First Language Acquisition

THEORIES IN FIRST
LANGUAGE ACQUISITION
BEHAVIORIST APPROACH
NATIVIST APPROACH
• According to behaviorists, children come into this world with a tabula
rasa (a clean state bearing no preconceived notions about the world or
about language) and these children are shaped by the environment and
slowly conditioned through various schedules of reinforcement.
• Behaviorists might consider effective language behavior to be the
production of correct responses to stimuli. If a particular response is
reinforced, it then becomes habitual, or conditioned.
PAVLOV’S CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
• To Pavlov, classical conditioning is an unconscious learning method and it

is the most clear way in which people can learn. It is the process in which
an auotomatic, conditioned response is paired with specific stimuli.
HOW DO WE LEARN
• We learn by association. Our minds naturally connect events that occur in

sequence.
CLASSICAL CONDITIONING
PAVLOV’S EXPERIMENTS
• Before conditioning, food (Unconditioned Stimulus, US) produces

salivation (Unconditioned Response, UR). However, the tone (neutral
stimulus) does not.
• During conditioning, the neutral stimulus (tone) and the US (food) are
paired, resulting in salivation (UR). After conditioning, the neutral
stimulus (now Conditioned Stimulus, CS) elicits salivation (now
Conditioned Response, CR)
ACQUISITION
• Acquisition is the initial learning stage in classical conditioning in which

an association between a neutral stimulus and an unconditioned stimulus
takes place.
• Pavlov and Watson believed that laws of learning were similar for all
animals. Therefore, a pigeon and a person do not differ in their learning.
SKINNER: OPERANT CONDITIONING
Skinner’s experiments extend Edward Thorndike’s thinking, especially his

law of effect. This law states that rewarded behavior is likely to occur again.
• As a behaviorist, Skinner believed that it was not really necessary to look

at internal thoughts and motivations in order to explain behavior. Instead,
he suggested, we should look only at the external, observable causes of
human behavior.
SKINNER: OPERANT CONDITIONING
• Learning to associate a response with a consequence

• Skinner’s theory of verbal behavior was an extension of his general theory
of learning by operant conditioning. Operant conditioning (also referred to
as instrumental conditioning) is a method of learning that occurs through
rewards and punishments for behavior.
• Skinner argued that behaviors were shaped by external influences instead
of inner thoughts and feelings. Critics argued that Skinner dehumanized
people by neglecting their free will.
• Skinner used the term operant to refer to any “active behavior that operates
upon the environment to generate consequences.” In other words,
Skinner’s theory explained how we acquire the range of learned behaviors
we exhibit each and every day.
Skinner’s Operant Chamber
• Using Thorndike's law of effect as a starting point, Skinner developed the

operant chamber, or the Skinner box, to study operant conditioning.
The operant chamber, or Skinner box, comes with a bar or key that an
animal manipulates to obtain a reinforcer like food or water through trial and
error. The bar or key is connected to devices that record the animal’s
response.
Operant & Classical Conditioning
• 1. Classical conditioning forms associations between stimuli (CS and US).

Operant conditioning, on the other hand, forms an association between
behaviors and the resulting events.
• 2. Classical conditioning involves respondent behavior that occurs as an
automatic response to a certain stimulus. Operant conditioning involves
operant behavior, a behavior that operates on the environment, producing
rewarding or punishing stimuli (consequences). Operant conditioning can
also be known as instrumental conditioning or Skinnerian conditioning.
BEHAVIORISTIC APPROACH
In behavioristic approach, language learning is the result of

