Psycholinguistics

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How do we acquire
language?













One of the most complex resources that human beings possess and use to communicate between them is language, Its is notorious by its varieties and the fact that every individual is potentially able to acquire this faculty, it is not a simple element to explain. On the one hand, It is claimed by thecognitive approach that the acquisition of language exclusively depends on external stimuli. Language is the product of answers to these stimuli that the child learn by apparent habits.
On the other hand, according to the cognitive views , Language is considered from a cognitive approach . This useful faculty is productive, that is to say, as individuals we are able to build potentially infinitephrases and sentences from a very finite group of components according to Chomskian view, we are enabled of linguistic creativity that allows us to build more complex structures . Another characteristic is its sistematicity, as Fodor quoted: “The ability to produce / understand some of the sentences is intrinsically connected to the ability to produce / understand many of the others”. Therefore,language as a system is also structured by phonological, morphological as well as syntactic rules that form meaningful phrases and sentences from meaningful words organized structurally.
It arises the question: how do we acquire our first language?,

In order to answer this question, we will review three important approaches that differ and important discoveries in linguistic studies that lead tothe development of psycholinguistics. According to these findings , some aspects of the Innatism and later cognitive approaches will be supported in this essay.

1.- Behaviourist approach : Empirist approach . In the 1920’s Behaviourist view studies separated linguistics from psychology because language is described by functional analysis . In “Verbal behaviour”, 1957, Skinner identifies thevariables that control verbal behaviour and specify how these variables interact to produce this kind of behaviour that emerged due to the influence of a specific environment where certain speech models exist and are reinforced and others considered errors are corrected. Behaviourist studies of language was based on animal learning. Its studies of language development were based on studies withparrots.

2.- Innatist approach: Rationalist approach . Some years later, by late 1950’s after having written “Syntactic Structures” Noam Chomsky became known for presenting a real revolution not only for linguistic science but also for every cognitive science. Chomsky claimed that language consisted of a set rules and principles that are produced at the cognitive level which generatedlanguage as speech, where words cannot influence the next unit as an associative chain. This human faculty enabled individuals to acquire a language despite a poor stimulus present in the input that the environment provided. Human beings are able to combine a serie of finite elements , that is to say, words in order to express infinite linguistic elements.
Such combinatory rules are considered“Grammar” that all children possess and use to acquire a language. This is denominated Universal Grammar which allows human beings to acquire any language of the world by utilizing the language acquisition device, predominating the sintax.
Another characteristic of language considered by this current was modularity , that is to say, there is only one independent or autonomous brain module that is able toprocess linguistic information.

3.-Later cognitive approaches : Later approaches that started developing in the 1970’s did not consider language as an autonomous cognitive faculty. Language is also related to other cognitive faculties as sensation, perception , memory among others. It is not modular as Chomskyan view considered.
Cognitive theory (Piaget) claims that language is produced...