Theories of Language Development

With an emphasis on language performance (actual language use in different
situations) rather than language competence (knowledge of language
rules and structure), learning theories contend that children learn their
verbal behavior (a termsuggested by the behaviorist B. F. Skinner in 1957 to
replace the vague word of “language”) primarily through conditioning and
imitation, not maturation. Classical conditioning allows the child to make
associations between verbal stimuli, internal responses, and situational contexts
to understand a word’s meaning. It also enables the child to comprehend
a word’s connotative meaning—whether it is associated with pleasant
or unpleasant feelings. Operant conditioning shapes the child’s speech
through selective reinforcement and punishment. Adults’ verbal behaviors
serve as the environmental stimuli to elicit the child’s verbal responses, as
models for the child to imitate, and as the shaping agent (through imitating
their children’s well-formed speech and recasting or expanding their illformed
speech).
Nevertheless, learning theories have difficulty explaining many phenomena
in language development. Imitation cannot account for children’s creative
yet logical sayings, such as calling a gardener “plantman,” because
there are no such models in adult language. Shaping also falls short of an adequate
explanation, because adults do not always correct their children’s
mistakes, especially grammatical ones. Sometimes they even mimic their
children’s cute mistakes. Furthermore, residential homes are not highly
controlled laboratories—the stimulus-response-consequence contingencies
are far from perfect.