Functional Approaches

More recently, with an increase in constructivist approaches to the study of language, we have seen a shift in patterns of research. The shift has not been so much away from the generative/cognitive side of the continuum, but perhaps better described as a move even more deeply into the essence of language. Two emphases have emerged:

(a) Researchers began to see that language was one manifestation of the cognitive and affective ability to deal with the world, with others, and with the self;

(b) Moreover, the generative rules that were proposed under the nativistic framework were abstract, formal, explicit, and quite logical, yet they dealt specifically with the forms of language and not with the the deeper functional levels of meaning constructed from social interaction. Examples of forms of language are morphemes, words, sentences, and the rules that govern them. Functions are the meaningful, interactive purposes, within a social (prag­matic) context, that we accomplish with the forms.

Cognition and Language Development

Lois Bloom (1971) cogently illustrated the first issue in her criticism of pivot grammar when she pointed out that the relationships in which words occur in telegraphic utterances are only superficially similar. For example, in the utterance "Mommy sock," which nativists would describe as a sen­tence consisting of a pivot word and an open word, Bloom found at least three possible underlying relations: agent-action (Mommy is putting the sock on), agent-object (Mommy sees the sock), and possessor-possessed (Mommy's sock). By examining data in reference to contexts, Bloom con­cluded that children learn underlying structures, and not superficial word order. Thus, depending on the social context, "Mommy sock" could mean a number of different things to a child. Those varied meanings were inade­quately captured in a pivot grammar approach.

Lewis Carroll aptly captured this characteristic of language in Through the Looking Glass (1872), where Alice argues with Humpty Dumpty about the meanings of words:

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master— that's all."

Bloom's research, along with that of Jean Piaget, Dan Slobin, and others, paved the way for a new wave of child language study, this time cen­tering on the relationship of cognitive development to first language acqui­sition. Piaget (Piaget & Inhelder 1969) described overall development as the result of children's interaction with their environment, with a comple­mentary interaction between their developing perceptual cognitive capac­ities and their linguistic experience. What children learn about language is determined by what they already know about the world. As Gleitman and Wanner (1982) noted in their review of the state of the art in child language research, "children appear to approach language learning equipped with conceptual interpretive abilities for categorizing the world.... Learners are biased to map each semantic idea on the linguistic unit word.";

Dan Slobin (1971, 1986), among others, demonstrated that in all lan­guages, semantic learning depends on cognitive development and that sequences of development are determined more by semantic complexity than by structural complexity. "There are two major pacesetters to language development, involved with the poles of function and of form: (1) on the functional level, development is paced by the growth of conceptual and communicative capacities, operating in conjunction with innate schemas of cognition; and (2) on the formal level, development is paced by the growth of perceptual and information-processing capacities, operating in conjunction with innate schemas of grammar" (Slobin 1986). Bloom (1976) noted that "an explanation of language development depends upon an explanation of the cognitive underpinnings of language: what chil­dren know will determine what they learn about the code for both speaking and understanding messages." So child language researchers began to tackle the formulation of the rules of the functions of language, and the relationships of the forms of language to those functions.

Social Interaction and Language Development

In recent years it has become quite clear that language functioning extends well beyond cognitive thought and memory structure. Here we see the second, social constructivist emphasis of the functional perspective. Holzman (1984), in her "reciprocal model" of language develop­ment, proposed that "a reciprocal behavioral system operates between the language-developing infant-child and the competent [adult] language user in a socializing-teaching-nurturing role." Some research (Berko-Gleason 1988, Lock 1991) looked at the interaction between the child's language acquisition and the learning of how social systems operate in human behavior. Other investigations (for example, Budwig 1995, Kuczaj 1984) of child language centered on one of the thorniest areas of linguistic research: the function of language in discourse. Since language is used for interactive communication, it is only fitting that one study the commu­nicative functions of language: What do children know and learn about talking with others? about connected pieces of discourse (relations between sentences)? the interaction between hearer and speaker? conver­sational cues? Within such a perspective, the very heart of language—its communicative and pragmatic function—is being tackled in all its vari­ability.

Of interest in this genre of research is the renewed interest in the per­formance level of language. All those overt responses that were so carefully observed by structuralists and hastily weeded out as "performance vari­ables" by generative linguists in their zeal to get at competence have now returned to the forefront. Hesitations, pauses, backtracking, and the like are indeed significant conversational cues. Even some of the contextual cate­gories described by—of all people—Skinner, in Verbal Behavior, turn out to be relevant! The linguist can no longer deal with abstract, formal rules without dealing with all those minutiae of day-to-day performance that were previously set aside in a search for systematicity.

