Chomsky's Universal Grammar versus Usage-Based Theory Of Language Acquisition

[xSilverPhinx]

I learnt about Chomsky's universal grammar theory back at uni, and we weren't even told that this debate rages. I chalk it up to the lousy teachers we had.

To summarise, Chomsy's theory posits that most children are born with an innate genetic disposition for learning languages and that all (not supported by evidence) languages have an a common set of rules, an underlying structural basis known as universal grammar.

Usage-based acquisition, on the other hand, states that other cognitive functions such as categorisation, analogy-making and pattern-seeking, besides social interactions facilitate language acquisition during the critical period (up until about puberty). I personally think this makes a lot more sense.   

The idea that we have brains hardwired with a mental template for learning grammar—famously espoused by Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—has dominated linguistics for almost half a century. Recently, though, cognitive scientists and linguists have abandoned Chomsky's "universal grammar" theory in droves because of new research examining many different languages—and the way young children learn to understand and speak the tongues of their communities. That work fails to support Chomsky's assertions.

The research suggests a radically different view, in which learning of a child's first language does not rely on an innate grammar module. Instead the new research shows that young children use various types of thinking that may not be specific to language at all—such as the ability to classify the world into categories (people or objects, for instance) and to understand the relations among things. These capabilities, coupled with a unique hu­­­man ability to grasp what others intend to communicate, allow language to happen. The new findings indicate that if researchers truly want to understand how children, and others, learn languages, they need to look outside of Chomsky's theory for guidance.

This conclusion is important because the study of language plays a central role in diverse disciplines—from poetry to artificial intelligence to linguistics itself; misguided methods lead to questionable results. Further, language is used by humans in ways no animal can match; if you understand what language is, you comprehend a little bit more about human nature.

Full article (Scientific American)

[Icarus]

^ One of the reasons that I like HAF so well. A pleasing number of you provide subject matter that falls well outside the realm of the "pablum" type tripe that is so popular.  It is pleasing to observe that we can be serious students of the world of knowledge while still retaining a sense of humor.

Thank all of you who contribute. You know who you are.

[Dave]

How much does rhythm have to play in this I wonder, as a framework for hanging the speech on.

Check on YouTube for a fair number of pre-speech kids arguing with parents or other kids.  Neither know what the other is actually saying but the rhythm is right and the expressions indicate emotion. Language needs some kind of rhythm, kids pick up elements of tunes, even songs, before actual speech in my experience.

A couple or three years later the rhythms in a child's speech may become exagerated, sing-song.

Even now I can remember something, a telephone number say, more easily if I can put it to a tune. Maybe it is the extra effort involved that fixes it in my mind, but earworms are always tunes in my experience. And I am not, in any way or genre, a music fan.

[Recusant]

I learnt about Chomsky's universal grammar theory back at uni, and we weren't even told that this debate rages. I chalk it up to the lousy teachers we had.

To summarise, Chomsy's theory posits that most children are born with an innate genetic disposition for learning languages and that all (not supported by evidence) languages have an a common set of rules, an underlying structural basis known as universal grammar.

Usage-based acquisition, on the other hand, states that other cognitive functions such as categorisation, analogy-making and pattern-seeking, besides social interactions facilitate language acquisition during the critical period (up until about puberty). I personally think this makes a lot more sense.

That was an interesting article, xSilverPhinx, thank you very much for posting about it. The "innate genetic disposition for learning languages" part does seem to be correct. Seems like the universal grammar was a step too far, though. I'd read previously that Chomsky's idea was being questioned, but didn't delve into the reasons, nor the ideas that were being put forward to replace it. The article did a fine job of explaining that. 

[xSilverPhinx]

^ One of the reasons that I like HAF so well. A pleasing number of you provide subject matter that falls well outside the realm of the "pablum" type tripe that is so popular.  It is pleasing to observe that we can be serious students of the world of knowledge while still retaining a sense of humor.

Thank all of you who contribute. You know who you are.

Glad you liked it.

[xSilverPhinx]

How much does rhythm have to play in this I wonder, as a framework for hanging the speech on.

Check on YouTube for a fair number of pre-speech kids arguing with parents or other kids.  Neither know what the other is actually saying but the rhythm is right and the expressions indicate emotion. Language needs some kind of rhythm, kids pick up elements of tunes, even songs, before actual speech in my experience.

A couple or three years later the rhythms in a child's speech may become exagerated, sing-song.

Even now I can remember something, a telephone number say, more easily if I can put it to a tune. Maybe it is the extra effort involved that fixes it in my mind, but earworms are always tunes in my experience. And I am not, in any way or genre, a music fan.

Interesting questions, I don't have a clear-cut answer but I like to speculate.

Firstly, are you talking about tunes that are already in your long term memory (tunes that are familiar to you) or making up a random tune as you "sing" a string of numbers? While maybe in both cases having an additional melodic context can facilitate learning, familiar tunes might offer an advantage when consolidating a memory.   

It might take some of the burden off your working memory, which is the type of extremely short-term memory responsible for remembering things just long enough to be transferred to short-term memory, or forgotten. It's the type of memory you're using to remember the words you're reading right now, by the time you've reached this point you've most likely forgotten what the first word of the this paragraph was, that memory has decayed but you've retained a gist-like memory of what I'm saying. Whether you consolidate that gist-like memory into long-term memory depends on a few factors, among them attention and emotion.

Children in general do have better working memories than adults. They are essentially learning machines. I don't know about babies, though. I'd imagine they must be rather difficult to test.

