语言学导论第十章.ppt

Chapter 10 Language Acquisition language acquisition --- the child’s acquisition of his mother tongue, i.e. how the child comes to understand and speak the language of his community Preliminaries: Is there a critical period for L1 acquisition? If yes, when will be the starting point of this period? Is imitation important for L1 acquisition? Do children only rely on imitation to pick up his/her L1? Is it necessary for a child to receive formal instruction in order to pick up his L1 successfully and why? (1)theories of child language acquisition 1. a behaviorist view of language acquisition(by B.F.Skinner) Language can be viewed as a behavior and language learning is simply a matter of imitation and habit formation. stimulus organism response language input the learner imitation e.g. ‘This is a pen.’ ‘This is a pen.’ four steps for a child to acquire his/her L1: imitation reinforcement repetition habituation positive negative good bad correct performance errors e.g. praise or reward e.g. correction Q:What implications can we get from the following dialogue? Child: Nobody don’t like me. Mother: No, say “Nobody likes me”. Child: Nobody don’t like me. (dialogue repeated eight times.) Mother: Now, listen carefully, say “Nobody likes me”. Child: Oh, nobody don’t likes me. Criticisms of behaviorist learning theory: 1.overemphasize the external factors (i.e.language input) 2.ignore the internal factors (i.e.the role of learner himself) 3.overemphasize the role of imitation 2. an innatist/nativist view of language acquisition (by Noam Chomsky) the innate hypothesis: human beings are biologically programmed for language and that the language develops in the child just as other biological functions such as walking. the logical problem of language acquisition: How can children come to know more about the structure of their language than they could reasonably be expected to learn from the language samples they hear? language acquisi