Teamwork341

This page has been created to encourage and facilitate collaboration amongst members of the Wiki team. Feel free to post your contributions to this page, as well as to copy others' into your sandbox for revision. Also, it may be helpful to utilize the talk function of this page to share ideas, rather than any one person's.

target article: language acquisition

Introduction

first paragraph

Andrew A wants to work on this! Can someone post the link or URL to the Wikipedia page? I am having a really hard time finding it. Andrewz1 (talk) 20:08, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Language acquisition Is this the page you're looking for? Semccraw (talk) 15:45, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

History

For my copy editting job i editted the first paragraph under history Cindyy1 (talk) 18:15, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

For my copy editing job I also edited the second paragraph under the section titled "History." Lissyh1990 (talk) 23:43, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

overview of whole article

main domains of language

possible stubs or links to existing articles: phonetics, phonology, lexicon, semantics, syntax, grammar

defining language, maybe early in article?

must link to other WP articles, eg, language

Hockett's features need to be integrated into the focus on child language

I will be working on a stub for rapid fading if anyone wants to add to this.

Bhaluska (talk) 23:08, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Domains of Language

Phonology

neonates: Janet Werker, Pat Kuhl, distinguishing own from other languages (via prosodic information)

6 months: Peter Juczyk, sensitivity to non-native contrasts reducing, vowels first, recognition of own name (check Saxton: CM thinks it's 7 months), babbling (canonical or reduplicated and variegated; jargoning) *Allie Glock wants to work on phonology at 6 months

At 6 months of age, babies begin to zoom in on the phonemes of their native language. In other words, they are no longer able to recognize the phonemes of foreign languages. This loss does, however, allow young children to ignore sounds that are unimportant to their language development, and sparks a learning process of communication using their native language. Bilingual babies also begin to lose recognition of phonemes unfamiliar to their native languages at this age, while simultaneously zooming in on the phonemes of both languages they are learning.

At the beginning of the stage of perception and comprehension, babies 6-7 months of age begin to recognize their own name. One’s name is probably the most frequent word a person hears. Therefore, it is one of the first words children are able to learn and comprehend. Using motherese, parents and adults often repeat a baby’s name numerous times while talking to them. For example, a mother may greet her baby in the morning by saying, “Good morning Suzie! How is Suzie doing this morning? Lets pick something out for you to wear today. Does Suzie want to wear this? Is Suzie ready for breakfast?", and so on. As a result of her mother's constant use of her name, Suzie begins to recognize "Suzie" as a word. More importantly, she realizes the word "Suzie" is her name, and thus she begins to respond to the sound of her name.

Around the age of 6 months, children enter into the developmental stage of babbling. There are two subtypes of babbling that children produce; reduplicated and variegated, both of which have a consonant vowel syllable pattern. Reduplicated oral babbling is when children verbalize the same consonant vowel syllable pattern repeatedly, such as bababa. In contrast, variegated oral babbling maintains the consonant vowel syllable patterns while implementing different phonemes in each syllable, for example, namadega. Notice that bababa and namadega lack meaning. This absence of meaning is the reason why these utterances are not considered to be words, but rather baby talk or child oral babbling.

Babbling is not restricted to verbal communication, but is also present in non-hearing children. This is called manual babbling. Like oral babbling, manual babbling has reduplicated and variegated subtypes. Reduplicated manual babbling is represented when children continuously repeat the same hand gesture. Slightly more complicated, variegated manual babbling makes use of minimal pairs that are distinguished based on palm direction, hand shape, location, and movement. Manual babbling also lacks meaning, and is the result of a child’s attempt to produce language.

References:

McKee, C. (January 12 - April 5, 2012). Lecture Class by A. L. Glock [Typed Notes]. PSY/LING 341: Language Development, University of Arizona. Arizona, Tucson.

Saxton, Matthew. Child Language: Acquisition and Development. London: SAGE Publications, 2010. Print, (125-127).

