BATAAN PENINSULA STATE UNIVERSITY

GRADUATE SCHOOL
Telefax: (6347) 2372350
(6347) 2375830 City of Balanga 2100 Bataan, Philippines
Website: www.bpsu.edu.ph Email: graduateschoolmc@gmail.com
Email: bpsugraduateschool@gmail.com Telefax: (6347) 2376658

Name: Aika Kristine L. Valencia Teacher: Dr. Flora Canare

Language as a Mental Phenomenon

The relationship between language and thought has been seen in a couple of alternative ways.
One basic question concerns the degree to which language is a special, autonomous mental
system vs. a particular product of general cognitive functioning. A separate but related
question concerns whether or not (or the degree to which) language directly shapes non-
linguistic thought. The two questions are linked because the latter (language-shaping-
thought) view seems to presume some autonomous existence of language which is more basic
than the kinds of thought involved. The latter (tool) view presumably can exist with either
view of language. So, the question boils down to whether a) language is an independent
mental entity (or “module”) that contributes to the actual forming of thought, or b) language
constitutes a tool which speakers can (to varying degrees does) make use of in the process of
thought and/or to convey thought. The latter view implies that, where there exists some
reason, thought can take on a form or have some content that is inconsistent with the form or
content of language, while the former does not.

Theories of Language Development

Ways to contrast approaches to language development:

Language is separate from cognition Language is a subset of cognition

Chomsky's linguistic theory is based on the following empirical facts: "child learns language
with limited stimuli", or the problem of poverty of evidence.

 The input during the period of a natural language acquisition is circumscribed and
degenerate. The output simply cannot be accounted for by the learning mechanism only,
 such as induction and analogy on the input. The output and input differ both in quantity
and quality.
 A subject knows linguistic facts without instruction or even direct evidence. These
empirical facts, "knowledge without ground", are expressed: "Knowledge of language is
normally attained through brief exposure, and the character of the acquired knowledge
may be largely predetermined."
 This predetermined knowledge is some "notion of structure", in the mind of the speaker,
which guides the subject in acquiring a natural language of his own. For a subject to
know a natural language is for him to have a certain I-language. Language acquiring, in
terms of
I- language, corresponds to the change of a subject's mind/brain state.
Chomskyan Nativism
“The child’s language ‘grows in the mind’ as the visual system develops the capacity for
binocular vision, or as the child undergoes puberty at a certain stage of maturation.
Language acquisition is something that happens to a child placed in a certain
environment, not something the child does.”
 Why are there two different views on the relationship between language and cognition?
At the dawn of the cognitive revolution, in the late 1950s, there were two distinct ideas
about the nature of mind. According to this view, children are born with a ‘language
acquisition device’ and with specific linguistic knowledge. This knowledge is thought to
include the concepts of noun, verb, grammatical subject, and structures that constrain
possible grammatical rules.
 In contrast to the views of the dominant psychological theory of the 1950s, behaviorism,
Chomsky argued that the children do not learn to speak by imitating adults. His key
evidence was that children spontaneously use incorrect forms they could not have heard,
like ‘goed’ and ‘breaked’. Linguistic over regularizations like these suggest that
children are extracting rules from the language they hear, not merely imitating.

“Nature” is the major influence “Nurture” is the major influence

on language development language development
 Nature AND Nurture

According to Chomsky (1959), the characteristics of complex organisms “are in general a

complicated product of inborn structure, the genetically determined course of maturation, and
past experience.

Knowledge of Language

“I know English?”

Identifying individual sounds correctly.

Knowing the combinations of sounds.
Knowing the formation and division of words. Clear-ly.
Combination of words at sentence level.
Decoding all above system: understanding the meanings of words, phrases, sentences.
Using language in communicative context.
 Knowing a language means having moderate level of speaking and listenings skills. And
also expressing ideas in written mode. You are illiterate if you cannot convert your speech into
writing. Michael Halliday (2003). Knowing a language means having moderate level of
speaking and listenings skills. And also expressing ideas in written mode. You are illiterate if
you cannot convert your speech into writing. Michael Halliday (2003).
 “Language is … to be considered in two contexts: on the one hand, human system of
conceptualization and perception, and on the other, the actual use of language in society.” (J.
Yalden, The Communicative Syllabus, 1987)

How is a language acquired / learned?