The Social-biological theory

The basic content of social-biological theory is that a child, possessing an innate ability to symbolize (including language), and receiving from adult material of a language, "recycles" it, and with the development actively and independently acquire successive systems "childish" language, gradually bringing them closer to the adults’ linguistic system.

The main Conditions necessary for the acquisition of language

Child must have a certain level of formation (maturation) of the nervous system (central and peripheral), sufficient for language acquisition at concrete stage of development. Herewith the following regularity of ontogenesis must be taken into consideration: development as a social phenomenon (in particular, the process of socialization) leads biological maturation. It is known that many brain structures in humans are finally formed only at the time of "early adulthood" (approximately till the age of 21). However, a person takes possession of the language (all of its forms), much earlier than this age, namely: the "nucleus" of oral and the kinetic language at three years, "nucleus" of writing language at the age from eight to ten years. We should not forget that language acquisition requires maturation of well-defined structures of the nervous system and the establishment of certain relationships between them. This situation is confirmed, in particular, different forms of pathology of the nervous system. For example, many children with cerebral paralysis master language as a sign system, although usually have articular disorders, sometimes heavy.

In addition, child’s peripheral articular and hearing apparatus should be formed, which allows him to speak and understand directed speech. However, even with significant deformation of the peripheral articular apparatus, the child learns language as a sign system (in this case child expressed disturbances usually occur sound pronunciation and prosody). It is otherwise happens in violation of auditory function. Moderate and severe hearing loss naturally leads to abnormal development of all components of language: not only the phonetic and phonemic, but also semantic and syntactic, lexical, morphological and morph-syntax.

Of course, language learning is largely due to the mastery of the culture (spiritual and material), and above all - of the people whose language child learns. As mentioned above, especially ethnic cultures, countries define certain features of the language.

Necessary condition for language acquisition – is the ability and need to communicate. It is known that children with autism who have extremely limited ability mentioned above develop abnormally, because of this they do not master language at all, or acquire language usually with significant disabilities.

It has been said that child must possess an innate ability to symbolize, also in the language area.

In order to acquire language, the child must receive correct patterns of surrounding speech. Also verbal behavior of surrounding people should be correct: paying attention to child’s speech, providing them with an unobtrusive aid in the production of statements, the approval of desire to verbal communication, tactical error correction in speech, etc. Especially we must mention the desire of adults to supplement children’s vocabulary. Usually adults surrounding child supplement his vocabulary by so-called nominative vocabulary, by " subjective " words ("Say: home, rooster, machine, male, shoes"), leaving the " aside" predicative words (verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, etc.). In the center of separate statement, as we know, is a predicate, in the expanded utterance (text) - the system of predicates. Therefore, these words should take the main place in the child’s vocabulary.

Finally, one of the most important conditions for language acquisition - is a favorable social environment in which child lives: benevolent attitude toward child, desire to communicate with child, proper education and training. In communication the most important role is given to mother.

After analyzing psycholinguistic research works we distinguished three main stages of native language acquisition:

The first phase (from 0 to 9-10 months). - Assimilation of codified impressive speech (verbal and kinetic), of expressive kinetic and uncodified oral expressive speech.

The second phase (from 9-10 months. Up to 11 years) - the assimilation of all forms of codified oral and sign language. This stage, in turn, consists of 4 stages.

(a) the first stage (from 10.9 to 18 months.) – the start in acquisition of language system;

(b) the second stage (from 18 months. Up to 3 years) - the acquisition of "nucleus" of language system;

(c) third stage (from 3 to 5 years) – acquiring the "periphery" of the linguistic system;

(d) the fourth stage (from 5 to 11 years and later) - Improving the existing language system.

The third stage (usually - from 6 to 11 years) - acquisition of written language (reading and writing).

(a) the first stage - acquisition of initial reading skills (from 6 to 8 years old) and letters (from 6-7 to 9 years);

(b) the second stage (from 8-9 to 11 years later) - improving reading and writing skills.

Several theoretical positions have been sketched out here. A complete, consistent, unified theory of first language acquisition cannot yet be claimed; however, child language research has manifested some enormous strides toward that ultimate goal. And even if all the answers are far from evident, maybe we are asking more of the right questions.