10 months: Pat Kuhl, own phonemes pretty much categorized, consonants now done, word comprehension getting going (Jessica O. is doing 10 months Ornelasj (talk) 06:08, 14 April 2012 (UTC))

At 10 months, infants begin to lose their ability to discriminate sounds from non-native languages when those sounds do not represent a discernible contrast (also known as a separate phoneme) in their native language.

This loss of infants' ability to detect phonemic contrasts in other language is apparent when we look at the following phonemes from the perspective of a Japanese speaker: /ɹ/ and /l/. In English, /ɹ/ is a separate phoneme from /l/. This is exemplified in the words 'rake' and 'lake.' An English speaker would not use /ɹ/ and /l/ interchangeably because in English, this would create two different words with two different meanings. To a Japanese speaker, however, these words would not sound critically different, as these sounds are not separate phonemes in Japanese.

Janet Werker, a professor at the University of British Columbia, conducted an experiment in 1984 which shows this change in an infant's ability to discern the phonemic contrasts of any language. Before this change occurs, all contrasts are "critically different" to all infants. That is to say, an infant (learning any spoken language in the world) is able to perceive the difference between an /ɹ/ or an /l/, as well as he or she is able to note the difference between /p/ and /p^h/ (aspirated /p/) and categorizes these sounds as contrasting. Patricia Kuhl, noting this ability in infants to identify these contrasts, named them "citizens of the world" because they seemed to be born with the power to learn any and all given phonemes as separate. Which meant, as Kuhl noted, they were born with the capability to learn any language in the world entire.

Although this new ability presents itself as a loss of phonemic specification (i.e., the inability to discriminate between sounds of a non-native language may appear to be a step backward in learning), it is actually helping infants to zero in on the sounds of their own language, while preventing them from overextending this specification. If infants did not learn to ignore the differences that are irrelevant in their native language, they would have to hold a space in their lexicon for the sound /p/, in any given word, as well as a space for the other sounds /p/ (e.g., /p/ at the beginning of a word, /p/ at the end of a word, /p/ between two consonants, etc.). Not only would this put strain on the infant's memory, but it would be an unnecessary distinction to make (unless, of course, each of those categories of /p/ are contrastive in the infant's native language). In English, for instance, /p/ becomes aspirated at the beginning of a word, but English speakers do not note this /p/ as a contrastive sound. That is, if a native English speaker heard a person start the word, 'pat' with an unaspirated /p/, he or she would not hear this as a separate word with a separate meaning; although they may notice this difference, they would instead hear one of the many types of /p/ that would be considered in their lexicon under the general category, /p/. However, if they had a separate category in their lexicon for each type of /p/ sound, extra time would have to be taken in order to find exactly the right /p/, which would still lead him or her to the conclusion that the word uttered was 'pat,' but would take longer and require more space in his or her memory.

At this time, infants also learn to recognize sequences of the same consonants and vowels as the same words, regardless of who the sequences come from or what their patterns of intonation are. That is, they learn that a speaker's vocal tendencies are not a part of what gives a word a specific meaning. With this ability at hand, infants are able to ignore these differences, and they begin to learn how to hone in on word meaning, then subsequently, sentence meaning and the grammar of their language.

This would be a good place to insert captured video of infants and their discriminatory abilities at these ages...we could also reference the demo video shown in class, but not embed it (Max Sasaki), maxsasaki (talk) 05:56, 21 March 2012 (UTC)):

12 months: first words produced, what's their phonology like? overlap with babbling

References

Lexicon

comprehension/production lag

content vs function elements - Lauren McMahon is working on this Laurenm2 (talk) 06:21, 1 March 2012 (UTC)laurenm2}}

early semantic errors like over-extension

numbers over time, all the way up to a literate high school graduate (maybe a link to a stub on vocabulary estimation)

maybe smoosh morphology into the lexicon (although much of it links words to syntax)

Bios

Susan Carey - JessicaSG

I will add more information on Susan Carey's accomplishments and awards.

