Approaches to Language Acquisition. The Role of Input for First and Second Language Acquisition

Seminar paper from the year 2023 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, University of Augsburg (Angewandte Sprachwissenschaft), course: Spracherwerbstheorien, language: English, abstract: The following paper elaborates to what extent input plays a central role in First and Second Language Acquisition and what influence it has in the universal grammar approach to language acquisition and the usage-based approach. Moreover, two papers will be examined and analyzed in the second part of the thesis. The mastery of one or even more languages can be judged as a necessary foundation of every human being. People's participation in social processes can only be guaranteed by expressing, interacting and communication trough language. Thus, one can become part of a society by interaction and communication. From birth, infants tend to express themselves, initially through non-verbal communication which is subsequently replaced or extended by single words to first exclamations and incomplete sentences. Thus, as soon as toddlers use more than two words to express themselves, it is often referred to as telegraphic style. Due to the importance of learning to speak, linguists, psychologists and other scientific field experts have been studying the background and context of language acquisition for quite a long time such as B. F. Skinner who examined language learning already in the 1940s/50s. His sophisticated behavioristic approach, nowadays regarded as outdated, saw the infant as a tabula rasa, i.e., as a kind of blank page which has to be filled or written on. This approach considered the acquisition of language based on a stimulus-response model, in which the environment plays a central role in the learning process. The infant, however, has almost no active role within this process but rather acts as an imitator. Over the years, numerous other theories of language acquisition have been developed and established.