Blackwell Reference Online

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During the past three decades, language acquisition research has pendulumed between nativist and empiricist approaches to development. In the sixties, Chomsky proposed the existence of a language acquisition device that encapsulated knowledge of a universal grammar, in order to resolve problems associated with the impoverished nature of the input stimulus. In the seventies, cognitive and social knowledge was introduced as a support system to the language acquisition process in order to take the strain from the overloaded formal learning machine. Finally, the eighties saw the maturation of concern in individual differences and crosslinguistic approaches to acquisition but the problem of learnability still loomed large. The naive observer of these events may be forgiven for wondering whether a theoretical resolution will ever emerge. My best guess is that they are likely to be disappointed, at least in the short term. The story about to be told might best be described as a summary of a recent version of the empiricist/nativist debate – or, at least, one side of the debate. The goal of this chapter is to convince you that connectionist approaches to understanding language acquisition offer a useful new tool for pushing the debate further, hopefully in a constructive fashion. Tools like observers are not theoretically neutral. In the field of language acquisition, connectionism is best ... log in or subscribe to read full text