression "poverty of the
stimulus" in Rules and Representations (Columbia University Press,
1980).The poverty-of-the-stimulus argument has been used to reinforce
Chomsky's theory of a Universal Grammar.
Chomsky's Position
"It is, for the present, impossible to formulate an assumption about
initial innate structure rich enough to account for the fact that
grammatical knowledge is attained on the basis of the evidence
available to the learner."
Richard Nordquist
Grammar & Composition Expert Poverty of the Stimulus (POS)
http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/Poverty-Of-The-Stimulus.htm

CHOMSKYS POVERTY OF STIMULUS ARGUMENT

UG: Insufficient language data in the

environment children cannot acquire
by any Empiricist means
Objections: Steinberg - acquisition of
declarative sentences structure involves
phrase structuradequate is acquisition
too. The same goes for Q? stimulus
input is and not impoverished!
Speech production follows speech
understanding!

CHOMSKYS IRRELEVANCE OF INTELLIGENCE

ARGUMENT

LA is essentially independent of intelligence: for example animals

Objections:
Putnam: animals may lack the necessary analytical skills
and abstract reasoning
Steinberg: low intelligence is sufficient for the acquisition
of grammar
Putnam (1975): Complex system of thought as mathematics
cannot be the result of genetic inheritance (evolution being
completed) it must be an invention of the intelligence of
the mind. Why not invent grammar as well? Chomsky:
change of position- mathematics is not independent of
language but is a product of Universal grammar

OTHER THEORIES
THAT EXPLAIN HOW
LANGUAGE ARE
ACQUIRED?

SENSORIMOTOR STAGE (birth-2

years old)
At this early stage in cognitive
development, Piaget saw language
skills as basically physical. The
baby experiments with what her
mouth can do just as she
experiments with what her hands
can do.
In the process she learns how
to imitate some ofJEAN
the sounds
PIAGET
she
hears her parents making and in
what context those sounds should
be made.

The CONCRETE OPERATIONAL

STAGE begins around age 7 and
lasts until at least age 11 or 12. At
this stage, the child is capable of
using logic and of solving
problems in the form of stories as
long as the story deals only with
facts rather than abstract ideas.
Language at this stage is used to
refer to specific and concrete facts,
not mental concepts. Piaget
believed that some people remain
in this stage for the remainder of
their lives, even though a child in
this stage has not yet reached full
cognitive maturity.
The FORMAL OPERATIONAL STAGE begins at age 11 or 12 at
the earliest. At this stage, the child can start to use abstract
reason and to make a mental distinction between her self and
an idea she is considering. Children who have reached this
stage can use language to express and debate abstract
theoretical concepts such as those found in mathematics,
philosophy or logic.

Language is a social concept that is developed through

social interactions. According to Lev Vygotsky, a 20th-century
Soviet psychologist, languageSOCIAL
acquisition
involves not only a
DEVELOPMENT
childs exposure to words but also an interdependent
process of
THEORY
growth between thought and language. Vygotskys influential
theory of the "zone of proximal development" asserts that
teachers should consider a childs prospective learning power
before trying to expand the childs grasp of language.

Social development
theory & Language
Learning

A young child and her father are

playing with a shapes toy. The
young child alone cannot figure
out how the various shapes can fit
into the designated holes. Her
father describes how each shape
can only fit into its same shaped
hole
The father offers her
encouragement and
helps her put a few
pieces in their respective
hole. As the child grasps
the concepts, the father
allows her to complete
the task alone. This is an
example of interaction
influencing the cognitive
development of a child.

IMPLICATIONS TO TEACHING

PRINCIPLED ECLECTICISM Teaching English as a

Second Language (TESL) at present is based on an
amalgamation of many diverse methods. LarsenFreeman (2000)recognizes that there is no single
acceptable way to go about teaching language today.
Introducing the term Principled Eclecticism she
defines it as a desirable, coherent, pluralistic
approach to language teaching. Eclecticism makes the
lesson planner deviate from reliance upon a single
approach to teaching where the planner is constricted
within its limited number of techniques. Furthermore
the students performance can become mechanical
and as a result they cannot reap maximum benefits
from the learning.

LANGUAGE EXPERIENCE
APPROACH
Is

(HIGGINS,1995)

a teaching strategy which

increases decoding and
reading comprehension. It
draws upon and take
advantage of this important
link between experience and
learning by using the readers
narratives as the basis for
reading instruction.

STEPS IN USING LEA

*Teacher and students discuss the topic
to be focused in the brainstorming
activity.
*The students discuss/report what ideas
have been observed or experience.
* The teacher records the statements to
construct the basic reading materials.

COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH IN LANGUAGE (CLT)

In communicative language classrooms the focus shifts from
teacher-led to student-centered language application and using a
cooperative and collaborative learning mode is recognized as a
strong facilitator of learning. Information gap creation in the
activities result in each runner communicating information to the
rest of the group who do not know the contents of the cartoon
frame while the others listen, interrogate, discuss and take turns
to write, edit and present.
One of the instructional practices promoted by CLT is that material
should reflect real-life situations and demands. Thus inventiveness in
material preparation is pedagogically necessary to create meaningful,
comprehensible input.
Group & Cooperative Activities are encourage. During group
activities the language focus encompasses all four skills: Listening,
Speaking, Reading and Writing. Furthermore during cooperative activities
identifies the following as crucial: Positive interdependence among
learners in respect to resources and task accomplishment; Face-to-face
interaction in small groups; Individual accountability for participation
or internalization of the relevant knowledge or skills. (Weimer ,2002)

VYGOTSKYS
THEORY
MODEL

First implication of Vygotsky's theory comes

from the emphasized importance of social
interaction.
In accordance with that, interaction,
collaboration and peer instruction between
learners should be encouraged during the
educational process,
since it will enhance learning. Teacher should
also collaborate with the learners and help
them construct meaning and he should also
try to encourage externalization:
the teacher, working with the school
child on a given question, explains,
informs, inquires, corrects, and forces
the child himself to explain.5)
The teacher or any higher-level partner in the
educational process shoul always be aware of
the development level of his partner.
Another effective form of teaching is

scaffolding - providing learner with help

when and as much as needed

MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES APPROACH

HOWARD GARDNER(1983)
Although you can't please all the students all the time, it's just
good to bear in mind that there are many different ways of
learning.
If you try an activity with one group and it falls flat, it may
well be worth trying it again as it may work really well with
another set of students.
If you can identify the loner of the class or the one who is
always up and out of his seat, try and put activities into your
lesson plan that you think will suit them from time to time.
In the classroom ,you may be wondering what all this has got
to do with your classes, well, although not impossible, it would
be quite a real undertaking to give all your students a test to
see which of the intelligences is most prominent, and then
tailor-make each of your classes to suit every individual
student!

REFERENCES:
Finegan, E. (2015). Language its structure and use. Stamford USA:
Cengage Learning Products.
Fromkin,V. et al. (2014). An introduction to langauge. Stamford USA:
Cengage Learning Products.
NordquistRichard Grammar & Composition Expert Poverty of the
Stimulus (POS) http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/Poverty-Of-TheStimulus.htm

THANK YOU !
THANK YOU!
THANK YOU!
Presented by: Genevieve B. Garrido
CNU Graduate School
Osmena Boulevard, Cebu City
Second Semester 2015