I will also discuss the book she wrote Origin of Concepts and her research on cognitive development

Susan Carey was a William James Fellow at the American Psychological Society. She is also a Guggenheim Fellow and a Fulbright Fellow at London University. She is well known for writing the book “The Origin of Concepts” in which she explains the development of new concepts in human cognitive development. Her book goes into great detail about core cognition as well as different aspects of cognitive science. She has had a huge impact on the world of language acquisition. She has created new terms and models to help better understand human cognition. Carey has also done a lot of research on face perception in cognitive neuroscience. In addition, she has done quite a bit of research that illustrates the difference in the way infants and young children view animals as well as inanimate objects. Carey has done some extraordinary work throughout the years using her knowledge to come up with theories in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy and linguistics.

References:

Carey, S. (2009). The Origin of Concepts. Oxford: Oxford University.

Matus, S. (2003). Susan Carey Reveals the Origin of Knowledge. Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Harvard University. Retrieved from: :::http://www.radcliffe.edu/about/news/press_releases_03carey.aspx

William James Fellow Award. Association for Psychological Science. Retrieved From: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/awards/james/citations/carey.cfm

Syntax

Syntax is defined as the rules and principles that govern sentence structure. In other words, it is the grammar of any given language. Syntax may also vary from language to language. For example, English is set up as a Subject Verb Object (SVO) grammatical structure where as French is a Subject Object Verb Language. In direct translation a sentence from French to English would seem ungrammatical because their word order is different.

The smallest form of syntax is any two-word utterance made by a child, which begins around the age of two years. Children learn the grammar their language by the time they start using two word utterances. In the Jabba the Hut experiment by Derek Bickerton and Noam Chomsky they tested a child’s, 3-5 years, understanding of English grammar. They would state a sentence like “ This is a cat.” And ask the child to restate the sentence in question from. The child would then respond with “Is this a cat?” properly forming an interrogative with English Syntax.

Two theory’s on how a child’s syntax is developed comes from Noam Chomsky’s Universal Grammar theory, and the Usage Based Theory.

Universal Grammar believes that a child has the rules for syntax encoded in them and it is an innate learning mechanism. The child does not need to be taught but rather they are able to develop the syntax of their language based on the encoding which is a part of the child. In contrast, the Usage Based Theory believes that the Childs Syntax comes from input. This theory rests solely on the functionality of language and the amount of times words and sentences are spoken to the child. The Usage Based Theory does not believe that the child has any sort of syntax in them but rather it is all learned through listening to adults around them. Both Theory’s, however, believe that the child is relatively quick about development in their syntax, even in such an enormous language like English.

Kayla Ek will work on this from the original page Kaylaek (talk)

Timeline: Dani dkunst (talk · contribs) leader

Time A: production

What do neonates do, vocalization-wise?

What about a few weeks later?

When do they start seeming to produce vowel-like sounds, even if they're not controlling their vocal tracts well yet?

When do we see cooing?

When do we see babbling?

canonical or reduplicated

Who's looking for audio on this?

variegated

Does anyone want to do something on jargoning?

Let's get something in on oral and manual babbling.

Who's looking for video on this?

Currently obtaining age appropriate cooing and babbling video via filmed footage, would audio just be easier? The videos will be embedded in the page like so (Found by jallen1):

This video is of a 3 month old infant cooing.

3 month old infant cooing in response to caregiver

Max Sasaki), maxsasaki (talk) 05:56, 21 April 2012 (UTC)):

Infant babbling in crib

— Preceding unsigned

This video is of a 6 and a 1/2 month old baby babbling, and is already properly licensed for our use. So we will definitely include this. As far as audio goes, I can also set up a page that allows streaming audio we can manually record. Does anyone have children at these ages that could be used for such educational purposes?