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION THEORIES

Skinner, Bloomfield  BEHAVIOURISM 
How do children acquire a language?
Language acquisition and learning  formation of habits  imitation
The process: Stimulus response  reinforcement

Noam Chomsky  Cognitivism

How do children acquire a language?
• The capacity of acquisition of a language is innate.
• Every human being was born with a LAD (Language Acquisition Device)
 Noam Chomsky  Cognitivism

• Focus on the speakers’ competence= mental representation of language rules, that

is the speakers’ knowledge of the language or the intuitions that they have about it.
• Interest in the mental processes involved in using a language and in learning to speak.
Noam Chomsky  Cognitivism
• “Language is creativity governed by rules”: with a finite number of grammar rules
and a limited vocabulary, speakers can generate an infinite number of sentences,
many of which may have never been said before.
• All speakers go through a process in the use of language, “period of interlanguage”,
in which they produce their own creative constructions by applying internal rules and
an internal grammar.
Noam Chomsky  COMPETENCE / PERFORMANCE
COMPETENCE-a person’s internalised knowledge of a language. This means a
person’s ability to create and understand sentences, including sentences they have
never heard before.
-refers to the “ideal” speaker/hearer
-is a cognitive (mental) skill.

Noam Chomsky  COMPETENCE / PERFORMANCE

Grammatical competence (correctness)
Communicative competence (appropriateness)
Pragmatic competence (capacity to interpret sentences using non-linguistic
information)
Poetic/creative competence

Noam Chomsky  COMPETENCE / PERFORMANCE

PERFORMANCE- the actual use of language in concrete situations” how a person

actually uses his/her language knowledge in producing and understanding utterances,
including errors. “There are rules of use without which the rules of grammar would
be useless”.
 Competence versus Performance

History:

 Ferdinand de Saussure: a Swiss linguist whose ideas on structure in language laid the
foundation of the 20th century linguistics. He used the terminology: “la langue” and
“parole”.
 Noam Chomsky: An American linguist, first introduced the concept of “performance” and
“competence” as part of the foundations for his Generative grammar.
de Saussure’s Theory La Langue
 It has a large number of elements whereby meaning is created by the arrangements between
the elements and their consequent relationships. O While learning a language, we master
the system of grammar, spelling, syntax and punctuation (elements of langue).
 Langue precedes and makes speech possible.
Parole
 Parole is the actual utterances. It is an external manifestation of langue. It is the usage of the
system, but not the system. His theory differentiates between the language and how it is
used, and therefore enables these two very different things to be studied as separate entities.

Chomsky’s Theory

 Chomsky also distinguished the underlying knowledge of language from the way language
is actually used in practice.
 According to him, Language performance may be affected by such things as attention,
stamina, memory, etc.
 Therefore, a theory of language should be a theory of competence. Once a full theory of
competence is developed, it can be integrated into a theory of performance, which will also
consider other cognitive abilities.

Competence

 Competence is a person’s underlying (subconscious) linguistic ability to create and

understand sentences, including sentences they have never heard before.
 It’s a person's acquaintance with a set of grammatical rules and is different from the actual
linguistic activities.
 Linguistic competence includes components such as phonetics, phonology, syntax,
semantics and morphology.
 Competence enables native speaker to recognize ambiguous sentences or accept even
apparently meaningless sentences as syntactically correct (and even making some sense).
 Even if you’ve never heard these before, you know which one is “English” and which one
isn’t. Example: Eight very lazy elephants drank brandy.
*Eight elephants very lazy brandy drank.
Performance
 Performance is the real world linguistic output.
 May accurately reflect competence, but it also may include speech errors.
 Performance may be flawed because of memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention
and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) or other psychological factors.

Performance error

The performance of a speaker may not be fault free, even though his competence is perfect.
Example:

Why is it important to make a distinction between competence and performance?

It allows those studying a language to differentiate between a speech error and not knowing
something about the language. To understand this distinction, it is helpful to think about a
time when you've made some sort of error in your speech.
For example: Let's say you are a native speaker of English and utter the following: “We
swimmed in the ocean this weekend.”

 Is this error due to competence or performance?

 It isn't that you don't know that the past tense of swim is swam, you've just
mistakenly applied the regular rule to an irregular verb.
 Distinction between competence and performance illustrates the difference between
accidentally saying “swimmed” and the fact that a child or non-proficient speaker of
English may not know that the past tense of swim is “swam” and say “swimmed”
consistently.
 Your competence is fine, it is your performance that has let you down.

How do competence and performance apply to the language classroom?

 As we have learned, competence and performance involve “knowing” and “doing”.

