Theoretical Perspectives

1. behaviorist

1.1. a "nurture" perspective that was developed by numerous theorists including Karmiloff, Harris, Skinner, and others

1.2. considers children to be "blank slates" who learn by making connections between stimuli, responses, and events

1.3. explains productive speech

1.4. does not account for children leaning novel utterances

2. nativist

2.1. emphasizes innate human characteristics

2.2. developed by Noam Chomsky

2.3. states that all people can acquire language due to cognitive structures

2.3.1. New node

2.4. focuses on the syntactic nature of language

3. cognitive developmentalist

3.1. Based on Jean Piaget's work

3.2. emphasizes language acquisition as a result of maturation and cognitive development

3.3. though language is perceived as an innate ability, cognitive development is considered a prerequisite for language learning

3.4. contributes to understanding the development of semantic/syntactic/morphemic knowledge

4. interactionist

4.1. The work of Bloom and Tinker expanded on the original ideas of Vygotsky

4.2. contends that children acquire language through their attempts to communicate with their world

4.3. based on the acquisition of pragmatic language knowledge

4.4. speech has social origins, develops only where people interact/communicate