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Language Development Perspectives
Current approaches to the study of language development
21
Science
Undergraduate 2
09/02/2020

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Term
Language Socialization Approach
Definition
A description of children's language use in social contexts and an account of the social processes by which children come to use language in the manner of their culture. (More empiricist)
Term
Biological Approach
Definition
A description of the genetic bases of the human language capacity and its disorders; a description of the structures and processes in the brain that serve language development. (More nativist)
Term
Generative Linguistic Approach
Definition
A description of children's innate linguistic knowledge (Universal Grammar) and how it interacts with experience to produce knowledge of a particular language. (Heavily nativist)
Term
Social Approach
Definition
A description of the social-cognitive abilities and social-communicative experiences relevant to language development. (More empiricist)
Term
Domain-General Cognitive Approach
Definition
A description of the domain-general learning capacities that serve language development and of the sources of information in input that those learning procedures use. (Interactionist/Emergentist/Connectionist)
Term
Developmental Systems Approach (Epigenetic Approach)
Definition
A description of how genetically based characteristics and environmental influences interact over time and across developmental domains to shape language outcomes. (Interactionist/Emergentist/Connectionist)
Term
Dynamical Systems Theory Approach
Definition
A description of the self-organizing processes that give rise to developmental changes and moment-to-moment variability in children's language performance.
Term
Learnability Approach
Definition
Focuses on explaining the fact that language is acquired (why is language learnable)
Term
Developmental Approach
Definition
Focuses on explaining the course of language development (why do we learn language in this way)
Term
Language Acquisition Device
Definition
Chomsky's idea of the human capacity for language as a device residing in the human brain that takes, as its input, certain information from the environment, and produces, as its output, the ability to speak and understand a language. (a nativist concept)
Term
Universal Grammar
Definition
A theorized portion of the Language Acquisition Device proposed by Chomsky that contains some knowledge of the structure of language, which makes language acquisition possible. (a nativist concept)
Term
Nativism
Definition
The belief that every human, from birth, has some blueprint in their mind for how to learn language. Popularized by Noam Chomsky.
Term
Empiricism
Definition
The idea that humans are born as blank slates with no linguistic knowledge, who then must learn language through hard work and socialization. Popularized by John Locke. Later dubbed empiricism because of the belief that Nativism does not use empirical evidence.
Term
Interactionism
Definition
The idea that language acquisition results from the innate characteristics of the child's mind interacting with the child's language experience. In this theory, the child is not doing hard work every day to learn language.
Term
Constructivism
Definition
An idea similar to Interactionism, which views language development as a child's active construction of language using inborn mental equipment but operating on information provided by the environment. In this theory, the child is doing hard work every day to learn language.
Term
Emergentism
Definition
The view that knowledge can arise from the interaction of that which is given by biology and that which is given by the environment.
Term
Connectionism
Definition
A proposed mechanism of pattern learning that seeks to explain language acquisition as learning the patterns among smaller elements of sound or meaning.
Term
Modularity Thesis
Definition
The view that the human ability to acquire language is specific to language, and that the mind in general consists of multiple special purpose abilities, or "modules," and many have their own innate content. (Inspired by Chomsky's proposal of a Language Acquisition Device)
Term
Cards to make: Language Abstractness, Continuity and Discontinuity in Language Development
Definition
Term
Formalism
Definition
The view that the nature of language and its acquisition have nothing to do with the fact that language is used to communicate
Term
Functionalism
Definition
The view that both language itself and the process of language acquisition are shaped and supported by the communicative functions language serves
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