LEARNING TO SPEAK
The mystery of language acquisition was tackled by philosophers and linguists
from ancient times. Plato proposed that words mapped onto objects in the external
world from some innate knowledge. Sanskrit grammarians debated on whether the
semantics of a word came from innate knowledge or tradition passed on from one
generation to the next (Matilal, 1990). In The Twilight Zone episode “Mute” (1963),
several children are raised without exposure to language in an effort to foster telepathic
abilities. It may surprise you to know that such experiments have actually been carried
out, albeit not to foster telepathy but to study language acquisition. This experiment is
now known as “the forbidden experiment” (Shattuck, 1980/1994). Herodotus (ca. 485
– 425 BCE) reports in his Histories (II.2 “An Account of Egypt”) the Egyptian pharaoh
Psamtik I carried out an experiment where a child was brought up without exposure to
language in an effort to see what they spoke. The hypothesis being that whatever
words came out would be the primordial language. They apparently concluded that
the original language of humanity was Phrygian because the child said bekos, the
Phrygian word for bread. Salimbene di Adam in his Chronicles reports a similar
experiment carried out by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in the 13th century.
James IV of Scotland did a similar experiment where the child apparently spoke good
Hebrew. While these previous experiments seem to be based on the assumption that
some original language would emerge from the subjects, an alternative hypothesis
was postulated by the Mughal emperor Akbar. He claimed that language came from
hearing and a similar experiment by his found the child to be mute (Campbell & Grieve,
1981). Such experiments are obviously highly unethical and should not be attempted
under any circumstances.
From the descriptions above, you may have discerned two major themes:
language acquisition as innate and as a socially acquired skill. The former was
supported by rationalists such as Plato and Descartes while the latter was adopted by
empiricists such as Locke and Hume. Locke (1690/1975) argued that knowldeg was
acquired from experience with the famous image of the mind as a tabula rasa or blank
slate onto which experience writes through sensations. The debate is alive and well
today with the empirical camp being supported by the works of Piaget and the
rationalist views supported by Chomsky. Perhaps the most influential voice today in
this debate is Chomsky’s. He argued against the views of the Behaviourists who
claimed all behaviour was a product of rewards of punishments (operant conditioning).
B. F. Skinners Verbal Behavior (1957) was perhaps the seminal work of the empiricist
view on language acquisition. Skinner suggested that the successful use of a sign or
symbol (such as a word) by a child elicits positive reinforcement from the listening
adults resulting in the behaviour of linking the sign with an object more likely. This
association of a word with an object gets reinforced over time to develop as language.
This view was attached by Chomsky (1959) in his review of Skinner’s book. He argued
that children often ignore language corrections from adults and Skinner fails to explain
the fundamental role of syntactic knowledge on language competence.
1. Language Development
Chomsky and the Poverty of the Stimulus
Chomsky demonstrated that children acquire linguistic rules or grammar
without an inexhaustive sample of the acquired language. In other words, children
cannot learn the rules of grammar by mere exposure to a language (Chomsky, 1965).
For one thing, children hear an imperfect input. Adult speech is full of slips-of-the-
tongue, false starts and errors. Sometimes there are contractions such as gonna and
wanna and words are not necessarily separated in continuous speech. There is also
a lack of examples of all the grammatical structures in a language for children to derive
all linguistic rules from analysing the input. All of these phenomena are often labelled
the “poverty of the stimulus” (Berwick, Pietroski, Yankama, & Chomsky, 2011). Poverty
of the stimulus is often used as an argument for universal grammar. This is the claim
that all languages have some underlying common structure within which all surface
structures of language emerge.
