FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
Task:
-
How
do you feel that children acquire their first language?
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What
are your views of Chomsky’s theory of first language acquisition?
The aim of this
essay is to express my ideas towards first language acquisition and my views of
Chomsky’s theory of First Language Acquisition (F.L.A). In order to do this, I
will focus on chapter 3 from Vivien Cook “General
Concepts of Language Acquisition”.
In my
opinion, children behave as if they were sponges, since they acquire language
from the environment. That is to say, children need to be exposed to the social
context in which they are immersed. This context could be composed by parents,
peers, caretakers, neighbours and relatives. In my view, this input is
essential for children to acquire an L1 because, in an isolated situation,
children would not be able to cope with all the language they are supposed to
produce.
According
to Chomsky, children unconsciously need the three types of evidence while
acquiring the language. These are positive, direct negative and indirect
negative evidence. “Positive evidence”
is the one in which the occurrence of particular sentences in the speech
children hear tells them which sort of language they are encountering and so
how to set the parameters; “direct negative evidence” is the one in which
children might say an incorrect sentence and an adult immediately correct it;
and “indirect negative evidence” shows that certain forms do not occur in the
sentences the children hear. With all these evidences children can set a
parameter to a particular value.
Chomsky
claims that direct negative evidence is not necessary for language acquisition,
but indirect negative evidence may be relevant. He also states that imitation
is not the only necessary requirement to produce language but also creativity.
The former is only about repeating, parroting pieces of language. The latter is
about creating new structures of language, which is basically what humans do.
Having mentioned
Chomsky, when I first encountered his theory of F.L.A, I was stunned because I
felt children behave as if they were robots. Eventually, I discovered I was
mistaken; I read his theory in depth and realized that instead of being robots
and merely repeating pieces of language, children carry a Language Acquisition
Device (L.A.D). Children hear a number of sentences said by adults, that is to
say, the primary data; then they process this data within the L.A.D.; and
finally they acquire linguistic competence in the language. Hence, this device
is in charge of processing the input in order to produce the appropriate
output. Chomsky says that this device constructs the postulated grammars from
the given data.
I feel that
Chomsky was a pioneer as regards neuro-linguistics because he was the one who
demonstrated and defended his theory throughout his life. From my point of view
he was controversial at that time but that does not mean he gave up his ideas.
I consider that he has made a relevant contribution to the field of linguistics
with concrete evidence and with the new notion of creativity, the capacity of
understanding and producing sentences that people have never heard before.
In conclusion,
children acquire a first language from the evidence they encounter, so without
any evidence at all, they will acquire nothing. Knowledge of language needs
experience to mature, without it nothing would happen. As Chomsky has very well
said, language acquisition is the maturing of the mind according to a preset
biological clock.
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