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1、Modern First Language Acquisition Theory现代母语习得理论Language is closely related to the human mind. The human mind, however, is very difficult to study, as it cannot be observed directly. But it leaves its traces everywhere, particularly in language. Language has been a window of the mind. Many people ha
2、ve tried to discern the workings of the mind from the growth of children. Psycholinguists are concerned with the mental processes that are involved in learning to speak, and are also interested in the underlying knowledge and abilities which children must have in order to use language and to learn t
3、o use language in childhood. Is language innate or is it learned after birth? Is there any biological foundation for language? How do children acquire their first language? These and other issues have the focus of interests and research to applied linguists, psycholinguists and language teachers. L1
4、 acquisition theories are the attempted explanations for these unanswered questions.1. Major Modern First Language Acquisition Theories 现代主要母语习得理论How do children acquire language is at the center of the debate. Learning theorists such as Skinner maintained （1957）that language is acquired through rei
5、nforcement. Chomsky （1959 ）argued that language was far too complex to be learned so completely in such a short space of time, by cognitively immature toddlers（baby, child）, merely by reinforcement. He argued that the neonate婴儿 arrives equipped with a LAD. This contains a set of rules common to all
6、languages and allows children to learn any language which they are exposed to. Slobin (1985) suggested a similar innate device-the LMC (language making capacity). The interactionists perspective suggests that a combination of biological and cognitive factors plus linguistic environment are all neces
7、sary for the acquisition of language.Basically we shall discuss two schools of thoughts on the issue of language acquisition here. The question of how children acquire their first language is answered quite differently by the two schools of theories. The school of behavioristic theory believes that
8、the infants mind at birth is a blank slate to be written on by experience. With regard to language, it claims that children acquire their L1 through a chain of stimulus-response-imitation-reinforcement. The other school of thoughts is based on the innateness hypothesis. People who hold the cognitive
9、 view believe that human babies are somewhat predisposed 有倾向 to acquire a language. They say that there are aspects of linguistic organization that are basic to human brain and that make it possible for human children to learn a language with all its complexity with little or no instruction from fam
10、ily or friends. The nature of language acquisition is still an open question and people are still probing the nature of the innateness of infants mind.2. Brief History of Modern L1 Acquisition Research 现代母语习得研究简史1Modern research on child language acquisition dates back to the late 18th when the Germ
11、an philosopher recorded his observation of the psychological and linguistic development of his young son. 2. Most of the studies carried out between the 1920s and 1950s were limited to diary like recordings of observed speech with some attempts to classify word types, and simply accounts of changes
12、from babbling to the first word and descriptions of the growing vocabulary and sentence length. 3. Most observers regarded language development as a matter of imitation, practice, and habituation. 4. It was not until the 1960s that the study of L1 acquisition received a new major impetus促进 largely b
13、ecause of the Chomskys revolution and the creation of the generative grammar. Researchers began to analyze child language systematically and tried to discover the nature of the psycholinguistic process that enables every human being to gain a fluent control of the exceedingly极度 complex system of com
14、munication. 5. In a matter of(about) a few decades of language some giant strides were taken, especially in the generative and cognitive model of language, in describing the nature of child language acquisition and the acquisition of particular languages, and in probing universal aspects of acquisit
15、ion.3. L1 Acquisition Theories: A Behavioristic Perspective 行为主义母语习得理论L1 acquisition theories can roughly be divided into two major groups: behavioristic and cognitive.Behaviorists contend主张 that language is a fundamental part基本部分 of total human behavior. Behaviorists learning theories describe and
16、explain behavior using a SR model. The basic tenet原则 of behaviorism is that human beings can not know anything they have not experienced and children and adults learn language through a chain of stimulus-response reinforcement. Since one can not look inside a living organism, one can not observe its internal states. Hence one can not know anything about them. Any statements one makes about internal states or process are meaningless. Each organism is