Language Development
Language development is perhaps one of the greatest mysteries in
psycholinguistics. The rapidity of first language acquisition is astounding to anyone
who has tried to learn a second language as an adult. This process can be broadly
divided into stages based on the characteristics of the infants’ output. However, we
must note that output doesn’t always assure us a clear picture of the cognitive
processes that are going on within the infants’ minds. These include crying, sucking
noises and burps. At around 6 weeks, we start getting cooing sounds followed by vocal
play between 16 weeks and 6 months (Stark, 1986). This vocal play involves sounds
that appear similar to speech but containing no meaning. Babbling is observed
between 6 to 9 months. This is different from vocal play in that it contains true syllables
(generally CV syllables as in ‘wa wa’ for ‘water’). Children produce single-word
utterances around 10 to 11 months followed by an extraordinary expansion of
vocabulary around 18 months. At the same time, we start to get two-word utterances.
We also start to get telegraphic speech. These are utterances which lack grammatical
elements (Brown & Bellugi, 1964). Grammatically complex utterances emerge around
two and a half years. Research methods that we can employ with adults is not always
possible with infants. One technique is the sucking habituation paradigm. This
paradigm measures the rate of sucking an artificial pacifier as a measure of interest
by the infant in a novel stimulus. It has been observed that babies prefer novel stimuli
as opposed to stimuli that are familiar. If they are presented with habituated (or familiar)
stimuli and then a novel stimulus pops up, the rate of sucking increases. This can be
used to see whether an infant can detect the difference between who stimuli. Another
technique is the preferential looking technique. Here children look longer at scene that
are consistent with what they are hearing. Using such techniques (and others),
psycholinguists try to determine at what age children understand the difference
between phonemes, morphemes and understand syntax.
Imitation
The simplest form of language acquisition would be simple imitation of adult
language. While children do imitate adult behaviour to some extent, this alone cannot
account for language development. The sentences produced by children acquiring
language do not show imitation of adults. Children often make errors that adults don’t
make. However, imitation may play a role in the acquisition of accents, speech
mannerisms and specialized vocabulary.
Conditioning
Skinner (1957) argued that language acquisition happens through the same
mechanisms of operant conditioning that operated on other human and animal
behaviour. However, adults generally do not encourage children to speak like them.
On the contrary, adults often imitate the childish speech of children when speaking to
them. If any correction is made, it is regarding the accuracy of the statements rather
than their syntax. Another observation that learning theories cannot predict is the
pattern of acquisition of irregular verb and noun forms. Saying *gived instead of gave
or *gooses instead of geese are some examples of this. Children generally show a
pattern of correct imitation of the stem but then incorrect production. These incorrect
productions are usually because of over-regularization of the past tense or plural forms
of the stems. Finally, children produce the correct forms. This is an example of U-
shaped development: performance starting off well, then deteriorating before
improving. In essence, language acquisition appears to be based on learning rules
rather than learning associations.
The Language Acquisition Device
Chomsky (1965) argued for the existence of a language acquisition device
(LAD). This is hypothesized to be an innate structure separate from intellectual ability
or cognition. If the poverty of the stimulus is true, then children need something in
additional to language exposure to arrive at language competency. The language
acquisition device was later replaced by the concept of universal grammar. According
to this idea, the child has innate rules of inference that enable them to learn a
language. This would be a set of parameters that constrain and guide language
acquisition. As languages vary in terms of their grammar, syntax and morphology,
Chomsky hypothesized that language learning was essentially setting parameters
using input from exposure to a language that in turn set other parameters
automatically. In other words, languages cannot vary in any way possible with infinite
variety. There are basic parameters that influence each other. We can look at some
examples of parameter setting across language. For example, if a language has
subject-verb-object (SVO) word order, then question words (what, where, who, how)
would come at the beginning of the sentence while a language that is subject-object-
verb (SOV) would put them at the end.
• English (SVO): “What is your name?”
• Tamil (SOV): “உங்கள் ெ பயர் என் ன?” Your name what?
Some universals may be an innate part of grammar. For example, there is not
obvious rationale for having all SVO languages putting question words at the
beginning of their sentences. It is also possible that the external environment in which
we evolved may play a role in the development of universals. Languages often note a
difference between animate and inanimate object of sentient and non-sentient beings.
However, there is some criticism about the idea that true universals, common to all
languages, might exist.
