The nativists belive that this language acquisition device explains why all normal children acquire language during the same time period in a certain order and for the fact that children can understand new sentences and formations of sentences without ever having had experience of them before.
It is evident, however that there are many weaknesses with this theory; primarily that it is not a complete enough theory to explain the whole of language acquisition. It does notr explain why socially deprived and isolated children, for example geneie, have non-existant language skills. even when they were reintroduced into society, they failed to acquire much more than a very basic level of linguistic knowledge. If this theory was completely correct, then these deprived children would be able to acquire language in the normal way provided that the appropriate triggers were presented.
Another theory which is in direct contrast to Chomsky’s theory of innateness is the imitation theory by Skinner. This states that children acquire language by imitating the language structures they hear around them. Parents automatically reinforce and correct their children’s language, which forms the basis for a child’s knowledge of language (classical conditioning). Before criticising this view, it should be pointed out that language acquisition must involve a lot of memorising. Clearly, children must hear the words of their language in order to go about storing it in their brains and clearly English children learn English because they are receiving English input. So despite the fact that imitation is necessary for learning pronunciation and in acquiring vocabulary, children do not always pick up the correct forms from it. For example, with irregular verbs children can sometimes over generalise, not necessarily using the standard form which adults are heard using and producing many things not in the adult grammar. Children also produce and understand new sentences. If imitation is right, we'd predict that children would not produce sentences they had not already heard. If we assume that children are constructing grammar, however, this would be expected. They acquire the "rules" of their syntax and thus have a powerful device for producing sentences according to the general syntactic rules of their grammar. This suggests that this theory alone is not adequate enough to describe the whole of language acquisition.
Another theory by Piaget known as the cognitive approach links language acquisition directly to intellectual development. So, children can only use a certain grammatical structure or feature if they understand the concept. Piaget was a psychologist who viewed language acquisition as a case of general human learning. He has not suggested, however, that the development is not innate, but only that there is no specific language unit. Piaget’s view was then that the development (i.e. language acquisition) results mainly from external factors or social interactions. This approach to language acquisition seems to be the most effective in describing linguistic progress within the first one and a half years; however it is difficult to find a precise link between linguistic and cognitive developmental stages.
Recent studies have shown the importance of interaction in acquiring language. Vygotsky and others believe that social interaction plays an important role in the learning process and places a great emphasis on the role of shared language in the development of both thought and language. Being exposed to this interaction at first will eventually enable them to build their inner resources. Adults, whilst talking to children alter the way they speak to allow room for the child to take part in a conversation. For example they use simplified utterances, distinctive intonation patterns and questions which invite direct participation. Adults also expand on the child’s speech which has been proven to increase his/her awareness of grammatical structures. This child directed speaach is an important means of creating a positive relationship between parent and child, which forms the basis for future communication.
However, Piaget greatly disagreed with child directed speech, believing it to be an impoverished form of speech, not allowing children to learn the correct forms of language.
