Much of this was review for me. I have enjoyed other texts by Freeman in the past few years. I especially like the form/meaning/use concept, because it illustrates the dynamics of language acquisition in a comprehensive manner.
Freeman discusses oral language acquisition in terms of developmental psychology, sociology, anthropology and linguistics. Developmental psychologists often (like Chomsky) believe children have an inborn capacity to learn language ( language acquisition device - LAD). Sociological and anthropological approaches focus on environment and culture. The linguistic approach looks at generative and universal grammar, and I find this a bit complex. However, the point that children do not acquire language by pure mimicry seemed relevant. As children learn to speak, they often make mistakes that suggest they are following a pattern For example, my daughter used to say things like “mommy boughted it” indicating that she understood the past tense pattern, but applied it in an over generalized way. This little example seems to indicate that there is a universal grammar because even though the grammatical knowledge may not be built in, there seems to be a capacity absorb and conceptualize patterns.
Freeman discusses oral language acquisition in terms of developmental psychology, sociology, anthropology and linguistics. Developmental psychologists often (like Chomsky) believe children have an inborn capacity to learn language ( language acquisition device - LAD). Sociological and anthropological approaches focus on environment and culture. The linguistic approach looks at generative and universal grammar, and I find this a bit complex. However, the point that children do not acquire language by pure mimicry seemed relevant. As children learn to speak, they often make mistakes that suggest they are following a pattern For example, my daughter used to say things like “mommy boughted it” indicating that she understood the past tense pattern, but applied it in an over generalized way. This little example seems to indicate that there is a universal grammar because even though the grammatical knowledge may not be built in, there seems to be a capacity absorb and conceptualize patterns.
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