(Max Sasaki), maxsasaki (talk) 05:56, 21 March 2012 (UTC)):

Time B: comprehension

Started Timeline

This needs more/correct milestones for both production and comprehension. Anyone who wants to contribute to the timeline let me know, I have also posted this into my own sandbox. Dkunst (talk)

Before I got assigned to the Presentation, I had been working on fixing the timeline that had been created. I'll post it here so that someone can fix it, add to it, and reference it as needed.

Average Age	Language Development
Birth-2 months	Can separate own language from foreign languages; imitation; crying and swallowing; attend to parents' faces and voices.
2-4 months	Cooing and laughing.
4-6 months	Vocal play (makes attempts to form syllables), shows a preference for speech sounds over non-speech sounds (e.g., whistling, though it comes from a speaker's mouth).
6-9 months	Starts babbling only in sounds of own language; zooming in on the phonemes of their native language; recognition of own name; word segmentation.
10 months	Pointing to call attention to objects of interest to the infant, honing in on the sounds of their native language (and the ability to categorize the contrasting sounds of all other languages greatly diminishes).
11-14 months	Can follow eye gaze, can comprehend whole utterances and names of familiar objects.
12 months	First word, produces holophrases.
15 months	Uses gestures to substitute for words difficult to produce, as well as combines gestures and words they are already able to produce, learn words for the sake of understanding others' intentions.
16 months	Comprehend 150 words; produce 30 words, comprehends whole sentences, attempts to imitate adult conversation.
18 months	Two-word utterances, masters stops (while still having difficulty with fricatives).
21 months	Starts using inflectional morphology.
23 months	Production of short, grammatical sentences.
24 months	Starts speaking in multi-word sentences with a clear word order forming; produce 200-300 words.
36 months	Experience fast mapping.
48 months	Complex grammar; produce 1,500 words.
60 months	Mature pronunciation; comprehend 6,000 words; produce 2,200 words; learn on average 3.6 new words per day.

Allieglock Allieglock (talk) 07:30, 13 April 2012 (UTC) Ependell (talk) 04:30, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

References:

McKee, C. (January 12 - April 5, 2012). Lecture Class by A. L. Glock [Typed Notes]. PSY/LING 341: Language Development, University of Arizona. Arizona, Tucson.

Saxton, Matthew. Child Language: Acquisition and Development. London: SAGE Publications, 2010. Print, (125-127).

Research Methods

HAS, habituation (Eimas et al, 1971; Werker)

preferential looking

elicited production (Berko Gleason with wugs) (I can work on the bit about Berko Gleason and wugs in my sandbox)Aebarone (talk) 16:33, 6 March 2012 (UTC)Aebarone

ERPs and other neuro-imaging techniques (see Saxton's ch 10)

Big Issues

nature/nurture

Critical period - Alissa Hartt - I will work as a copyeditor and edit the second paragraph under the title "The Sensitive Period" Lissyh1990 (talk) 15:45, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Eric Lenneburg

Feral/Isolated Children

Genie

Representation of language acquisition in the brain

Recent advances in the field of neuroimaging technology have allowed for a better understanding of how language acquisition is manifested physically in the brain. Language acquisition generally occurs in children during a period of rapid increase in brain development. At this point in development, a child has several more neural connections than he or she will have as an adult. This allows the child to be more capable of learning new things and allows the child to be more effective in learning new materials than it would be as an adult.

The Sensitive Period

Language acquisition has been studied from the perspective of developmental psychology and neuroscience, which looks at learning to use and understand language parallel to a child's brain development. It has been ascertained through empirical research on developmentally normal children as well as extreme cases of language deprivation that there is a "sensitive period" of language acquisition in which infants have the ability to learn any language. This plasticity diminishes as a child becomes gradually more exposed to the specific sounds and structure of his or her language environment. This allows the child to promptly become a native speaker of that language. As Christophe Pallier noted, "Before the child begins to speak and to perceive, the uncommitted cortex is a blank slate on which nothing has been written. In the ensuing years much is written, and the writing is normally never erased. After the age of ten or twelve, the general functional connections have been established and fixed for the speech cortex." According to the sensitive or critical period models, the age at which a child acquires the ability to use language is a predictor of how well he or she is ultimately able to use language.[32] However, there may be a cutoff age at which becoming a fluent and native-like user of a language is no longer possible. Our brains may be automatically wired to learn languages, but this ability does not last into adulthood in the same way that it exists during development in childhood. By the onset of puberty (around age 12), language acquisition has typically been solidified and it becomes more difficult to learn a language in the same way a native speaker would. At this point, it is usually a second language that a person is trying to acquire and not a first.[33]

