Language Acquisition. Nativism vs. Contructivism

Examination Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Stuttgart (Institut für Linguistik ¿ Abteilung Anglistik), language: English, abstract: Language is an endless source of amazement. Language acquisition, namely the process by which humans acquire the capacity to perceive, produce and use language, is a crucial matter to face for any theory of language. A strong approach about the acquisition of language should be able to provide an answer as to how children break into language and how language knowledge emerges and develops. The aim of this thesis is to introduce and discuss the most impacting approaches to language acquisition up to date and evaluate them against empirical data.

On the one hand, some scholars, among them the developmental psychologists Jean Piaget and Michael Tomasello have been arguing that the acquisition of language is implemented via domain-neutral cognitive mechanisms and unspecific, general learning processes: such approaches reject both the idea of a language-specific ability and the hypothesis of any innate component in language acquisition.

I will first discuss Jean Piaget¿s ideas and afterwards Michael Tomasellös recent elaboration of Piaget¿s constructivism.