1.2. This theory focuses on inborn/innate capabilities being responsible for language development. This is due to particular cognitive structure that is built to understand language. This theory focuses and on syntatic knowledge and claims that there is a universal grammar for human language. Some go as far as to say language is a human instinct.
2. Cognitive Devlopmental
2.1. Jean Piaget
2.2. Cognitive Development perspectives, like nativism focus on nature's effects on language development. However, in this theory, the cognitive ability to understand language must develop throughout life and is not inborn. First the child goes through the prelinguistic sensorimotor stage through which they gain object permanence which is a prerequisite to be able to manipulate symbols. symbolic representation actually changes a child's cognitive processes. Next, the child becomes capable of understanding the relations between objects and actions and therefore able to create abstract schemata that reflect experience broader than the individual person. Teh second stage of is the preoperational stage that goes from age 2 to 7, and in which children begin to represent the world with images and words. This starts egocentric then beomes socialized.
3. Behaviorist
3.1. BF Skinner
3.2. The Behaviorist model is much more concerned with "nurture" than "nature." This theory posits that learning occurs based on stimuli, responses, and reinforcements. A child is a tabula rasa prior to the language learning process of associations. Operant Learning occurs when consequences are felt that depends on the child's behavior. This helps explain imitative speech in children. Many types of evironmental responses can constitute reinforcement and thus drive the speech learning process.
4. Interactionist
4.1. Vygotsky, Bruner, and Halliday
4.2. The Interactionist model posits that both nature and nurture play an important role in language development, but focuses on the sociocultural interactions of children. According to this model children learn language through attempts to communicate with the world around them. Therefore it is a functional approach that looks more at the process of the acquisition of language than the final language product acquired. This theory borrows behaviorism's recognition of the importance of the environment, the human capacity for processing language that is in nativism, and the claim from Cognitive development that the linguistic cognitive ability grow. Part of the evidence for this theory is that children acquire functional conceptions of the world before they develop linguistic abilities. Parents and other environmental factors play a major role in this theory.
