Tom essay

Imitation and reinforcement are the most crucial tools for Child Language Acquisition - Evaluate

There are many theories based on Child Language Acquisition that are believed to establish the best ways for a child's language to develop, such as Skinner believing operant conditioning with positive and negative reinforcement coupled with imitation of the caregiver's standard use of language is key. Skinner contradicts the most influential linguists theory, Chomsky, who believes in his theory of Universal Grammar that children have an innate ability to understand the rules of syntax and they therefore say things they've never heard by overgeneralisation, and these virtuous errors show their understanding of language and syntax. This in turn supports Chomsky's idea and contradicts Skinner's idea as children can't learn non standard uses such as 'runned', adding the inflectional suffix 'ed', from adults as they have never heard it from adults, contradicting the viewpoint that children learn most from imitation. Chomsky is supported by Jean Berko Gleason and his 'wugs' theory, where children were shown a 'wug' something they have never seen or heard before, and when asked what 2 wugs were they replied 'wugs', showing their knowledge of the rules of grammar.

It could be argued that imitation is one of the mos crucial tools for a child's language acquisition. An example of imitation having a positive effect on a child's language acquisition is shown n the transcript, where Tom says the non standard noun phrase "The dad bike", and the mother simply replies "dad's bike" adding the possessive inflectional suffix "'s". After saying this and reducing her length of utterance to just 3 morphemes, Tom replies with "the dad (.) dad's bike (.) dad's bike...." eventually imitating the standard use noun phrase "dad's bike". After hearing his mother repeat the standard use of what he said, he internalises the standard use, but firstly starts to say the non standard phrase 'the dad'. He then self corrects himself and uses the standard form for the rest of the transcript, showing how effective imitation can be to improve a child's language and improve their acquisition of the language. This may have been helped by the mother using a smaller length of utterance than normal. Theorist Deb Roy said that the caregiver uses less complex language at the birth of a word, here being 'dad's bike'. Theorist Jerome Bruner also suggested that adults adopt their language in order to talk to children in an easier way and help their language develop, known as child directed speech; this is shown here as the mother imitates what Tom says but in a simplistic way, and consequently he gets the noun phrase correct. This links to what Skinner also said that it is easier for children to develop their language if another young child is speaking due to that other child's language already being more broken down.
Another example of imitation being a crucial tool for a child's language acquisition is shown in the transcript is where Tom says he 'killed the sheep', showing a lexical misunderstanding and overextension of what he actually did which is squashing the sheep. The mother replies "did you? what you squashed it". Tom then imitates the standard use by saying "yeah (.) I squashed it". Here, Tom accepts the alternative verb choice of 'squashed' which may be a euphemism to encourage Tom to use milder language. Again, this supports Skinner's idea that children learn through imitating speech of a caregiver.

Skinner believes that positive and negative reinforcement is very influential for a child to increase their vocabulary, and the development of a child's language is mostly due to positive reinforcement. In the transcript is an example of the mother using positive reinforcement to praise Tom's understanding and communication - after Tom says "is (.) dat your talker", where 'talker' is the non standard usage of the concrete noun tape recorder which conveys the use effectively, the mother replies "my talker? yeah (.) that's a tape recorder" with the positive particle 'yeah' showing the positive reinforcement to praise his knowledge and helps the modelled adult concrete noun 'tape recorder' can help him learnt he adult version instead of the coinage 'talker' what he said which supports chomsky.
The mother also uses negative reinforcement after he asks "is these drawing Cartoon Network cup of tea mum" where he over extends Cartoon Network for looking like something else. She replies "um (.) no (.) its a moving shadow mug...". The negative particle 'no' shows the use of negative reinforcement but Tom actually gets the response he wanted after using the language function labelling of the local topic the mug.