Language Development
Let’s look at the language development of a child born on the 1st of January. Reflect
on each stage and the physical and cognitive changes that must occur in order for a
child to reach these milestones.
• January 1, 2022 — February 12, 2022, Vegetative Sounds
- Infants make vegetative sounds from birth. These include crying, sucking
noises and burps.
• February 12, 2022 — April 16, 2022, Cooing
- At around 6 weeks, we start getting cooing sounds
• April 16, 2022 — June 30, 2022, Vocal play
- Vocal play is observed between 16 weeks and 6 months. This vocal play
involves sounds that appear similar to speech but containing no meaning.
• June 30, 2022 — September 30, 2022, Babbling
- Babbling is observed between 6 to 9 months. This is different from vocal
play in that it contains true syllables (generally CV syllables as in ‘wa wa’ for
‘water’).
• October 1, 2022 — November 30, 2022, Single-word utterances
- Children produce single-word utterances around 10 to 11 months
• November 30, 2022 — June 1, 2023, Two-word utterances
- An extraordinary expansion of vocabulary occurs around 18 months. At the
same time, we start to get two-word utterances.
• June 1, 2023 — January 1, 2024, Telegraphic speech
- We start to get telegraphic speech around the second year. These are
utterances which lack grammatical elements.
• January 1, 2024 — June 30, 2024, Full sentences
- Grammatically complex utterances emerge around two and a half years.
2. Pidgins and Creoles
A pidgin language is a grammatically simplified communication method. It
usually develops when two or more groups have to develop a system of
communication when a common language doesn’t exist. It is common when
communities come together for trade and they are not considered complete
languages. Pidgins are not native to any speech community. It is built from the words
and sounds from a number of languages with a limited core vocabulary. Pidgins usually
have the following characteristics: • Their morphology is usually isolating • They tend
not to have complicated phrase structures • Syllables tend to be simple and often lack
codas • Consonant clusters are simplified • Linguistic characteristics such as gender
and number (singular and plural) are excluded As Canada has a long history of contact
between various language communities, it has had a large share of pidgins developing
over the centuries. To facilitate transactions between their communities, the Inuvialuit,
or Mackenzie River Inuit, and the Indigenous Athabaskan speakers used an Inuit trade
jargon. Inuktitut-English Pidgin was used in Quebec and Labrador. Algonquian–
Basque pidgin was used by Basque whalers and Algonquin communities the Gulf of
Saint Lawrence up to the 1710s. Labrador Inuit Pidgin French was a pidgin heavily
influenced by French and spoken in Labrador until the 1760s. The reason we are
discussion pidgins here is to explore the extraordinary drive towards language in
human beings. While pidgins exist as second languages for adult speakers, if the
children of those adults are exposed to a pidgin, they do not grow up speaking it.
Instead, they develop a complete language known as creole. A creole is a pidgin
language that has become the native language of the children of adult pidgin speakers.
Unlike the simplified pidgins, creoles are syntactically rich and complete languages.
This indicates that human beings have some in-build language mechanism that can
develop a language with the mere exposure to linguistic structures. A creole that
developed Scottish Red River Métis in present-day Manitoba is Bungi Creole. It
developed from pidgins of Scottish English, Scottish Gaelic, French, Norn, Cree, and
Ojibwe. Michif is another example of a fully developed creole language. Michif
combines Cree and Métis French with words borrowed from English, and some
neighbouring Indigenous languages. Michif noun phrase phonology, lexicon,
morphology, and syntax as well as articles, adjectives are derived from Métis French.
Its verb phrase phonology, lexicon, morphology and syntax as well as demonstratives
are from Cree. Exploring the emergence of creoles from pidgins show the inherent
instinct for language in human beings. If language is merely a socially transmitted
communication system, then children could grow up speaking pidgin as their
language. The fact that they develop a complete syntactically rich language even when
exposed to pidgins suggests an internal language acquisition mechanism that takes
in the input of linguistic structures and develops it into a language using some universal
grammar.
