An army of strawmen Input vs Nativism in language acquisition Dr Robyn Orfitelli University of Sheffield

ELL226 Language Acquisition Possibly also: L2 Syntax, Semantics, Phonology, and/or Phonetics ELL226 Language Acquisition Structures of English Also: L1 Varieties of English, History of English Sounds of English Research methods in Linguistics A-Level English Language (maybe)

How can we avoid turning theories of acquisition into strawmen? Today Overall structure of the class Lectures Seminars Workshops Assessment Teaching students about extremely different approaches to acquisition… without giving them the answers… while encouraging them to be critical thinkers… but still suggesting they not reject approaches out of hand… Is a pedagogical rat’s nest. How can we avoid turning theories of acquisition into strawmen?

Things to teach students CONTENT Data/Stages of development English Cross-linguistically Explanations for content Overarching theories Specific theories SKILLS Critical thinking about data How do stages interact? Identifying gaps in our knowledge Critical thinking about the explanations Identifying the predictions made by theories Mapping acquisition data onto these predictions. Designing an original study

Topics from this year Does plural omission in Bokmäl Norwegian differ from that English, and what does this tell us about theories of plural omission? Elephant-s vs Elefant-er How do children with ASD acquire the prosodic cues that help distinguish between ambiguous sentences? I saw the man with the binoculars.  I saw him. I saw the man with the binoculars.  I did so with the binoculars.

The black box Input Output Limited sentences Errors Variable Unlimited sentences Error-‘free’ Uniform Output

Behaviourism Input Nothing Output BF Skinner (Including Positive/ Negative feedback) Input BF Skinner Nothing Output

Child Directed Speech Input Input to children in structured in a way that facilitates acquisition Nothing? Output

Cognitivism Input General intelligence, spatial reasoning… Output Jean Piaget General intelligence, spatial reasoning… Output

Nativism Input General intelligence, spatial reasoning… Noam Chomsky General intelligence, spatial reasoning… Universal Grammar Output

Universal Grammar A biological blueprint for learning language. A set of universal rules that interact with the linguistic environment (input) to determine a particular grammar in the mind/brain of an individual. Not everything will be part of UG! Even the staunchest nativists believe that as little as possible should be encoded in UG – only the most basic, fundamental, and demonstrably universal principles of human language.

No negative evidence Nothing CH: Mamma isn’t boy, he a girl. M: That’s right. CH: And Walt Disney comes on Tuesday. M: No, he does not. no correction - parents correct utterances for their truth value, not for grammar Nothing

Poverty of the Stimulus (de Villiers et al 1990) A child is told a story of a boy who climbed a tree and fell out. That night, while he was taking a bath, he saw a large bruise on his arm and said to his dad, “I must have hurt myself when I fell this afternoon.”   a. When did the boy say he hurt himself? b. When did the boy say how he hurt himself? Poverty of the stimulus: there are many things we know about our language for which there is no evidence at all in the input data

“Motherese” hypothesis Newport, Gleitman & Gleitman (1977) Child Directed speech is not simpler than adult directed speech: NGG found that 70% of sentences to children are complex, including negatives, questions, commands, embedded sentences, passives. Adult language is significantly more complex than the child's at any level in development. No correlation between simplicity of mother's speech and overall grammatical development as measured by vocabulary size, length of sentences, use of complex grammar… Prosody?

Take-home message Input and nativism aren’t incompatible; it is entirely possible that both work together to explain different parts of the acquisition puzzle.