Question: Discuss critically Nativist Theory of language learning.
Nativist theory
The nativist theory is a biologically based theory, which argues that humans are pre-programmed with the innate ability to develop language. Noam Chomsky is the main theorist associated with the nativist perspective.
This was first proposed by Noam Chomsky in 1957 and developed by Pinker in 1994. Chomsky proposed that humans are born with an innate mechanism called the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) which states:
- Innate ability to learn language, a biological brain mechanism.
- Children only need minimum exposure to prime the LAD.
Nativist theory also focuses on the following perspectives:
- It emphasizes the contribution of child’s environment.
- It helps to explain innate human ability to develop sophisticated language systems.
- It extends the language learning ability of children and drive to communicate.
Nativist theory critically shows the following psychological aspects of language learning:
Hard wired background in grammar
Children are born with the Universal Grammar wired into their brains. This grammar offers a certain limited number of possibilities – for example, over the word order of a typical sentence.
More Note of Linguistics
Repeated devour
Children begin speaking by trying to repeat what they have heard their parents say. Have you ever heard a child say things like this?
- Daddy go.
- He hitted me.
- No eat cake.
Who did they hear utter such phrases? ‘Daddy go’ is an attempt to express ‘Daddy is going’. But if the child were merely trying to repeat this common phrase, he or she would also occasionally say ‘Daddy is or simply is going?’ Yet these two phrases do not occur as normal speech errors of children while ‘Daddy go’ is a common one.
Innate advanced mistakes
Mothers often respond to the semantic content of what their children say (‘No, that’s not a doggie, it’s a cow’). They very rarely respond to the grammatical status of their children’s phrases. Indeed, when parents do respond to speech errors, they most often respond positively. Here is an advanced error:
It’s raining, where is the umbrella?
In fact, parents themselves make grammatical errors when they speak. Even though children do not know when their parents are speaking grammatically and when they are making errors, all children grow up knowing the language perfectly.
Critical period of language learning
The critical period between the ages of 2-7 suggests that (first) language learning, like walking, is an innate capacity of human beings triggered by a level of development more than feedback from the environment. That is, so long as a child hears a language-any language-when they reach this critical period, they will learn it perfectly. If this is true, any child not hearing language during this period not only should not learn to speak but also should not be able to learn to speak. The ethical implications of research on this question are obvious.
Thus, it can be said that nativist theory of language learning is outstanding though it is not over criticism. This theory basically informs that the child does not learn the language but creates it anew.
