Theories of Language acquisition in relation to beginning reading instruction
Focus
Particular focus is the
acquisition of syntax.
Purpose
Isolate
Relate
Assess
Atheoretical Studies
McCarthy's
Article induces
mixed feelings
Reports on a wide variety studies:
Escriptive
Normative
Investigators made
Little attempt
Formulate
Test
To handle data
Consequently
No coherent account.
Child language
Prevocalic stage
Various stages repelte:
Errors
Deficiencies
As a result:
Sounds “emerge”
First words are uttered:
Characteristic time
Grammatical distinctions
Elimination of various “errors
Vocabularies
‘‘ expand”
Investigators may:
Discover the child learns
to distinguish pin.
Witch from which.
Klima y Bellugi (1966)
Did with negation
N. Chomsky propuse
Term competence
Well-defined concept in linguistics
Menyuk (1969)
Discusses some of the problems
To interpret data
Holophrastic utterances
The interpretation of the
data is the crucial issue.
Behavioristic Theories
The book-Verbal Behavior (1957)
Skinner proposes acompre:
Theory of language acquisition
Language behavior
N. Chomsky’s
Demonstrates
the inappropriateness
Of Skinner’s proposal
Criticisms reiterate
earlier arguments
Syntactic Structures
The
review also attacks
Reinforcement theory
Notion of generalization
Chomsky claims
Theory is illusionary
Most of its concepts are irrelevant
Real issues are
never confronted
Acquisition, declaring that:
Refusal to study
Learning permits:
Superficial account
Unanalyzed contribution
Generalization
Includes interest in this process.
Verbal behavior will
remain a mystery.
Chomsky’s criticisms
Inadequacy
of conditioning
Reinforcement theories
Staats and Staats (1962,
1963, 1968)
Terms as operant learning
Reinforcing stimuli
Time
Scheduling of reinforcement
Successive
approximation
Chaining
Extinction
Discrimination
Generalization to explain
how language is acquired
Garrett and Fodor (1968)
The facts of language are abstractions
Certain probabilities of occurrenc
Jenkins and Palermo (1964) propuse
Theory of language acquisition
Recognizes some recent linguistic advances
Problem they see in language acquisition
Child learns the stimulus
Response equivalences
Claim that the child generalizes
to form
classes of responses