Imagine a blank template, a white sheet of paper, that’s how human being starts off.
From a crying baby in a cradle, to babbling, to simple single words, slowly progressing
into two-words, then finally a complete sentence, ever wonder how one acquires the
ability to produce the language? Linguists throughout the ages have tried to find out
how does one ACQUIRE a language, is it a deep structure as claimed by Kimball? Or is it
an innate ability, a build-in human capacity propagated by Chomsky?
Various theories have arose since language studies came to fore, and the ability to
acquire language has interested various parties since the dawn of man. From the dunes
of Egypt, Psammeticus, the Pharaoh during the 7th century BC, believed language
was inborn and that children isolated from birth from any linguistic influence would
develop the language they had been born with. Fast forward to the 15th century, King
James VÂ of Scotland performed a similar experiment; the children were reported to
have spoken good Hebrew. Akbar, a 16th century Mogul emperor of India, desired to
learn whether language was innate or acquired through exposure to the speech of
adults. He believed that language was learned by people listening to each other and
therefore a child could not develop language alone. So he ordered a house built for
two infants and stationed a mute nurse to care for them. The children did not acquire
speech, which seemed to prove Akbar’s hypothesis that language is acquired and does
not simply emerge spontaneously in the absence of exposure to speech.Â
Henceforth, modern linguists have been trying hard to crack the codes which govern the
acquisition and learning of a language. Theories ranging from Jean Piaget’s Cognitive
Theory(1929), Skinner’s Behaviorist Theory (1957), to Chomsky’s The Innateness
Hypothesis, and Lambert’s Critical Period Hypothesis(1967) for first language
acquisition, and finally Krashen’s 5 hypothesis of second language learning have paved a
way for an insight, a way to unravel the way the mind works in acquiring and learning a
language -which happen to be distinct from one another-, and here, we will be looking
at the theories that have been the workhorse of language acquisition and learning.
Definition:
First Language Acquisition is touted by linguist as the process of acquiring a language
via exposure whilst young. First language is defined as the primary language -not
necessarily mother tongue- which the speaker first acquires and use on a constant basis.
According to Lennenberg (1967) the language that one picks up during the critical
period will generally be the person’s first language. The Canadian census agrees that the
first language that one acquires during childhood is the first language.
A second language, however, can be a related language or a totally different one from
the first language. Language acquisition is a cognitive process cognitive process
(reasoning, perception, judgment and memory) of “acquiring” a language. It is usually
done subconsciously, with the mind slowly structuring the template to mold the
language into shape. Language learning however, means a person is trying to learn the
language consciously through practice, training, or experience.
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