Typical Saturday at Starbucks
Chapter 2:
Infant Intelligence
What could be more exciting than hearing your baby’s first word? As that first word grows into a sentence and later into conversation, you will be watching a miracle—the miracle of language development.
~ Lesia Oesterreich
The Learning Stages of Language
Babies are born with the ability to learn language and all children, regardless of what language their parents speak, learn language in the same way. At birth, babies can already respond to the rhythm of language; they can recognize stress, pace, and the rise and fall of pitch. As early as four months, infants can distinguish between language sounds and other noise, such as the difference between a person’s voice and foot stomps. By six months, infants begin to babble and coo, a sign they are learning language. At this early stage, an infant is capable of making all the sounds (phonemes) in all the languages of the world. This is about 150 phonemes, in about 6,500 languages. However, no language uses all 150 phonemes. For example, English has only about 44 phonemes. Some languages have more, others less. This is why by the time the child is a year old, she will have dropped the sounds that are not part of the language she is learning. By eight months, babies learn this sense of phonemic awareness. Babies learn which phonemes belong to the language they are learning and which do not. By twelve months, babies learn morphemes. They learn when different sounds in a language are combined, they create meaning. For example, the sounds m, ah, m, and ee refer to the person who provides comfort and food – “mommy”. A child’s vocabulary continues to grow throughout her development, and by twenty-four months, children learn how to create sentences, specifically how to put words in the correct order. For example, in English we say: “I want to play outside,” not “Want I outside play.” By thirty to thirty-six months, about 90% of what children say is grammatically correct. With age, children continue to expand their vocabulary and develop more complex language, and by age eleven, their language fully resembles adult language.[1]
The Acquisition of Language
Now, the main question is how and why are babies able to acquire language at such an early age? How do infants determine what words mean, or how to produce grammatical utterances they have never heard before? And, why do they learn language? Is it because their parents teach it to them; or is it simply innate, and therefore they will learn it regardless of environmental factors?
Constructivism and Nativism
There are two poles in the explanation of language acquisition: At the one pole, is the Constructivist view, which argues our experience of the world is dependent upon what our minds bring into perception, and therefore language production is achieved through experience; at the other pole is Nativism, which argues language is innate, there are universal principles which govern language acquisition, and these are prewired at birth. From these two poles, many dimensions in language acquisition are formed. Modern day theorists tend to believe the basic capacity to learn a first language is innate, while particular forms/meaning connections of individual languages are acquired through exposure to a specific speech within a child’s community. The task is to find out what aspects of human language are innate, hard-wired into the infant’s brain structure, and what aspects are learned through experience. The argument in favor of finding a compromise between these two theories is referred to as Internalism and Generativity. This theory argues language development is both biological and social.
Constructivism
To better understand how these two opposite theories can be welded together to explain the acquirement of language, it helps to look at each extreme position individually and thoroughly. First is Constructivism, also referred to as Learning Theory. The main theorist associated with the learning perspective is B.F. Skinner. This theory is rooted in behaviorism, and includes classical and operant conditioning, and social learning.
Skinner’s View on Speech
Skinner argued language development is the result of external reinforcement, and verbal response was contingent on four things: reinforcement, stimulus control, deprivation, and aversive stimulation.[2] When these things interact in a child’s environment, children begin to make certain associations, which is the basis of all language. Skinner then also claimed there were four general types of speech: echoic behavior, mand, tact, interverbals, and autoclitic (Skinner).
Echoic behavior is the primary form of verbal behavior of language learners. These verbalizations include repeated utterances (Skinner):
(1) PARENT: [pointing to cookie] That’s a cookie. Can you say ‘cookie’?
CHILD: Cooookie
Mands, which are short for ‘demands,’ are utterances that are reinforced by the elevation of deprivation. For example, if a child were hungry or cold, his requests, such as saying ‘cookie’ would be considered mands. Directives such as “Stop,” “Go,” and “Wait” also are considered mands (Skinner).
However, a child may simply be naming an object he sees or repeating what he likes when he says “cookie.” These utterances are produced when the speaker is not deprived, but rather is providing information. Utterances with this underlying motivation are called tact, which is short for “contact.”
The fourth type of utterance is the interverbals. These include utterances that are not necessarily to provide information, such as “Please” and “Thank You.” This type of utterance pertains to the interactive nature of the conversation.
The final category, autoclitics, was Skinner’s attempt to deal with internal speech, or thought. Autoclitics are subject to the same effects of reinforcement as verbalized speech, and these thought behaviors influence not only current and future thought but also current and future behavior.
Skinner was strictly a behaviorist, and did not believe the brain had anything to do with language, but rather the “mind” and other phenomena were what led to language when shaped by external sources. Skinner’s theory for how language demonstrates how parents can gradually shape the child’s speech through positive reinforcement and how a child can learn how to imitate through observation, but what Skinner’s theory fails to do take into consideration the complexity of grammar.