This sensitive period is typically never missed by cognitively normal children- humans are extremely well prepared to learn language, and unless there is a complete lack of language in the environment it is almost impossible not to learn language. Researchers are unable to experimentally test the effects of the sensitive period of development on language acquisition because it would be unethical to deprive children of language until this period is over. However, case studies on abused, language deprived children show that they were extremely limited in their language skills even after instruction; such examples can be seen in Genie, Isabelle and Victor.[34]

Neurocognitive research

According to several linguists, neurocognitive research has confirmed many standards of language learning. Standards such as: "learning engages the entire person (cognitive, affective, and psychomotor dominas), the human brain seeks patterns in its searching for meaning, emotions affect all aspects of learning, retention and recall, past experience always affects new learning, the brain's working memory has a limited capacity, lecture usually results in the lowest degree of retention, rehearsal is essential for retention, practice [alone] does not make perfect, and each brain is unique" (Sousa, 2006, p. 274). In terms of genetics, the gene ROBO1 has been associated with phonological buffer integrity or length [50]

Although it is difficult to determine without invasive measures which exact parts of the brain become most active and necessary for language acquisition, fMRI and PET technology has allowed for some conclusions to be made about where language may be centered. The two main areas where language has been connected in the brain are Wernicke's area and Broca’s area. Wernicke’s area is part of the cerebral cortex linked to speech and is involved in the understanding of written and spoken language. Broca's area is a region of the hominid brain with functions linked to speech production. Kuniyoshi Sakai proposed, based on several neuroimaging studies, that there may be a "grammar center" where language is primarily processed in the left lateral premotor cortex (located near the pre central sulcus and the inferior frontal sulcus). Additionally, these studies proposed that first language and second language acquisition may be represented differently in the cortex.[34]

User:Bmbrooks Here is my final edit of the Neurocognitive Research and Representation of language acquisition in the brain sections. I was responsible for the narrative, but additionally added a few facts that seemed to be needed.

human uniqueness

Charles Hockett's Design features of language

I will be working on a stub for semanticity Jesusserrano

Brittany H - You might move your piece on rapid fading to here.Cecilemckee (talk) 19:36, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

These features also need stubs (write your name next to the stub you would like to work on):Vocal-Auditory Channel,Broadcast transmission and directional reception, and Total feedback Jesusserrano

A stub for semanticity has been added.Jesusserrano 3-18-2012

Animal Communication

Bees

vervet calls

modularity

Michelle Ramirez is going to work on the bio for Michael Tomasello.

Theories of Language Acquisition

We need to figure out how to organize the prose that's already in the article. It covers a number of explanations of language development in different degrees of depth.

Aglick (talk) 18:03, 21 March 2012 (UTC) I will work on editing each section in Language Acquisition. I will fix the grammar, flow and structure.

I will work organizing the existing information in the article to begin to structure this section. Lmfye (talk) 03:30, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

Here is all the existing information about theories in the article. I organized them by "nature" and "nurture" and "both" because it is the common disputing argument. Much of this needs more information or editing. Lmfye (talk) 21:52, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

A range of theories of language acquisition have been proposed. These theories include innatism, Psychological nativism, and Generativism in which a child is born prepared in some manner with these capacities, as opposed to other theories such as Behaviorism and Relational frame theory, in which language is simply learned as one learns to ride a bike. Theories which support aspects of both nature and nurture are Social interactionism, Emergentism, and Empiricism.

