J. B. Watson's Theory Of The Acquisition Of Language

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The Behaviorist Perspective 1. Basics of the Theory Behaviorism is a psychological theory, founded by J.B Watson and pioneered by Skinner (1957), which rests on the ideology that language is acquired through principles of conditioning, by imitation and reinforcement. It is one of the earliest and oldest scientific theories on language acquisition. The principle behind this theory is the interdependence of stimulus-response and the association between them. According to this concept, children grasp a language by “associating sounds with objects, actions, and events.” (Theories of Language Acquisition, Language and Cognition). They tend to reproduce words and reconstruct sentences after hearing them being used by their parents and surroundings. …show more content…

Chomsky advocates the principle that no child can acquire a language and its complicated grammar based only on language input form his environment. On a first note, most of the time children are not able to repeat what adults say. In addition, a study carried by Brown and Hanlon showed that parents and adults in general cheer for a child when he says something true and accurate, rather than for being grammatically correct. Chomsky believes that a child’s biological endowment is responsible for his acquisition of language, as long as there are people speaking to the child. One could also question to what extent can the environment encourage language learning? From famous writers of the age of enlightenment to contemporary abstract writers, each novelist has his own style of writing and present a talent that not any other individual has. The prominent linguist explains, in his theory of Universal Grammar, that this ability is hardwired into the brain and not a consequence of social circumstances that shaped this talented person’s language. In his article Behaviorist Theory and Language Learning, Dr. Mehmet Demirezen argues that each individual learns differently; it is not possible for two children put under the same conditions to learn the same way and have equal vocabulary and structure their sentence exactly the same way. According to Chomsky, there definitely are “some innate capacities which human beings possess that predispose them to look for basic patterns in

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