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Noam Chomsky: Language Development
By Glenn Eastman
Psychology 1100
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Glenn Eastman
Wendy Heimbigner
Psychology 1100
07-02-2010
Noam Chomsky: Language Development
In the beginning of the 1950s, Chomsky a pioneer in the field of
psycholinguistics, helped establish a new relationship between linguistics and
psychology. While Chomsky argued that linguistics should be understood as a part of
cognitive psychology. In his first book, Syntactic Structures (1957), he opposed the
traditional learning theory basis of language acquisition. In doing so, he expressed a view
that differed from the behaviorist view of the mind as a tabula rasa. His theories were
also diametrically opposed to the verbal learning theory of B. F. Skinner, the foremost
proponent of behaviorism. In Chomsky's view, certain aspects of linguistic knowledge
and ability are the product of a universal innate ability, or "Language Acquisition
Device" (LAD) (Chomsky, Chomsky’s System of Ideas).
The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a hypothetical brain mechanism that
Noam Chomsky postulated to explain human acquisition of the syntactic structure of
language. This mechanism endows children with the capacity to derive the syntactic
structure and rules of their native language rapidly and accurately from the impoverished
input provided by adult language users. The device is comprised of a finite set of
dimensions along which languages vary, which are set at different levels for different
languages on the basis of language exposure. The LAD reflects Chomsky's underlying
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assumption that many aspects of language are universal (common to all languages and
cultures) and one constrained by an innate core knowledge about language called
Universal Grammar. This theoretical account of syntax acquisition contrasts sharply with
the views of B. F. Skinner, Jean Piaget, and other cognitive and social-learning theorists
who emphasized the role of experience and general knowledge and abilities in language
acquisition (Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax).
The LAD theory claims to account for the fact that children acquire language
skills more rapidly than other abilities, usually mastering most of the basic rules of
language by the age of four. As evidence that an inherent ability exists to recognize
underlying syntactical relationships within a sentence, Chomsky cites the fact that
children readily understand transformations of a given sentence into different forms, such
as declarative and interrogative, and can easily transform sentences of their own.
Applying this principle to the adult mastery of language, Chomsky has devised the nowfamous nonsense sentence, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." Although the
sentence has no coherent meaning, English speakers regard it as even more nonsensical if
the syntax, as well as the meaning, is deprived of underlying logic, as in "Ideas furiously
green colorless sleep.” Chomsky's approach is also referred to as "generative" because of
the idea that rules generate the seemingly infinite variety of orders and sentences that
exist in all languages. Chomsky argues that the underlying logic, or deep structure, of all
languages is the same and that human mastery of this logic is genetically determined, not
learned. The aspects of language that humans have to study are termed surface structures
(Chomsky, language Development).
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The first years deal with sounds and meanings. According to LAD the aspect that
parents first notice occurs at around three or four months when a child begins to gurgle
and coo. Cooing consists of series of vowel sounds that babies tend to make which
American parents, at least respond to. Just a couple of months later, at about seven
months, these same infants start to babble. The first consonant sounds enter into their
language, and they produce sounds much more like speech. In this period, children seem
to carry on conversations with consonant-vowel sounds that only they can understand.
The beginning of language continues with a strong appearance from the sound
component of the language orchestra. The exact role of the sound component in the
development of later language, however, has been hotly debated. Is babbling, for
example, a form of pre-speech, is it merely an avenue for young children to practice
using their vocal chords and to imitate sounds that they hear with mouth movements that
they can make? Scientists are still not sure. Yet, it is interesting that even deaf children
babble with sounds. Deaf children of deaf parents babble with their hands and show the
same progression toward babbling as do hearing children.
The second year points the way toward language. Most parents find that true
language emerges with the first words at around thirteen months. There is a fuzzy line
between recognizable sounds and first words. For example, "mama" and "papa" will be
among the early sounds interpreted as words by parents. With no intention of bursting
bubbles, the sounds used to make these "words" are easy for babies to produce. Whether
they really function as words is debatable. To qualify as a real word, a word must sound
like a known word and be used consistently, even in different contexts, to mean the same
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thing. For example, a child who uses the word "flower" to refer only to a flower on the
front porch and not to the flower in the dining room vase is not credited with having
spoken a word.
During the third year children go through a process of refining grammar.
Children may put together an actor and a verb, "Mommy go," or a verb and an object,
"eat lunch." They are still limited by how much they can produce at a given time. If, for
example, they wanted to say that they would not eat lunch, they could not utter "No eat
lunch" in the early stages, but would most likely have to limit their output to "No eat" or
"No lunch." Shortly, however, this narrow window expands and the number of words
they can use in a sentence increases. During the middle of the third year, children
become sophisticated grammar users who can speak in longer sentences, and who begin
to include the small grammatical elements that they previously omitted.
Having mastered the sound system of language, learned the meanings of words,
and learned how to structure sentences, children turn their attention to mastering the ways
to use language in social situations at around three or four years of age. The child who
says "More milk" is cajoled by parents to use the magic word please. Children typically
struggle to understand what people really mean to say during this phase (Chomsky,
language Development).
The most common cause for language problems are ear infections, more
specifically, "otitis media." Otitis media involves an accrual of fluid in the ear that results
in temporary hearing loss. As one might expect, this condition has more severe
consequences if it occurs in both ears than if it occurs in just one ear. About one-third of
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children suffer from extensive bouts of otitis media (greater than three bouts in the first
year), and children who are in alternative care environments or who are around other
children are reported to have higher incidents of the condition. On average, two-year-olds
will have had six infections, each of which will have lasted for an average of four weeks.
Anecdotally, the cause for most concern comes from claims of immature or poorly
articulated speech. While parents often worry about the four-year-old child who uses
"baby talk,” most of these errors are well within the normal range of development.
Children show remarkably consistent patterns as they attempt to pronounce common
adult words (Chomsky, language Development).
As has been seen, children have a lot to learn in their first three or four years.
They constantly show what they know by what they say and how they say it. In fact, what
they say has been used as the universal metric of language development. It is what the
pediatrician records during routine office visits. And it is what a parent quickly jots down
in the child's baby book. Whether a person is French or American, lives in a castle or a
tent, and is deaf or hearing, the course of language development appears to be the roughly
the same (Chomsky, language Development).