Language acquisition
Language acquisition refers to the process by which individuals gain proficiency in a language, encompassing both the unconscious and conscious aspects of learning. It is often distinguished from language learning, which typically involves more deliberate study and practice. The dynamics of language acquisition are influenced by a variety of factors, including biological, environmental, and social elements. Historically, the field has evolved through contributions from notable linguists and psychologists, such as Leonard Bloomfield, B.F. Skinner, and Noam Chomsky.
Bloomfield's behaviorist approach emphasized stimulus-response mechanisms in language learning, suggesting that children acquire language through imitation and reinforcement. In contrast, Chomsky introduced the idea of an innate linguistic capacity, proposing that humans are born with a universal grammar that facilitates language acquisition. This perspective has sparked ongoing debate among researchers regarding the balance between innate abilities and the influence of environmental context.
In addition to first language acquisition, the study of second-language acquisition has gained attention, focusing on how individuals learn to communicate in a non-native language. This area explores both cognitive and social factors, recognizing that learners often have distinct motivations for acquiring a new language. Overall, language acquisition remains a complex and multifaceted field of study, reflecting the rich interplay of cognitive abilities and social interactions in language development.
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Language acquisition
The study of language acquisition examines how people acquire language in different settings. In many instances the term language acquisition has been distanced from the term language learning, although they are interchangeable in many contexts. The former generally refers to the unconscious process of becoming proficient with language, and the latter refers to the conscious process of studying language. Although researchers studying language acquisition have come to no consensus as to how language is acquired, they do agree that biological, environmental, and social factors are crucial to the process.
Overview
Language expert Leonard Bloomfield is credited for developing the field of modern linguistics in the early twentieth century, which gave rise to many theories of language acquisition. Bloomfield was a behaviorist who believed that language acquisition was the result of stimulus and response. Later, in the 1940s, other researchers in the field, notably psychologist B. F. Skinner and linguist Noam Chomsky, expanded Bloomfield's theories. Skinner also believed in the behaviorist approach to language acquisition, in which a child learns language by associating objects with sound and imitates adults as they model these sounds and provide reinforcement for correct responses. With time, the child gradually understands and speaks the language of the community. According to Skinner, there is no pre-existing ability that stimulates language acquisition. Skinner’s notions have been disputed by many researchers because they ignore the biological influences in language acquisition, and because only a small amount of speech is modeled or reinforced by adults.
Chomsky believed that language learning is a complex system and must take into consideration the speaker’s abilities to create and understand a vast number of words and sentences. More importantly, Chomsky believed that children are born with an innate linguistic capacity to acquire a language and that language has a universal grammar that is learned across languages. This notion led him to postulate that all humans have a language acquisition device (LAD) that is present biologically at birth. Nonetheless, Chomsky did not disprove that environmental factors play a big role in language learning. Researchers have criticized Chomsky for focusing too much on a person’s innate abilities to discover language without taking into account the context within which language is learned, used, or works as a system. In other words, Chomsky’s ideology is said to be deficient in providing rules of how the mind works to contribute to language competence.
Second-language acquisition became a research focus as linguists sought to determine how learners acquire language in order to speak and communicate in a non-native language and integrate into a new culture. Second-language acquisition examines both the cognitive aspects and the social aspects of discovering language. However, in second-language acquisition, the learner has an ulterior motivation to learn the language, unlike the acquisition of the first language, where a child imitates sounds that resemble adults’ speech.
Bibliography
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