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CSD 333 Oral Language Development
Dept. of Communicative Sciences and Disorders
Michigan State University
Professor Laura Dilley
Spring, 2019
Unit 4 (Jan. 28 – Feb. 3, 2019)
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Objective
• Goal: Survey major theories of language
development
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Goals of science
• Description
• Explanation
• Prediction
• Control
– We desire control over outcomes in cases of
disorders or non‐felicitous conditions
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Criteria of good theories
• Achieve the higher goals of science
(explanation, prediction, control)
• Must be testable and falsifiable; that is, it must
be possible to show if they are true or false
• Must withstand scrutiny
– “Theory” means something special in science
• Must show connectivity across evidence
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How can I learn
language?
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Nature vs. nurture
• Are children preprogrammed to acquire
language?
• Do infants learn language through their
experiences?
• This is the “nature‐nurture” debate
– Also called “nativist‐empiricist” debate
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Mechanisms of acquisition
• By what mechanisms does language develop?
• Domain‐specific vs. domain‐general
– Domain‐specific: Dedicated solely to tasks of
comprehending and producing language
– Domain‐general: Using the same mechanisms for
language as for cognition, reasoning, problem
solving, and perceiving
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Mechanisms of acquisition
• By what mechanisms does language develop?
• The modularity debate concerns the extent to
which the brain is organized into modules
– A domain‐specific account implies strict
modularity
– A domain‐general account implies nonmodularity
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Driving forces
• What types of input drive language
development?
• Social conventions and interactions
• Positive evidence for assumptions
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Summary: Questions
• Are infants preprogrammed for language
acquisition, or do they learn language through
their experiences?
• By what mechanisms does language develop?
• What types of input drive language
development?
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Nature‐nurture debate
• Nurture‐inspired theories (also called
empiricist theories)
• Nature‐inspired theories (also called nativist
theories)
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Nurture‐inspired theories
1) Behaviorist theory (Skinner)
2) Social‐interactionist theory (Vygotsky)
3) Cognitive theory (Piaget)
4) Intentionality model (Bloom)
5) Competition model (MacWhinney)
6) Usage‐based theory (Tomasello)
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B. F. Skinner
(1904‐1990)
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Skinner’s Behaviorist theory
• Behaviorism proposed that learning was the
result of reinforcement and punishment
• Operant conditioning proposed that
reinforced behaviors become strengthened,
and punished behaviors become suppressed
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Skinner’s Behaviorist theory
• Under behaviorism, language is learned and
taught through reinforcement
• Proposes environmental stimuli elicit verbal
responses (or language) from children, who
“learn” language due to reinforcement
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Example: Behaviorism
“ba”
“baba”
“babble”
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Lev Vygotsky
(1896 – 1934)
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Social‐interactionist theory
• Social interaction through interpersonal
communication and culture shape higher
mental functions
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Social‐interactionist theory
• Human knowledge exists on psychological and
social planes
– Social plane: Social interaction
– Psychological plane: Cognitive functions
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Social‐interactionist theory
• Zone of proximal development: Difference
between actual development level and level
of potential development
actual development potential development
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“Bat, fat,
“Cat?”
mat…”
“Rat!”
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Jean Piaget
(1896‐1980)
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Cognitive theory and epistemology
• Epistemology: the branch of philosophy that
investigates the origin, nature, methods, and
limits of human knowledge
• Piaget’s cognitive theories and philosophies
together are known as genetic epistemology
– Genetic epistemology: The study of the
development of knowledge
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Cognitive theory (Piaget)
• Emphasized stages of learning and
development
– Stages spanned ages 0‐2, 2‐7, 7‐11, and 11+
• Achievements in one stage must occur before
progressing to the next stage
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Cognitive theory (Piaget)
• Viewed language a domain‐general ability that
follows general cognitive development
• Cognition hypothesis: Cognitive achievements
must be in place for language to emerge
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Cognitive theory (Piaget)
• Children are egocentric
• Children don’t replace egocentric speech with
dialog until developing the ability to see
others’ perspectives
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“Watch me
“OK here “My
wiggle my “My feet
goes. Are pigtails are
nose!” are cold
you tickling my
and I’m
watching?” shirt!”
hungry!”
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Intentionality model
• Proposes children's abilities in language,
emotional expression, cognition, social
interaction, and play develop in tandem
• The child drives language learning due to the
need to express inner thoughts
1/28/2019 Prof. Lois Bloom
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Competition model
• Describes mechanisms for acquiring the forms
that comprise a language
• Draws heavily on heard input
1/28/2019 Prof. Brian MacWhinney
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Competition model
• Overgeneralization: Over‐application of a rule
– Example: I goed and I runned reflect
overgeneralization of the rule “add –ed to a verb
to make past tense”
• The competition model proposes multiple
language forms compete with one another
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Usage‐based theories
• Emphasize the social nature of language
• Propose children learn language because they
have reason to talk
1/28/2019 Prof. Michael Tomasello
Usage‐based theories
• Based on observations of joint attention during
first year
– Joint attention: the shared focus of two individuals
on an object
• Propose children's knowledge of language
form and meaning emerges from use of
language
– Intention reading is a key skill
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“Bababa!”
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Nature vs. nurture
• Are children preprogrammed to acquire
language?
• Do infants learn language through their
experiences?
• This is the “nature‐nurture” debate
– Also called “nativist‐empiricist” debate
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Nature‐inspired theories
1) Modularity theory (Fodor)
2) Universal grammar (Chomsky)
3) Bootstrapping theories (e.g., Gleitman,
Pinker, Jusczyk)
4) Connectionist theories (e.g., Rumelhart,
McClelland, Elman)
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Jerry Fodor
(1935‐)
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Modularity theory
• Emphasizes the organization of the brain as
comprised of highly specified modules
• Proposes the language capacity is innate and
localized to domain‐specific processors
• Encapsulation: processors operate
independently of one another and do not
share information
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Modularity theory
• Language development in different areas is
driven forward by different types of input
• Environmental inputs shape the lexicon
• Innate capacities shape syntax
• Proposes separate areas of language can
develop independently of one another
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Noam Chomsky
(1928‐)
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Universal Grammar
• Universal Grammar posited that children are
born with possible grammatical rules and
constraints
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Universal Grammar
• Linguistic competence: children’s knowledge
about language
• Linguistic performance: actual
comprehension and production of language in
specific situations
• Proposed language acquisition depends on an
innate, species‐specific module dedicated to
language
– Language Acquisition Device
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Prof. Lila Gleitman
Prof. Peter Jusczyk
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Prof. Steven Pinker
Bootstrapping theories
• Bootstrapping: an individual accomplished a
goal by personal effort or with minimal
outside assistance
“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps”
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Bootstrapping theories
• Syntactic bootstrapping
• Semantic bootstrapping
• Prosodic bootstrapping
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Syntactic bootstrapping
• Syntactic bootstrapping describes the use of
syntax surrounding unknown verbs to
constrain possible meanings
“Are you bringing me the apple?”
hold
carry
walk
bring
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Semantic bootstrapping
• Children deduce grammatical structures by
using word meanings they acquire from
observing events around them
• Children use correspondences between
semantics and syntax to determine the
syntactic category of each word
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Prosodic bootstrapping
• Proposes that infants’ sensitivity to acoustic
properties of speech (including pitch, rhythm,
pauses, stress) allows inferences about units
• Infants hypothesize that strong‐weak syllable
groupings form words
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Connectionist theories
• Attempt to approximate the brain and
simulate mechanisms responsible for
language growth in relationship to input
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