Evolution and Language

Theories of Language Origin

• The Tower of Babel: people built it, God destroyed it, people scattered, and languages emerged
• Darwin's Theory of Human Evolution: understanding human evolution through grasping movements, ape conversations, and sign language
• Bipedalism: standing and walking on two feet; Quadrupedalism: four-legged movement in chimpanzees

What is a Theory?

• A related set of concepts and principles explaining a phenomenon
• Purpose is to explain or predict the phenomenon
• Well-established theories are not likely to change

Laws vs. Theories

• Theories explain, laws are patterns of data
• Theories remain theories, laws remain laws
• One does not convert to the other with new evidence

Importance of Theories

• Provide concepts to understand observations
• Justify funding and research
• Enhance professional knowledge growth
• Guide research and identify unknowns

Development of Theories

• Speculative: based on thoughts, not evidence
• Descriptive: describe reality
• Constructive: people construct their own knowledge

Theory Development Processes

• Theory-Practice-Theory: applying existing theories
• Practice-Research-Theory: researching and developing new theories
• Theory-Theory Research/Practice: building and testing new theories

Theories on the Origin of Language

• Bow-Wow Theory: language emerged from natural sounds
• Ding-Dong Theory: language from environmental sounds
• Pooh-Pooh Theory: language from emotional vocal responses
• Yo-He-Ho Theory: language from cooperative activities
• La-La Theory: language from playful, loving, and poetic expressions
• Ta-Ta Theory: language from tongue and mouth gestures

Learning vs. Acquisition

• Language Learning: grammar method
• Language Acquisition: immersion method
• Hybrid Method: combining grammar and immersion

Facts about Language Acquisition

• No genetic predisposition to acquire a particular language
• All languages are equally easy to acquire as a first language
• Children acquire language rapidly and effortlessly
• Formal instruction is generally unnecessary

Puzzles of Language Acquisition

• Children say things they've never heard
• They get things right without correction
• Master grammar by age 5, but not complex math by age 15

Discussing Language Acquisition

• Is language an innate capacity or learned?
• How do First Language Acquisition (FLA) and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) compare?

Explaining First Language Acquisition

• Behaviorist: learned through conditioning
• Innatist: biologically programmed to acquire language
• Interactionist: learned through social interaction and cognitive development

Generative Grammar

• Children don't simply imitate adults
• They hypothesize rules and acquire deep structures

Universal Grammar

• Knowledge of common language elements
• Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

Chomsky's Theory

• Children acquire language rapidly
• They progress to deep production with limited errors

Interactionist/Developmental Perspectives

• Emphasize cognitive development and social interaction
• Piaget: stages of mental development
• Vygotsky: language develops through social interactions

Connectionist Perspective

• Language acquisition explained by learning in general
• Building connections between words and situations

Critical Period Hypothesis

• Age limit for acquiring native-like fluency
• Brain development and linguistic citizens of the world

Theories of Second Language Acquisition

• Innatist: children are programmed to learn a language
• Fundamental Difference Hypothesis: L2 acquisition is different from L1
• Behaviorist: learning through imitation and practice
• Cognitive: learning through comprehension and production### Language Development Stages

Babbling (6-8 months)

• Infants begin to distinguish between the sounds of their parents' language and other sounds.
• They respond only to sounds that are language distinctions of their parents' language.
• Examples include "baba" (bottle), "mama" (mother), and "nana" (grandmother).

Holophrastic (9-18 months/1-1.5 or 2 years)

• The first words stage, starting at around 1 year and continuing for approximately 6-12 months.
• Examples include "no" (no), "da" (dog), and "ma" (mom).

Two-Word (18-24 months)

• Normally begins at around 18-24 months or 1.5 to 2 years and continues for several months.
• A vocabulary of 50 or more words marks the beginning of this stage.
• Clear syntactic and semantic relations begin to appear, but not syntactic or morphological markers.
• There are no inflectional affixes and pronouns are rare.
• Word order matches the adult's word order, but the same two words in the same order can have more than one meaning.
• A word can refer to:
  • A whole object, not its parts or attributes.
  • A type of thing, not a particular thing (overgeneralization or overextension).

Overextensions and Underextensions

• Overextension: a child may use a word to refer to other objects with similar properties (e.g., calling all animals "sheep").
• Underextension: a child may not use a word for enough particular cases (e.g., "kitty" only means the family cat, not other cats).

Telegraphic (24-30 months)

• Children start stringing more than 2 words together, but omit function words and grammatical morphemes.
• Speech resembles telegraph writing (e.g., "Arrive Paris Monday" instead of "We arrived in Paris on Monday").

Later Multi-Word (30+ months)

• Vocabulary development continues, including overextension and overgeneralization strategies.
• Morpheme development starts, including -ed (past tense) and derivational affixes.
• Compounding shows up early in this stage.
• Inversion in questions appears later.
• This stage continues into fully developed language skills.