"Nature" Theories

Philosophers in ancient societies were interested in how humans acquired the ability to understand and produce language, well before empirical methods for testing those theories were developed, but for the most part they seemed to regard language acquisition as a subset of man's ability to acquire knowledge and learn concepts. Some early, observation based ideas about language acquisition were proposed by Plato, who felt that word-meaning mapping in some form was innate. Additionally, Sanskrit grammarians debated for over twelve centuries whether humans' ability to recognize the meaning of words was god-given (possibly innate) or passed down by previous generations and learned from already established conventions —e.g. a child learning the word for cow by listening to trusted speakers talking about cows.

Aglick (talk) 02:54, 22 March 2012 (UTC) I will edit "Nature Theories" section

Innatism

Psychological nativism

Generativism

Generative grammar, associated especially with the work of Noam Chomsky, is currently one of the principal approaches to children's acquisition of syntax. The leading idea is that human biology imposes narrow constraints on the child's "hypothesis space" during language acquisition. In the Principles and Parameters Framework, which has dominated generative syntax since Chomsky's (1980) Lectures on Government and Binding, the acquisition of syntax resembles ordering from a menu: The human brain comes equipped with a limited set of choices, and the child selects the correct options using her parents' speech, in combination with the context.

An important argument in favor of the generative approach is the Poverty of the stimulus argument. The child's input (a finite number of sentences encountered by the child, together with information about the context in which they were uttered) is in principle compatible with an infinite number of conceivable grammars. Moreover, few if any children can rely on corrective feedback from adults when they make a grammatical error. Yet, barring situations of medical abnormality or extreme privation, all the children in a given speech-community converge on very much the same grammar by the age of about five years. An especially dramatic example is provided by children who for medical reasons are unable to produce speech, and therefore can literally never be corrected for a grammatical error, yet nonetheless converge on the same grammar as their typically developing peers, according to comprehension-based tests of grammar.

Considerations such as these have led Chomsky, Jerry Fodor, Eric Lenneberg and others to argue that the types of grammar that the child needs to consider must be narrowly constrained by human biology (the nativist position). These innate constraints are sometimes referred to as universal grammar, the human "language faculty," or the "language instinct."

Aglick (talk) 17:30, 21 March 2012 (UTC)Adam Glick is going to edit this

"Nurture" Theories

In a more modern context, empiricists like Hobbes and Locke argued that knowledge (and for Locke, language) emerge ultimately from abstracted sense impressions. These arguments lean towards the "nurture" side of the argument- that language is acquired through sensory experience. This led to Carnap's Aufbau, an attempt to learn all knowledge from sense datum, using the notion of "remembered as similar" to bind these into clusters, which would eventually map into language.

Behaviorism

Proponents of Behaviorism argued that language may be learned through a form of operant conditioning. In B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behaviour (1957), he suggested that the successful use of a sign such as a word or lexical unit, given a certain stimulus, reinforces its "momentary" or contextual probability. Because operant conditioning is contingent on reinforcement by rewards, a child would learn that a specific combination of sounds stands for a specific thing through repeated successful associations made between those two things. A "successful" use of a sign would be one in which the child is understood (for example, a child saying "up" when he or she wants to be picked up) and is rewarded with the desired response from another person, therefore reinforcing the child's understanding of the meaning of that word and making it more likely that he or she will use that word in a similar situation in the future. Some Empiricist theories of language acquisition include statistical learning theories of language acquisition, Relational Frame Theory, functionalist linguistics, social interactionist theory, and usage-based language acquisition.

