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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
DU Yiran
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DOI:10.17265/2159-5542/2022.05.008
University of Liverpool, Liverpool, the United Kingdom
How children learn language is debated fiercely in academia. Behaviourists believe that children learn language through limitation and reinforcement learning while nativists argue that children are born with linguistic knowledge that can help them acquire language. One justification for the unreasonableness of children acquiring language through learning is the complexity of language. Another reason for child language acquisition not finishing through learning is the irrelevance between general intelligence and language competence. It can be argued that children acquire language innately by controlling the “language gene”, which develops through evolution. In ancient times, humans may have nothing different compared to other animals. Nowadays, after the evolution of a long period of time, the “language gene” inside children’s bodies could help them develop language faculties. The viability of this theory is underpinned by the poverty of the stimulus argument, language’s conformity to universal features, the change from pidgin and creole language, and the same sequence of the development of child language acquisition. However, critics claim that this theory cannot solve the problem of second language acquisition of adults and the case of Genie. This could be explained by the lack of “incomprehensible input” and language environment and the degeneration of the language acquisition device. They also argue that the evidence from neuroscience is missing, and it is pseudoscience. The evidence from Wernicke’s area, Broca’s area, and the FOXP2 gene could rebut the counterargument.
child language acquisition,
language faculty, language gene
Psychology Research, May 2022, Vol. 12, No. 5, 278-283
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