Three Myths from the Language Acquisition Literature

Abstract

Three popular assertions have hindered the promotion of an empiricist approach to language acquisition: (a) that Brown and Hanlon (1970) claimed to offer data that parents do not reinforce their children's grammaticality; (b) that Brown and Hanlon also claimed to offer data that parents do not provide negative evidence (i.e., corrective feedback) for ungrammaticality; and (c) that Gold (1967) claimed to offer a formal proof showing that, without negative evidence, a child cannot acquire a language solely from environmental input. In this paper I offer introductory comments on the nature-nurture distinction (including interactionism, and the nativists' claim to have found a gene for language). Next I debunk the three aforementioned assertions by arguing that the authors (Brown & Hanlon; Gold) never made the claims attributed to them; review evidence on the role of reinforcement and corrective feedback in language acquisition; and offer some concluding comments.

Reinforcement Contingencies in Language Acquisition

“…Humans, like other species, are equipped to learn through the immediate consequences of their actions; a learning process known as operant reinforcement. Early suggestions that reinforcement contingencies played a major role in the acquisition of all aspects of language (Skinner, 1957) were met with skepticism (e.g., Chomsky, 1959) that may have stemmed, in part, from failure to consider the full range of consequences that can potentially serve to reinforce the behavior that produces them (Moerk, 1983; Schoneberger, 2010). These include social reinforcement by even the subtlest reactions of listeners, which affect who we talk to and how (e.g., Borrero et al, 2007; Salzinger & Pisoni, 1960; Salzinger, Portnoy, Zlotogura, & Keisner, 1963) and potentially, “automatic” reinforcement by auditory feedback from our own speech (e.g., Palmer, 1998; Vaughan & Michael, 1982).…”

One model for the learning of language

“…It is worth emphasizing that the assumptions of no negative evidence ( 173 ) have been questioned by many language acquisition researchers ( 161 , 174 – 178 ). Our general model could easily be made compatible with positive evidence, or even other forms, including pedagogical evidence, as has been examined in similar statistical setups ( 179 ).…”

Handbook of Communication Disorders

“…Moreover, from the absence of a given construction, children may infer its ungrammaticality (Scholz, 2004: 961). Indeed, Gold recognized that, unlike the learner modeled in his theorem, human learners may not only profit from explicit disapproval but also from forms of indirect negative evidence (Gold, 1967: 454; see further, Schoneberger, 2010).…”