1 language learning in early childhood preview

connectionism
and involved computer simulations in which samples of
language were provided as input to a fairly simple program. The goal was to
show that the computer could ‘learn’ certain things if exposed to enough
examples. The program was found to be able to sort out the patterns from the
input and to generalize beyond what it was actually exposed to. It even made
the same kinds of creative ‘mistakes’ that young children make, such as
putting a regular -ed ending on an irregular verb, for example, eated.
In a usage-based model, language acquisition involves not only associating
words with elements of external reality. It is also a process of associating
words and phrases with other words and phrases that occur with them, or
words with grammatical morphemes that occur with them. For example,
children learning languages in which nouns have grammatical gender learn to
associate the appropriate article and adjective forms with nouns. So if
children are learning French, they learn that la and une go with chaise (chair)
and le and un go with livre (book). Similarly, they learn to associate pronouns
with the verb forms that mark person and number—il aime (he likes) and
nous aimons (we like). They also learn which temporal adverbs go with
which verb tenses.
Of particular importance to this hypothesis is the fact that children are
exposed to many thousands of opportunities to learn words and phrases.
Learning takes place gradually, as the number of links between language and
meaning and among language forms are built up. For usage-based theorists,
acquisition of language, while impressive, is not the only remarkable feat
accomplished by the child. They compare it to other cognitive and perceptual
learning, including learning to ‘see’. That is, the visual abilities that we take
for granted, for example, focusing on and interpreting objects in our visual
field, are actually learned through experience (Tomasello, 2009).
The 
differences 
between 
innatist, 
behaviourist, 
and
interactionist/developmental perspectives are clear. Innatism is based on
biological and neurological explanations, emphasizes the innate and universal
nature of language learning, and focuses on the final state, that is, the kind of
linguistic knowledge that adult native speakers have. Behaviorist and

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interactionist/developmental perspectives emphasize a much greater role for
the linguistic environment and focus on developmental features of learning.
However, behaviourism views learning as a process of imitation and habit
formation while interactionist/developmental perspectives view learning as a
more creative process in which learners’ innate abilities (linguistic and
cognitive) interact with the environment. We revisit these theories (and
others) in relation to L2 learning in 
Chapter 4
.