Noam Choomsky's Theory Of Language Theory: The Study Of Child Language

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There has been several conflicting arguments between varying theorist such as Noam Chomsky and B. F. Skinner studying Developmental Psycholinguistics, which is the study of child language, who have attempted to answer the question such as “How does a child learn his or her language so well in such a short time?” Noam Chomsky who is regarded as one of the most influential linguists (Neaum 2012), his nativist theory implies that language is an innate faculty, furthermore, he stated that all humans possess a ‘Language Acquisition Device or (LAD)’ (Neaum 2012), this contains knowledge of grammatical rules that are common in all languages throughout the world. Additionally, Chomsky states that ‘children will never acquire the necessary tools required …show more content…

These bodily responses usually indicate hunger or discomfort. this is due to the under developed vocal tract as well as their tongue filling their mouth in addition with the larynx still situated high in the neck, the sounds that are produced at this phase are not that wide. Cooing 2 – 4 months During this phase children begin to gain better control of their mouths and tongues they start to laugh and coo. The sounds that are produced are mostly from the back of the mouth which are velar, plosive consonants for example the /k/ and /g/ and the long close back rounded vowel /u:/. O’Grady suggests that from four months a parent, guardian or care-giver can contribute to language acquisition by speaking to the child in a particular way known as Motherese. This nature of speech is slow with careful pronunciation and simple vocabulary objects, using short sentences and exaggerated intonation. This kind of speech helps the child understand what is being said. Furthermore, children react more positively to speech with the emphasis of Motherese than speech that has adult like intonation. (O’Grady

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