related: Learning a Language

there are around 6,500 distinct languages, any child can learn any language, indicating that the biological machinery underlying language is common to all humans

Language Acquisition Theories

• linguistic genius of babies
• https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/adult-language-learning-change-the-brain

B.F. Skinner's theory

• children learn language through operant conditioning - children learn language through received “rewards” and/or “punishments”
• follows the four-term contingency (basis of language development):
  1. motivating operations
  2. discriminative stimuli
  3. response
  4. response stimuli
• Conditioning Behavior (Classical & Operant)
  • operant conditioning - a learning process by “rewards” and “punishments”
  • classical conditioning - a learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired: a response that is at first elicited by the second stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone

Noam Chomsky's Theory

• he believes in the existence of a “universal grammar”
• children have the innate ability to learn the language (nativism). However, it has not been supported by research

Jean Piaget's theory

• children use both assimilation and accommodation to learn a language
• assimilation - the absorption of new ideas into existing mental schemas
• accommodation - the changes made in mental schemas to fit new ideas

Lev Vygotsky's theory

• focused on:
  • Observational Learning
  • Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) - the zone between what a learner can do without help and what the learner can do with help. the zone where a learner learns with guidance