Skinner's behaviourist idea was strongly attacked by Noam Chomsky in a review article in 1959, calling it "largely mythology" and a "serious delusion". Instead, Chomsky argued for a more theoretical approach to language acquisition, based on a study of syntax. Aglick (talk) 02:56, 22 March 2012 (UTC) Adam Glick

Relational frame theory

Main article: Relational frame theory

The relational frame theory (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, Roche, 2001), provides a wholly selectionist/learning account of the origin and development of language competence and complexity. Based upon the principles of Skinnerian behaviorism, RFT posits that children acquire language purely through interacting with the environment. RFT theorists introduced the concept of functional contextualism in language learning, which emphasizes the importance of predicting and influencing psychological events, such as thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, by focusing on manipulable variables in their context. RFT distinguishes itself from Skinner's work by identifying and defining a particular type of operant conditioning known as derived relational responding, a learning process that to date appears to occur only in humans possessing a capacity for language. Empirical studies supporting the predictions of RFT suggest that children learn language via a system of inherent reinforcements, challenging the view that language acquisition is based upon innate, language-specific cognitive capacities.

"Nature" and "Nurture" Theories

Social interactionism

Main article: Social interactionist theory

Social interactionist theory consists of a number of hypotheses on language acquisition. These hypotheses deal with written, spoken, or visual social tools which consist of complex systems of symbols and rules on language acquisition and development. The compromise between “nature” and “nurture” is the “interactionist” approach. In addition, for years psychologists and researchers have been asking the same question: what are the language behaviors that nature provides innately and what are those behaviors that are realized by environmental exposure, which is nurture.

Going to be edited by Eberman7 (talk) 22:51, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Emergentism

Emergentist theories, such as MacWhinney's competition model, posit that language acquisition is a cognitive process that emerges from the interaction of biological pressures and the environment. According to these theories, neither nature nor nurture alone is sufficient to trigger language learning; both of these influences must work together in order to allow children to acquire a language. The proponents of these theories argue that general cognitive processes subserve language acquisition and that the end result of these processes is language-specific phenomena, such as word learning and grammar acquisition. The findings of many empirical studies support the predictions of these theories, suggesting that language acquisition is a more complex process than many believe.

Going to be edited by Eberman7 (talk) 22:51, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Empiricism

Although Chomsky's theory of a generative grammar has been popular with some linguists since the 1950s many criticisms of the basic assumptions of generative theory have been put forth by cognitive-functional linguistics who argue that language structure is created through language use. These linguists argue that the concept of a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is unsupported by evolutionary anthropology, which tends to show a gradual adaptation of the human brain and vocal cords to the use of language, rather than a sudden appearance of a complete set of binary parameters delineating the whole spectrum of possible grammars ever to have existed and ever to exist. On the other hand, cognitive-functional theorists use this anthropological data to show how human beings have evolved the capacity for grammar and syntax to meet our demand for linguistic symbols. (Binary parameters are common to digital computers but may not be applicable to neurological systems such as the human brain.)

Further, the generative theory has several hypothetical constructs (such as movement, empty categories, complex underlying structures, and strict binary branching) that cannot possibly be acquired from any amount of linguistic input, it is unclear that human language is actually anything like the generative conception of it. Since language, as imagined by nativists, is unlearnably complex, subscribers to this theory argue that it must therefore be innate. A different theory of language, however, may yield different conclusions. While all theories of language acquisition posit some degree of innateness, a less convoluted theory might involve less innate structure and more learning. Under such a theory of grammar, the input, combined with both general and language-specific learning capacities, might be sufficient for acquisition.

Since 1980, linguists studying children, such as Melissa Bowerman, and psychologists following Jean Piaget, like Elizabeth Bates and Jean Mandler, came to suspect that there may indeed be many learning processes involved in the acquisition process, and that ignoring the role of learning may have been a mistake.

In recent years, the debate surrounding the nativist position has centered on whether the inborn capabilities are language-specific or domain-general, such as those that enable the infant to visually make sense of the world in terms of objects and actions. The anti-nativist view has many strands, but a frequent theme is that language emerges from usage in social contexts, using learning mechanisms that are a part of a general cognitive learning apparatus (which is what is innate). This position has been championed by Elizabeth Bates, Catherine Snow, Brian MacWhinney, Michael Tomasello, Michael Ramscar, William O'Grady, and others. Philosophers, such as Fiona Cowie and Barbara Scholz with Geoffrey Pullum have also argued against certain nativist claims in support of empiricism.

