Language Theories and Processes

Language Acquisition

Most children complete the basic language acquisition process by the age of 5 without any direct instruction. Current theories of language acquisition posit that humans have a unique ability to test various hypotheses about the structure of language, to develop rules of a particular language and remember them, and to use these rules to generate appropriate language in various circumstances. As a child develops, these hypotheses about how language is structured are modified by particular language input. In other words, the set of rules available to the child changes as the child develops and recognizes what are and are not permissible structures in his or her particular language. Furthermore, the evidence of developmental change is clear in the types of utterances and discourse understood and produced at various ages.

This capacity for language acquisition follows a predictable pattern through different stages of acquisition. While the rate of acquisition may be different, the order is the same for all children and for languages other than English. Constance Weaver outlined the following stages in 1998:

• 1.
  Babbling is more a result of developing fine motor skills than an attempt to communicate. These sounds seem to be required in order for infants to develop the musculature needed to produce coherent speech later on.
• 2.
  Single-word utterances are usually nouns for common objects and people in the child's life. These utterances are the beginnings of the child's purposeful attempt to communicate. At this stage, overgeneralization, when a child formulates a rule and applies it too broadly, is common. For example, when a child learns that the four-legged friend in the house is a dog, or that the dog's name is Baxter, the child then generalizes [Page 550]and refers to all four-legged animals (cats, cows, horses, etc.) as dogs or as Baxters. Near the end of this stage, children begin to apply words to the behavior of others and not just their own.
• 3.
  Word combining and syntax emerge when the child begins to combine first two or three, then many words together. The ability to combine words signifies the ability to convey deeper meaning and use more complex grammar.

Noam Chomsky, the originator of transformational-generative linguistics, suggested that what a grammar should do is account for native speakers' unconscious but functional knowledge of grammar (i.e., “deep structure”), which enables comprehension and production of language. This internalized knowledge is one meaning of the word grammar. In this sense, grammar refers to a capacity for language, a native ability to create and comprehend utterances. His work represented a marked shift from the structuralist theorists who based their grammars on an analysis of the structures of a language. They focused on the surface structure of sentences and analyzed them into increasingly smaller components. Grammar may also refer to these formal systems that theorists have developed and studied to explain and analyze language. It is important to point out that this type of study has not produced a single body of knowledge on which all linguists agree. Rather, it has produced different grammars that are each dependent on different underlying assumptions and different methods of analysis and, accordingly, have different results. We now turn to the primary distinctions between prescriptive grammar and descriptive grammar.

...