Nativism
Noam Chomsky’s View on Language Acquisition
On the contrast, Noam Chomsky believes we do not learn or speak language by purely imitating other people, but rather we are born with the properties of a ‘universal grammar.’ The human mind is not a blank slate at birth, but instead components of the mind are innately determined. Experience does not fill the blank slate, but instead interacts with innate properties to form ‘competence’ in one’s different systems of knowledge.[3]
In his review of B.F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, Chomsky criticizes Skinner’s theory as placing limitations on the way causation of behavior can be determined. Skinner fails to demonstrate that behavior of a complex organism requires, in addition to information about external stimulation, knowledge of how the organism processes input information and organizes its own behavior. Therefore, Skinner’s explanation of Verbal Behavior is an untested hypothesis. These characteristics of the organism are a complicated product of inborn structure, the genetically determined course of maturation and past experience.[4] Chomsky claims that upon careful study of Skinner’s book, that Skinner’s claims are “far from justified;” they are metaphoric extensions” and “analogic guesses” (Chomsky). Chomsky claims that the definition of the problem rests with Skinner only concerning himself with the only data available, namely the record of inputs to the organism and the organism’s present response, and trying to describe the function specifying the response in terms of the history of inputs (Chomsky). The fact is simply that it is unknown whether or not verbal behavior is within the domain of Skinner’s system and whether the technical terms: stimulus, response and reinforcement are literally applicable to verbal behavior and functional parts of speech.
What is not unknown is the fact that children, regardless of what part of the world they are born in, acquire language through the same various stages. A child in China will follow the same linguistic patterns of language acquisition as a child in the United States.[5] For Chomsky, this is reason enough to believe that language comes from predetermined knowledge within a child. Universal grammar is a characterization of this innate principle of language faculty. This innate principle includes syntax, phonology, morphology, and semantics (the study of the relation between language and the world, in particular the study of truth and reference). Acquisition of language then, is a matter of adding to one’s store of universal grammar rules, or modifying this system, as new data are processed.[6] Between the ages of three and ten, a child is the most likely to learn a language in its entirety and grasp fluency. After this critical learning period it becomes harder for a child to completely grasp a language. Another factor that supports Chomsky’s theory is that a child does not need a trigger to being language acquisition. A parent does not need to coax a child to speak; if a child is around language production, she will produce language on her own. Also, it does not matter if a child is corrected or not. The child will still grasp the language in the same manner and speak the same way.
Finding Common Ground
Now that the theories of both Skinner and Chomsky have been discussed, it is time to turn to the argument of Internalism and Generativity, which argues that the acquirement of language is both a result of biology and environmental factors; “language functions both as an internalized form of mental grammar in individual brains and as an externalized socio-cultural object existing at an intersubjective plane of reality by shifting between these two poles of reality.”[7]
Generativity and Internalism
The term Generativity was coined by Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson in 1950 to denote “a concern for establishing and guiding the next generation.”[8] It can be expressed in many different fashions, from raising a child to stopping a tradition of drug abuse, to restoring land. You try to “make a difference” with your life, to “give back,” to “take care” of your community and your planet (Kotre). Generativity stems from a sense of optimism within oneself in regards to changing humanity for the better. The conception of the internalist approach is understood as viewing language as a mental grammar that grows and functions like a biological organ. The Internalism vs. externalism dichotomy ceases to exist once they are shown not to be alternative to each other, but rather complementary to each other (cogprints.org). Koster makes this point when he says:
“Our cultural memory is stored in, and distributed over brains, including my own, and over libraries and other collections of media. The same is true for words and other linguistic expressions. It would be absurd to say that I remain within the confinements of I-language when I produce or understand a sentence exclusively with words from my own memory, but that I embark on a short excursion to E-language if I use a dictionary for one word or another in the middle of a sentence” (cogprints.org).
Our experiences help us to create memories, and we use our internalistic mental structures to interpret the perceptions of these experiences. It takes our internal knowledge of language to extrapolate and interpret externalized knowledge of language. This is specifically important in looking at how children develop. Children become linguistically and culturally competent members of their community through interactions with their caregivers and other members of their community.[9]
Summary and Conclusion
It is through this socialization that children learn the appropriate behaviors for their community’s culture; they internalize beliefs and ideas which includes the concept of politeness. These skills are obtained from daily interaction in the home and in the community. It is this type of naturally-occurring language experience that allows for children to gradually construct their personal sense of identity. They begin to find themselves in relation to others. As children acquire their mother tongue in the home, they learn who they are as an individual.
[4] Chomsky, Noam. “A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, by Noam Chomsky.” A Review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behavior, by Noam Chomsky. Chomsky.info, n.d. Web. 08 July 2012. http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1967—-.htm. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Chomsky).
[6] Liu, Ming, and Xin Sheen Liu. “Chomsky and Knowledge of Language.” Philosophy of Language. N.p., 2000. Web. 08 July 2012. <http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Lang/LangLiu2.htm>. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Liu and Liu).
[7] Mondal, Prakash. “Can Internalism and Externalism Be Reconciled in a Biological Epistemology of Language?” Biosemiotics. Springer Science+Business Media, 2 May 2011. Web. 15 July 2012. <http://cogprints.org/7708/1/fulltext.pdf>. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Mondal).
[8] Kotre, John. “Generativity and the Generative Process.” Lives, Memories, Legacies, Stories: The Work of John Kotre. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 July 2012. <http://www.johnkotre.com/generativity.htm>. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Kotre).
[9] Schieffelin, Bambi B., and Elinor Ochs. Language Socialization across Cultures. Cambridge Cambridgeshire: Cambridge UP, 1986. Print. Further reference to this source in parentheses (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986).
Metaphor: Making the Abstract Concrete and Visual 