Biographies

• • • If any of you are interested in earning points for doing a short, video doc for their respective biography, let me know! comment added by maxsasaki (talk • 23:39, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Let's make a list of names we think are important. Then someone can go check to see if that person's name requires just linking to an already existing bio on Wikipedia, or starting a stub, or editing something already started.

B.F. Skinner

Cindy Cardenas and Alissa Hartt

We will edit and add information on B.F. Skinner's biography paragraph on his wikipedia page. Lissyh1990 (talk) 15:46, 2 March 2012 (UTC) Here's an already existing link of a biography of B.F. Skinner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.F_Skinner. Its not that long so we will add his biggest contributions to our field of study to tie into language acquisition. Cindyy1 (talk) 19:46, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Peter D. Eimas

Cindy Cardenas and Alissa Hartt

We will completely redo Peter D. Eimas's wikipedia page considering it is currently only five sentences long. Lissyh1990 (talk) 20:02, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Here is the link to his page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_D._Eimas

Eric Lenneberg

done byEmackin Also going to be done by Eberman7 (talk) 22:53, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Inspired by the ideas of Noam Chomsky, Eric Lenneberg began exploring language learning and brain development. With a focus on Linguistics and Psychology, he came up with a "Critical Period Hypothesis", which stated that there was a certain time in a persons development where their brain is more plastic therefore allowing more information to be absorbed. He claimed that children couldn’t fully acquire language until they reach this point, which for many is around the age of 4 or 5. Once that moment has passed it is much harder to retain information such as a new language.

There are 5 key periods that are used to define a critical period. 

1. Period of peak plasticity
2. Cut-off point (ends abruptly)
3. Occur early in development (occurs before age 5)
4. Brief (is only a short period of time, say a few months)
5. Deprivation has permanent and irreversible effects ("use it or lose it" concept. what is learned, or not learned, will not be forgotten (or remembered).
Although some of Eric's predictions were wrong regarding the timeline of Critical periods, he got the main idea correct. Critical periods have also been tested on animals as well, and the experiments showed to prove his hypothesis as true.

Research on isolated and feral children proved Eric’s hypothesis to be correct.
Children who were not exposed to language during puberty as well as children who did not learn to speak until after puberty had a very difficult time learning their language to full capacity. Isolated and feral children had issues with language factors such as syntax and morphology , something healthy and engaged children do not normally suffer with.
Second language learners also deal with the critical period hypothesis. Learners older than the age of 7 (period of peak plasticity before puberty), had more difficulty obtaining that second language. Children who started learning before the age of 7 turned out to be close to fluent 2nd language speakers.

Comments

How about a list for the article as well? developmentalists, important dates, classic experiments

Stub Possibilities

The following articles might prove useful if you want to work on a stub: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Starting_an_article & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stub . Jesusserrano (talk) 22:27, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

If you think of any topics that should be added as stubs please list them here. When you decide to work on a stub, please write your name next to the option listed or write your name and the stub's name if the option has not been listed here. More stub possibilities will be added really seen.

Possible Stubs:

• Recasts I have started working on this page sdmuszyn
• Simplification processes
• Hockett's Feature

• Vocal-Auditory Channel sdmuszyn
• Broadcast Transmission and Directional Reception sdmuszyn
• Complete Feedback
• Discreteness
• Reflexiveness sdmuszyn

• Negative evidence
• Manual Babbling (mentioned in Petitto biography page but not given too much attention)

I will be working on an article for manual babbling Jesusserrano (talk) 20:33, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

A page for manual babbling has been created Jesusserrano (talk) 03:39, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

• Speech Performance
• Whole-Object bias
• Shared intentionality