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Innate Capacity and Linguistic Input: Co- Constructing First Language Acquisition

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Innate Capacity and Linguistic Input: Co- Constructing First Language Acquisition 1 INNATE CAPACITY AND LINGUISTIC INPUT: CO- CONSTRUCTING FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Dra. Dian Rianita, MA (Universitas Lancang Kuning – Pekanbaru) Hanafi, PhD (Universitas Andalas – Padang) _____________________________________________________________________ Abstract: The issue of how children acquire their first language has become noticeable from time to time. There are two dominant mainstreams, which explore the significant background of first language acquisition such as the existence of language acquisition devices and the role of the linguistic input. Both have their arguments to clarify the process of language acquisition. This paper discusses those ideas in which the first language acquisition are explained by the collaboration of two influenced theories since both theories provide the comprehensive analysis regarding the complex process of first language acquisition by a child. 1. INTRODUCTION How children acquire their first language continues to be an interesting issue for years. Experts from multiple disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, education, etc., have been continuously exploring the development of the human being in acquiring language. As pointed out by Roeper (1986), the ultimate issue in linguistics theory is the explanation of how children are capable of acquiring human language because unfolding the process of first language acquisition help discover the key for opening up the secrecy of language origin and second language acquisition. From the extensive literature of first language acquisition, there emerge two contrasting views which define child's acquisition of a language. The first view claims that first acquisition will only be predominantly possible by the existing human-specific innate capacity, early known as the Language Acquisition Device (Chomsky, 1965). The latter sees first language acquisition as externally stimulated by sufficient linguistic 2 inputs. This paper argues for the joint contribution of both innate capacity and linguistic input in assisting the children to acquire their first language and considers that none is more dominant than the other is as both co-construct the acquisition. 2. THE INNATE CAPACITY HYPOTHESIS Innate capacity or innate linguistic knowledge firstly emerged in the spirit of cognitive revolution in language inquiries the 1950's and 1960's as the result of Chomsky’s (1965) criticism upon Skinner’s (1957) behavioristic view of language acquisition. Chomsky claimed that children would never acquire the tools needed for processing an infinite number of sentences if the language acquisition mechanism was dependent on language input alone. Chomsky gave his further arguments by providing a term "language faculty" as one of cognitive faculties that facilitate language learning and acquisition (1965, p.56). This innate ability allows children to creatively generate infinite linguistic outputs that were never introduced to them. This view contributes to the theoretical assumption of the existence of Universal Grammar (UG). This internalized grammar allows learners to go beyond particular sentences fed by the input, permitting generalization and generation of comprehensible and grammatical linguistic outputs. As language acquisition is well known as a selective process where the child sets the values of parameters based on the linguistic environment, acquiring a language is “...an effortless achievement for children because they get it without explicit teaching and on the basis of positive evidence (what they hear from the environment)... (Guasti, 2002, p.4).” In addition, children develop their language skills in a limited amount of time, under unpredictable circumstances, and in identical ways across different languages. One important thing about first language acquisition is the fact that there is an undeniable similarity in the early language of children all over the world (Klein, 1996) regarding the developmental stages of first language acquisition. 3 “Every child undergoes the similar developmental process in acquiring their first language, i.e., from the earliest vocalization or babbling, one-word sentence, phrasal expression, and so on (Clark, 2009, p.14)”. For the proponents of this naturalistic view of innateness, this similar development could be one evidence for the presence of universal grammar and the dominant role of language acquisition device that is inherently planted only in human brains. 3. THE LINGUISTIC INPUT HYPOTHESIS From the other side of the bench, another perspective for first language acquisition is drawn by considering the role of environment, i.e., nurture. Proponents of this view argue that despite the specificity of human capacity in acquiring and using language to interact with each other, the role of linguistic inputs in the process of language learning is more dominant and empirically evident in determining children first language acquisition. In other words, children need to receive sufficient linguistic inputs from their environment for them to develop their own grammatical system in their first language. Without this external input, such innate ability will never be fully functional (Cowie, 2008). Furthermore, Pinker (1995) and Klein (1994) also argue that human was not born with a specific language in their head. At birth, a child does not speak at all, and they can only speak a language because they get in touch with the environment. Therefore, the individual’s capacity to talk and understand a particular language depends not only on such hypothetical ability as the innate capacity but more importantly on other definite sources, namely linguistic input. A more accommodating argument is also suggested that despite strong theoretical argumentation for children's quick and independent learning of syntactic rules, other linguistic and sociolinguistic abilities cannot be acquired in the absence of sufficient input from the facilitative environment (Clark, 2009, p.2). 4 Such linguistic input can occur in the early stage when mothers and other caretakers give the stimulus by developing a special way of talking to the children, commonly known as baby talk or motherese. In this case, adults usually simplify their speech to refer to objects in the immediate here and now; they modify their speech patterns, using a higher overall pitch, often with a rising intonation at the end of sentences; their speech is slower and more precise; there are more instances of emphatic stress. They commonly repeat utterances frequently, expand, and elaborate on what it is the child has said. Sometimes, according to Snow (1976), there are grammatical modifications in speech addressed to young children as compared to speech addressed to older children or adult in order to let the children comprehend the language. Those modifications cover fewer verbs, modifiers, conjunctions, and prepositions, including less use of third person constructions, passive voice, and other more complicated constructions. This type of talking and communication may resemble Skinner’s (1957) behavioristic approach to language acquisition. In his term, language development is accounted by means of environmental influence. Correct utterances are positively reinforced when the child realizes the communicative value of words and phrases. In this view, children learn their first language because they are positively reinforced to produce correct verbal expressions and negatively reinforced when making errors. However, the linguistic input hypothesis is different from behaviorism in seeing the nature of child acquisition. The linguistic input hypothesis is still operating under the cognitive view. While behaviorism sees that behavioristic reinforcement as the primary tools for acquiring specific behavior in animals, it fails to explain the infinite range of linguistic creativity shown by normal children after the age of three, who are never taught the grammar lesson or given infinite number of sentence construction. These children can creatively produce new sentences or utterances that they never heard before (Pinker, 1995, p.108), which is beyond the descriptive coverage of behaviorism. 5 4. JOINT COLLABORATION IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: INNATE ABILITY AND LINGUISTIC INPUT These two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive to each other. They both are complementary because the absence of one will significantly inhibit the acquisitional process. On the one hand, the lack of human-specific mental capacity for generating grammatical rules in a child's brain will affect his/her ability in developing his linguistic and communicative skills. Many cases show the existence of this innate capacity in every normal human being. Cases, where normal adults lose their ability to speak after a stroke, prove that human brain is clearly equipped with such capacity that any other animals never have, as proven in Kanazi and Bonobo's case (Segerdahl, Fields, & Savage-Rumbaugh, 2005). On the other hand, the lack or absent of linguistic input (nurture) in the critical process of child first language acquisition also severely prevent children from succeeding in acquiring the first language. Cases of feral children like Genie (Curtis, 1977), the wild girl of Champagne, Prava (the bird boy), and many others are hard proofs of the importance of linguistic input in the process of children first language acquisition. Despite maintaining their perfect surviving ability and assumingly having the innate capacity, these socially isolated and abandoned children cannot develop their innate capacity due to
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