Compare and contrast the four theoretical accounts of language acquisition.

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The Imitation Account.The simplest explanation of children's language learning is that they learn through imitation.Babies hear language used in systematic ways and learn to use language as adults use it.This is certainly true in one sense,because babies learn the language they hear.Behaviourists took this account one step further by arguing that babies don't just imitate what they hear but imitate what they're reinforced for saying (Skinner,1953).But a purely imitation-based explanation can't be completely right for one reason: Language is generative.Generativity means that language isn't just a set of predefined sentences that we can pull out and apply in appropriate contexts.Instead,it's a system that allows us to create an infinite number of sentences,producing new statements,thoughts,and ideas never previously uttered.The fact that even very young children use language in generative ways-producing sentences or combinations of words they've never heard-means they're producing things for which they were never directly reinforced,refuting a purely behavioural view.
The Nativist Account.The strongest nature view is the nativist account,which says that children come into the world knowing how language works.Nativists propose that children are born with syntactic rules that determine how sentences are constructed (Chomsky,1972).Noam Chomsky,who essentially invented the field of contemporary linguistics,even hypothesized that humans possess a specific language "organ" in the brain that houses these rules.He called it the language acquisition device,and argued that it comes pre-programmed to enable children to use language.A key weakness of the nativist view is that many of its claims are unfalsifiable.Critics have pointed out that children learn syntax gradually and that even adults use grammatically incorrect sentences.The nativist could reply that different aspects of grammar take more or less time to "set" and that ungrammatical sentences don't imply lack of knowledge of grammar.These are certainly reasonable explanations,but the theory's weakness is that it's hard to think of an outcome that nativists couldn't explain.As we've noted in earlier chapters,a theory that can explain every conceivable outcome in essence explains nothing.
The Social Pragmatics Account.The social pragmatics account suggests that particular aspects of the social environment help structure language learning.According to this account,children use the context of a conversation to infer its topic from the actions,expressions,gestures,and other behaviours of speakers.Children can figure out word meaning in this type of situation as early as 24 months of age (Tomasello,Strosberg,& Akhtar,1996).Still,this account has its weaknesses.Explaining child language on the basis of social understanding requires us to assume that infants understand an awful lot about how other people are thinking.In addition,we can explain most social pragmatic abilities without requiring as much insight on the part of the child (Samuelson & Smith,1998).For example,social pragmatic theorists might say that children learn to infer meaning from pointing by inferring the speaker's intentions.Alternatively,children might use a simpler process;they might notice that every time their caretakers point to a specific object,they utter the same word.In this way,children may infer that where someone is pointing is correlated with word meaning.This deduction doesn't require children to take into account the social context or communicative intentions of others.

Compare and Contrast the Four Theoretical Accounts of Language Acquisition