Jean Aitchison Theory Of Language
Theories of Language Acquisition
Language is acquired very quickly in a child’s life. This speed of acquisition has influenced a number of schools of thought about the ways that children learn to communicate.
Noam Chomsky (1965)
Noam Chomsky is an American linguist who believes that learning takes pace through an innate brain mechanism which is pre-programmed with the ability to acquire grammatical structures. He calls it the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). Chomsky finds it significant that although human languages seem different the share many similarities which he describes as universal grammar.
Supporting this theory is evidence that children from all around the world develop at a similar rate in similar stages. All children can acquire complex grammar by an early age, regardless of their environment or intelligence does suggest an innate learning device. However, the actual nature of this has not been pinpointed.
Damp Spoon Syndrome. This theory suggests that language change is caused by sloppiness and laziness. It is often linked to teenagers. However it is difficult to find evidence to state that language change is down to laziness. An example of laziness is the glottal stop. Crumbling Castle. Jean Aitchison Human language is a weird communication system: it has more in common with birdsong than with the calls of other primates. Jean Aitchison explores the origins of human language and how it has evolved. She likens the search to a vast prehistoric jigsaw puzzle, in which numerous fragments of evidence must be assembled.
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Alan Cruttenden (1974) compared adults and children to see if they could predict football results from listening to the score. C1 gate stereo vst download. He found that adults could successfully predict the winners by the intonation placed on the first team, but the children (up to the age of 7) were less accurate.
Categorising First Words
Katherine Nelson (1973) identified found four categories of first words:
• Naming
• Action/Events
• Describing/modifying things
• Personal/social words
60% were nouns. Verbs were the second largest group. Modifiers were third. Personal and social words made up 8% of the results.
Aitchison’s Stages of Children’s Linguistic Development
Jean Aitchison looked at the connections between children’s lexical and semantic development. These developmental stages are shown in the table on the next page. Once children expand their vocabulary they use network building to sort the words. An aspect of this stage is understanding hyponymy which occurs at around 18 months.
1 Labelling:Linking words to the objects to which they refer Understanding that objects can be labelled
2 Packaging: Exploring what labels can apply to. Over/under extension occurs in order to understand the range of a word’s meaning
3 Network Building: Making connections between words – understanding similarities and opposites in meanings
Piaget’s Stages of Children’s Linguistic Development – Cognitive Theory
• Sensorimotor
• Pre-operational
• Concrete operational
• Formal operational
Lev Vygotsky – Social Interactionist Theory
Vygotsky, an early child development researcher observed children’s play and linked it to both cognitive and social development. Young children often use props as pivots to support their play but when they get older they use their imagination instead. Vygotsky noticed how children role-play adult behaviour as part of exploring their environment.
Catherine Garvey’s study of pairs of children playing found that children adopt roles and identities, act out storylines and invent objects and settings as required in role-play scenarios. This is called “pretend play” and fulfils Halliday’s imaginative language function. Children play together because it is enjoyable, but it also practises social interaction and negotiation skills with roles and responsibilities often decided as they play. This is sometimes called “sociodramatic play” as it involves both social and dramatic skills, with clear rules and reflecting real world behaviour.
Sociodramatic play usually begins when the child is around four years old – possibly linked to their cognitive understanding of the different roles people have and how this affects their language. In their re-enactments they use subject specific lexis and structure them in some of the formulaic ways that adults use in real-life situations, suggesting they can observe and imitate adult behaviours.
Related articles
- Almost all human beings acquire a language (and (awalianursafitri.wordpress.com)
- Noam Chomsky on Bilingualism (psychologytoday.com)
- First Language Acquisition (niasarinastiti.wordpress.com)
- Language Acquisition in Children (sbteach2001.wordpress.com)
University of OxfordAddress: Worcester College, Oxford OX1 2HB, UK.Email: [email protected]Tel: +44 (0)1865 278392Fax: +44 (0)1865 278387 |
Main interests
(Socio)historical linguistics
The description, implementation and causation of language change, with particular reference to current changes.
Language and mind
Language acquisition, speech comprehension, speech production, with particular reference to lexical storage and retrieval.
Language and the media
Jean Aitchison Theory Of Language
The language used by the media, and the effect of the media on language, with particular reference to language change, the use of language to exercise power, the relationship of media language to language in literature.
Main books
Jean Aitchison Theory Of Language 3rd Edition
New media language(edited with Diana M. Lewis). London and New York.: Routledge.
Words in the mind: An introduction to the mental lexicon. 3rd edition (1st edition 1987). Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 2003.
Language change: Progress or decay? 3rd edition (1st edition1981). Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
The articulate mammal: An introduction to psycholinguistics.4th edition (1st edition 1976). London and New York: Routledge, 1998.
The language web: The power and problem of words. 1996 BBC Reith lectures. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
The seeds of speech: Language origin and evolution. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (Also, with new extended introduction, in C.U.P. Canto series, 2000.)