• imitation (word for word repetition)
• practice (repetitive manipulation of form)
• feedback on success (positive reinforcement)
• habit formation.
• According to behaviorists, children come into this world with a tabula rasa
(a clean state bearing no preconceived notions about the world or about
language) and these children are shaped by the environment and slowly
conditioned through various schedules of reinforcement
• Behaviorists might consider effective language behavior to be the
production of correct responses to stimuli. If a particular response is
reinforced, it then becomes habitual, or conditioned.
BEHAVIORISM AND THE AUDILINGUAL METHOD
• Behaviorist psychologists such as B.F. Skinner were forming the belief

that all behavior (including language) was learnt through repetition and
positive or negative reinforcement.
• Dialogues and drills form the basis of audiolingual classroom practices.
• Dialogues are used for repetition and memorization.
• After a dialogue has been presented and memorized, specific grammatical
patterns in the dialogue are selected and become the focus of various kinds
of drill and pattern-practice exercises.
• Repetition. The students repeat an utterance aloud as soon as they have
heard it.
• Examples:
• This is the seventh month. – this is the seventh month.
• Inflection. One word in an utterance appears in another form when
repeated
• Examples
• I bought the ticket. – I bought the tickets
• He …
• Replacement. One word in an utterance is replaced by another.
• Examples
• He bought this house cheap. – He bought it cheap.
• Restatement. The student rephrases an utterance and addresses it to
someone else according to instructions.
• Examples
• Tell him to wait for you. –Wait for me
• Ask her how old she is. – How old are you?
• Completion. The student hears an utterance that is complete except for one
word, then repeats the utterance in completed form
• Examples
• I’ll go my way and you go…- I’ll go my way and you go yours.
• We all have… own troubles. – We all have our own troubles…
• Transposition. A change in word order is necessary when a word is added.
• Examples
• I’m hungry. (so). – So am I
• I’ll never do it again. (neither). – Neither will I…
• Expansion. When a word is added it takes a certain place in the sequence.
• Examples.
• I know him. (hardly). – I hardly know him
NATIVIST APPROACH
• The nativist approach, whose leading figure is Noam Chomsky, states that
children’s brains contain a Language Acquisition Device (Universal
Grammar) which holds the grammatical universals.
• Universal grammar is a theory which suggests that some rules of grammar
are “hard-wired” into the brain, and manifest without being taught.
• LAD is the imaginary “black box” which exists somewhere in the brain.
• It is thought to contain all and only the principles which are universal to
all human languages.
• For the LAD to work, the child needs access only to samples of a natural
language. These language samples serve as a trigger to activate the device.
COMPETENCE AND PERFORMANCE
• Chomsky distinguished the underlying knowledge of language from the

way language is actually used in practice.
• Competence refers to person’s knowledge of his language, the system of
rules which a language user has mastered so that it would be possible for
that user to be able to produce and understand an indefinite number of
sentences and recognize grammatical mistakes and ambiguities.
• Performance refers to language seen as a set of specific utterances
produced by native speakers, as encountered in a corpus.
• Competence: abstract knowledge of language (abstract grammar knowledge)
• Performance: use of language
DEEP STRUCTURE AND SURFACE STRUCTURE
• The deep structure of a linguistic expression is a theoretical construct that

seeks to unify several related structures. For example, the sentences "Pat
loves Chris" and "Chris is loved by Pat" mean roughly the same thing and
use similar words. Chomsky has tried to account for this similarity by
positing that these two sentences are distinct surface forms that derive
from a common (or very similar) deep structure.

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THEORIES IN FIRST

• To Pavlov, classical conditioning is an unconscious learning method and it

• We learn by association. Our minds naturally connect events that occur in

• Before conditioning, food (Unconditioned Stimulus, US) produces

• Acquisition is the initial learning stage in classical conditioning in which

Skinner’s experiments extend Edward Thorndike’s thinking, especially his

• As a behaviorist, Skinner believed that it was not really necessary to look

• Learning to associate a response with a consequence

• Using Thorndike's law of effect as a starting point, Skinner developed the

• 1. Classical conditioning forms associations between stimuli (CS and US).

In behavioristic approach, language learning is the result of

• Behaviorist psychologists such as B.F. Skinner were forming the belief

• Chomsky distinguished the underlying knowledge of language from the

• The deep structure of a linguistic expression is a theoretical construct that

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