- Is language encoded in DNA?
- How much is built in?
- Acquiring Language is different than learning.
- Are verbal errors really errors? (We are trying to make the irregular, regular.)
- Children don’t know how to truly speak incorrectly.
- When there are errors that no child would make, it is assumed that these errors would break a rule of universal grammar.
- English is not innate, but language is.
- There are no primitive languages.
- Language Analogy theory doesn’t work (if you know one sentence, you can produce another one like it (but only other ones like it)).
- Language is like physical growth.
- Children are pre-programmed with the outlines for language.
- Children are biased learners: they take in all of the comprehensible input and build upon it.
- First assumptions for learning language:
- Words are always applied to the whole object
- Each word has an exclusive meaning.
- How does a child learn meaning?
- Learning meaning is only done by applying a word to new concepts or objects.
Language Theory Notes for 09.25.06
Author: Ben and Kara Wilkoff
