DE-CONSTRUCTING CHOMSKY?

Noam Chomsky vs. Michael Tomasello
By Elena Urrutia Sánchez

Perhaps one of the most relevant proposals for the theories of language acquisition in the 70’s was the Generative Grammar by cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky, one of the fathers of modern linguistics. His theory posits that every child is born with "an innate set of linguistic principles shared by all humans" known as “universal grammar”, a capacity to acquire language by means of an innate language acquisition device (LAD) possessed by every language user –which would explain why children acquire language in such a short time. Chomsky “proves” this after having observed that human babies and animals respond to language and 'reason’ to some extent, and that only humans could eventually get to actually produce and analyze language, as opposed to the poor stimulus they obtained from outside, because the LAD is unique to our species. Without being an expert, I could say through my experience that I agree to some extent with Chomsky in the fact that some people seem to have been born with a natural ability for learning languages (a foreign language as is my case), while other people seem to be destined to fail despite of how much effort their parents, teachers, tutors, and themselves put into the ‘simple’ task of speaking English –which in their case seems to have gargantuan proportions.
Chomsky’s innatism challenged the main proposals of Skinnerian’s Behaviorism as he introduced his book Syntactic Structures (1957), and through his critique to Skinner’s Verbal Behavior (1957) because ‘a theory restricting the external conditions of learning cannot account for generative grammar’ (Chomsky, 1957). He introduced the transformational grammar, according to which any speaker learning a language (with normal physical conditions) can interpret and produce an infinite number of coherent utterances, with a finite number of grammatical rules. He also referred to the differences among languages as parameters, like the fact that the subject must always be explicit in English –unlike the Spanish word “llegaron”, for instance. Such parameters must be learned by children based on observation as they are exposed to language, along with lexicon and grammar. As to these points, one would have to be blind not to notice that the behaviorist mere stimulus-response education does not cut the current needs in EFL teaching, but from more than a decade teaching English I would dare to say that I have witnessed infants grasping the basics of a language within seconds, and activating infinite patterns the next minute. Whether it be thanks to a natural device is up to the linguists and psychologists to determine, but it seems probable to me that a combination of our LEDs and the exposure to our surroundings makes us able to become competent, creative speakers of a language, comprising an Emergentist theory that combines biological features and creative aspects of language with language interaction (nature and nurture).
Subject to constant controversy, Chomsky’s theories have been criticized by many studies, like that of Daniel Everett (2005), according to which there is a community in Brazil called “Pirahã” where people communicate by means of “everyday channels” (humming, yelling, and whistling), without resorting to the Chomskian property of recursion, one of the basic elements for generative grammar to be possible. Everett argues that these capacities to communicate are bio-neurological rather than naturally acquired. Moreover, according to The Grammar of Identity by Stephen Clingham (2009), the members of that Brazilian community may have a limited language, but they navigate pretty effectively in their environment, “just as cab drivers in London perform poorly in English but manage to drive around without a city map” -by using their hippocampus brain functions(Clingham, 2009). This is only one of the many studies that have opposed Chomskian theories.
Another critic of Chomsky’s ideas is Michael Tomasello, who has dedicated a great deal of time to conduct research on child language acquisition, cognitive linguistics, and social learning in human and primates. He is against the idea of generative grammar, arguing that instead of a universal grammar there exists a usage-based theory, advocating for an emergentist view of language acquisition that deals with cognitive processes and brain functions. He focuses on how language is acquired by children, not by a universal grammar but by human cognition universals and vocal-auditory processing.
In his Constructing a Language (2003) he posits that two sets of cognitive skills result from biological/phylogenetic adaptations: intention reading (pragmatics) and pattern finding (biology and phonetics). I agree with the first one in the sense that I have observed pre-linguistic infants paying close attention to the events around them, imitating, and struggling to understand people’s intentions until they are able to replicate some of the behaviors they see. Tomasello argues that this skill is due to social-cognitive dexterity. What I have not witnessed is an instance in which children analyze auditory speech and recognize patterns to create their own categories, classifying pieces of knowledge from the first utterance to complex clauses, but I cannot prove otherwise.
Tomasello points out that children, unlike primates or other species, attempt to understand the people around them the moment they interact socially with them, key point in the acquisition of language. In fact, it is through intention-reading and attentional development that children obtain the patterns they need to make references and make their own constructions of knowledge, and they continue to do so over a period of time as they acquire more complex structures, which would demonstrate learning their grammar and lexicon through stages, rather than an innate ability to learn. Grammar is then regarded by Tomasello’s usage-based theory as something that derives from language, not as a prerequisite of it.
After having contrasted and compared the theories by both Chomsky and Tomasello, I could say that I still believe, from my experience as a learner, that individuals learn mainly from the context (their caretakers, parents, friends, teachers, and the linguistic situation) as Emergentism speculates, more than by a natural device they are born with, and which suddenly brings a set of binary parameters of a language. In the same way, I agree with Brunner’s precept that children are indeed supported by their families in the building of their language, but beyond that, by the ‘wall’ that the interaction with the world provides them with. On the other hand, I disagree with the generativist view of LADs allowing children to get the basic grammar of their first language because I have always believed that it is through imitation that many linguistic patterns are acquired and then produced by children.
As to EFL (English as a Foreign Language), theories about the best methodology to teach abound, but I have seen students get to master English only after many years of conscious practice, as Stern (1970) affirms, and I have seen how students go from listening and speaking to the more advanced skills of language: reading and writing.
Furthermore, I believe that students obtain pieces of a whole little by little (as in Krashen’s Natural Order), reason why every English program I have taught with has had a well-planned pacing, and has been designed to cover from the most basic to the most advanced topics and functions of language in order to produce students who are “better equipped for success” (Krashen, 1987). Notwithstanding the process every person must undergo when learning a new language, I reassure my beliefs about the importance of input from the outside when we deal with adult education. After all, Margaret Tucker’s idea of “critical period” –not that she was the first one to bring it up- is left behind as years go by when we teach adults, and it is no secret that the older people get, the more difficult it is for them to adapt to new patterns and linguistic structures, aiming to break the barrier of ‘language ego’ (Guiora et al. 1972).
As a professional educator, and thanks to the fact that I am receiving constant professional development sessions through ELT’s and seminars, apart from my Master’s studies, I have learned that I must be aware of how theories about language acquisition change with every decade. I clearly recall having been told by my university professors that Chomsky’s ideas were and would probably always be the most accepted pillars of language learning worldwide. Just some years later, I have discovered the fragility of almost any theory of education, perhaps because it is a never ending process, but also because fortunately, as the world becomes a smaller place because of the internet, more and more people in the world are researching, looking for ways to expand their horizons, and those ideas we thought of as ultimate truths, might be reevaluated by the thinkers of the future: us.
References:
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition. Harvard University Press.
Websites:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003175.html
http://books.google.com.co/books?id=kycHqdCbVwcC&pg=PA20&dq=Daniel+L.+Everett,+%22Cultural+Constraints+in+Grammar+and+Cognition+in+Pirah%C3%A3&hl=es&ei=0khYTIafIoP68AaX1JH1Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Daniel%20L.%20Everett%2C%20%22Cultural%20Constraints%20in%20Grammar%20and%20Cognition%20in%20Pirah%C3%A3&f=false
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_acquisition
www.serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/.../mtucker.html
www.sk.com.br/sk-krash.html