As for infants picking up on emotional cues before they've developed language, I think that would be nonverbal and not verbal learning. Babies respond better to higher-pitched prosody or "motherese". Some people say that it's due to parents wanting to imitate childlike speech but I don't agree with this. Why would a baby be more attuned to childlike speech? I think that babies are more sensitive to higher-pitched voices because they are more similar to their mother's, on who they are biologically dependent for food. Men in general have an intuitive grasp of this speech pattern preference and so modulate their prosody to match, even if it almost always sounds like something out of a Monty Python sketch.    

[xSilverPhinx]

I learnt about Chomsky's universal grammar theory back at uni, and we weren't even told that this debate rages. I chalk it up to the lousy teachers we had.

To summarise, Chomsy's theory posits that most children are born with an innate genetic disposition for learning languages and that all (not supported by evidence) languages have an a common set of rules, an underlying structural basis known as universal grammar.

Usage-based acquisition, on the other hand, states that other cognitive functions such as categorisation, analogy-making and pattern-seeking, besides social interactions facilitate language acquisition during the critical period (up until about puberty). I personally think this makes a lot more sense.

That was an interesting article, xSilverPhinx, thank you very much for posting about it. The "innate genetic disposition for learning languages" part does seem to be correct. Seems like the universal grammar was a step too far, though. I'd read previously that Chomsky's idea was being questioned, but didn't delve into the reasons, nor the ideas that were being put forward to replace it. The article did a fine job of explaining that. 

Yes, there are a quite a few genes that are required for the proper development of language in humans (and even of "language" in songbirds!) such as the  FOXP1 and FOXP2 regulatory genes, which are probably the most famous. Mutations in these genes have been associated with speech defects so it is very likely that there is an innate learning substrate for languages in people without harmful mutations in "language genes".   

What interests me is: what happens in cases when children learn two languages at the same time? And how is learning a second language after the critical period for first language acquisition different? 

[Dave]

xSP wrote:

Firstly, are you talking about tunes that are already in your long term memory (tunes that are familiar to you) or making up a random tune as you "sing" a string of numbers? While maybe in both cases having an additional melodic context can facilitate learning, familiar tunes might offer an advantage when consolidating a memory.   

It might take some of the burden off your working memory, which is the type of extremely short-term memory responsible for remembering things just long enough to be transferred to short-term memory, or forgotten. It's the type of memory you're using to remember the words you're reading right now, by the time you've reached this point you've most likely forgotten what the first word of the this paragraph was, that memory has decayed but you've retained a gist-like memory of what I'm saying.Whether you consolidate that gist-like memory into long-term memory depends on a few factors, among them attention and emotion.

Will have to try to notice what I do. Take one of my mobile numbers I could not make a story out of it so I "matched" it to a tune. Not the tone values of the numbers but the number of digits and their 5-6 grouping pattern. It was actually a jingle from an advert with the same group pattern!

So, yes, I am drawing on my memory bank and the oft repeated jingle had achieved its aim at locking itself in my mind -  including the image of a red telephone on wheels! The fact that I gave up watching TV five years previously only strengthens the success of this advertising technique to program the human mind!

Then I reuse it to program something else in...

Added:
Story telling is an old technique it seems. Another mobile starts 07463. Providing I can remember 074 I take 11 from that.  The next four numbers are the year I was 29 at the start of, and the last two are 29.

An old boss could make a story for a physics formula that took three widths of A4 paper to contain.  But he only had to remember the opening line to start his brain off. Once he started writing the first few terms of the formula the rest flowed out automatically.

 

[xSilverPhinx]

xSP wrote:

Firstly, are you talking about tunes that are already in your long term memory (tunes that are familiar to you) or making up a random tune as you "sing" a string of numbers? While maybe in both cases having an additional melodic context can facilitate learning, familiar tunes might offer an advantage when consolidating a memory.   

It might take some of the burden off your working memory, which is the type of extremely short-term memory responsible for remembering things just long enough to be transferred to short-term memory, or forgotten. It's the type of memory you're using to remember the words you're reading right now, by the time you've reached this point you've most likely forgotten what the first word of the this paragraph was, that memory has decayed but you've retained a gist-like memory of what I'm saying.Whether you consolidate that gist-like memory into long-term memory depends on a few factors, among them attention and emotion.

Will have to try to notice what I do. Take one of my mobile numbers I could not make a story out of it so I "matched" it to a tune. Not the tone values of the numbers but the number of digits and their 5-6 grouping pattern. It was actually a jingle from an advert with the same group pattern!

So, yes, I am drawing on my memory bank and the oft repeated jingle had achieved its aim at locking itself in my mind -  including the image of a red telephone on wheels! The fact that I gave up watching TV five years previously only strengthens the success of this advertising technique to program the human mind!

Then I reuse it to program something else in...

Added:
Story telling is an old technique it seems. Another mobile starts 07463. Providing I can remember 074 I take 11 from that.  The next four numbers are the year I was 29 at the start of, and the last two are 29.

An old boss could make a story for a physics formula that took three widths of A4 paper to contain.  But he only had to remember the opening line to start his brain off. Once he started writing the first few terms of the formula the rest flowed out automatically.

Reminds me of those mnemonists who can memorise a whole lot of digits in its exact order. They associate each image or card with a mental image against a very familiar backdrop or context ("the memory palace") and mentally construct a story with those images in sequence, making recall a lot easier.