Theories of Language Acquisition

Theories of Language Acquisition
Linguists and psychologists have long lectured the issues of language and its mechanism. Many of them however disagree on many points. The behaviorist school emphasizes on the role of the environment and of the standard method in language development, the generative school asserted that human beings are born with an innate ability to learn a language, and others as Piaget and his followers asserted that language development is related to the cognitive development in the child. * The behaviorist theory: believed that language is acquired through principles of imitation and reinforcement. According to this view, children will learn words and syntax by imitating adults, and adults enable them to learn words and syntax by reinforcing the correct speech. Language development can also be associated to an appropriate response to a given stimuli. * The nativist theory: Noam Chomsky and his school of generative grammar believed that human beings are born with a mental device which is called LAD (Language Acquisition Device) which enables them to acquire language. With this device (language faculty) the child has the capacity of constructing grammar with highly specified properties whenever s/he is exposed to a linguistic input even if it is poor. So, according to this view imitation and reinforcement are not valid methods for language acquisition since the child does not learn language as a set of habits. * The cognitive theory: the advocates of this theory such as Piaget and his followers believe that language development is related to the cognitive development.
To conclude, we still need lot of information to decide which one of these theories is more valid. However all what is suggested in them play an important role in language