In the recent past, many language instruction programs have focused more on the
“knowing” (competence) part of learning a language wherein words and sentences
are presented and practiced in a way to best help learners internalize the forms.
 The assumption here is that once the learners have ‘learned’ the information they
will be able to use it through reading, writing, listening and speaking.
 The disadvantage of this approach is that the learners are unable to use the language
in a natural way. Having been trained to learn the language through “knowing”,
learners have difficulty reversing this training and actually “doing” something with
the language.
 In brief, it is difficult to assess whether the learners’ insufficient proficiency is due to
limitations of competency or a lack of performance.
 In order to focus learners more on the “doing” part of learning, which allows a more
accurate measure of learners’ language proficiency, a more communicative approach
to teaching can be used.
 This type of approach concentrates on getting learners to do things with the
language. If we think of B-SLIM we can see that this relates to the Getting It and
Using It stages of the model. By encouraging students to eventually “learn through
the language” as opposed to strictly learning the language there is a more balanced
focus on both competence and performance.
 Criticisms

 Linguistic theories based on the notion of competence have been criticized for being
too idealistic.
 However, Chomsky dismissed criticisms of delimiting the study of performance in
favor of the study of underlying competence, as unwarranted and completely
misdirected.
 This led to a broadening of the original concept to communicative competence,
introduced by Hymes (1974). This is now generally defined as “the socially
appropriate use of language”.

Language as a Social Context

As has often been observed, language does not subsist in the f-minds of individuals alone;
it also exists in a social context. Some would say it exists only in a social context. In a
sense this is true—if there were no other individuals with whom one wished to
communicate, there would be little point to language as we know it. But on the other hand,
the use of a language in a community presumes that the individuals have the cognitive
capacity to produce and comprehend the signals they are sending each other. This
cognitive capacity is what is being studied in the mentalistic framework.

Herbert Clark (1996) emphasizes that linguistic communication is not a one way street, a
speaker making utterances and a hearer passively taking them in. Rather, virtually all
communication (but especially face to face) involves a delicate negotiation between speaker
and hearer in a joint effort for both to be assured that the intended message gets across.

"Understanding Language in Culture"

What is Socialization?

“An interactional display (covert or overt) to a novice of expected ways of thinking, feeling,
and acting.”

Language Socialization

“One critical area of social competence a child must acquire is the ability to recognize/
interpret what social event is taking place and to speak and act in ways that are sensitive to
the context.”
Socialization through language and Socialization to use language

Socialization through language: “…children and other novices in society acquire tacit
knowledge of principles of social order and systems of belief (ethnotheories) through
exposure to and participation in language-mediated interaction.”
 Grammatical and conversational structures are also culturally organized and as such
expressive of local conceptions and theories about the world. Language use then is a
major if not the major tool for conveying sociocultural knowledge and a powerful
medium of socialization. In this sense, we… suggest that children acquire a world
view as they acquire a language.”

The Transactional Model of Communication Development

This perspective emphasizes the reciprocal, bidirectional influence of the communication

environment, the responsiveness of communicative partners, and the child's own developing
communicative competence.

For example, this model assumes that the increasing readability or clarity of the child's
communicative behavior may influence the parent's style and frequency of contingent
responsiveness in ways that will further scaffold the child's developing competence during
the transition to linguistic communication. (Wetherby, Warren, & Reichle, 1998, p. 2)

The
Communication
Environment

The responsiveness of The child’s developing

communicative partners communicative competence

 “Children are viewed as active participants who learn to affect the behavior and attitudes
of others through active signaling and who gradually learn to use more sophisticated and
conventional means to communicate through caregivers’ contingent social
responsiveness.” (Kublin et al., 1998, p. 286)
 “The quality and nature of the contexts in which interaction occurs are considered to have
a great influence on the successful acquisition of language and communicative behavior.
 Development can be understood only by analysis of the interactive context, not simply by
focusing solely on the child or the caregivers, because successful communication involves
reciprocity and mutual negotiation." (Kublin et al., 1998, p. 286)

Main Points:

1. Children are active participants in their own language development.

2. Children develop language within a social context -language is not learned without
interacting with others.
3. Children learn about the way their society is organized and about their culture by
learning their language.
4. We speak differently in different contexts, i.e. with friends versus during religious
ceremonies. By learning to speak in different situations, we learn about how our
culture is organized.
5. By participating in cultural events, we learn language.
6. Therefore, active participation in meaningful communicative interactions is necessary
for develop language.