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On the Ontogenetic Requirements for Early Language Acquisition

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Book cover Developmental Neurocognition: Speech and Face Processing in the First Year of Life

Part of the book series: NATO ASI Series ((ASID,volume 69))

Abstract

A key challenge in the study of early language ontogeny is to discover when and how human language acquisition begins. Here, I attempt to move beyond dichotomous nature-nurture explanations of this process in my pursuit of the mechanisms underlying early language ontogeny. I do this by examining early language acquisition from a different perspective: I compare and contrast spoken and signed language acquisition. Then, based on the four sets of findings summarized below, I formulate a testable theory about the mechanisms that underlie early language acquisition, as well as the specific features of the environmental input, that together make possible human language acquisition. I further propose a new way to construe language ontogeny. Specifically, I advance the hypothesis that speech, per se, is not critical to language acquisition. Instead, I propose that the specific distributional patterns, or structures, encoded in the input — not the specific modality — are the critical input features necessary to enable very early acquisition to begin and to be maintained in our species from birth. A discussion relating the present findings to hypotheses about language phylogeny is also provided.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, McGill University, 1205 Docteur Penfield Avenue, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H3A-1B1

    L. A. Petitto

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  1. L. A. Petitto
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Experimental Psychology Laboratory, E.H.E.S.S. and C.N.R.S., Paris, France

    Bénédicte de Boysson-Bardies

  2. Development and Cognition Unit, Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, C.N.R.S., Marseille, France

    Scania de Schonen

  3. Psychology Department, SUNY at Buffalo, Buffalo, New York, USA

    Peter Jusczyk

  4. Department of Linguistics, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, USA

    Peter McNeilage

  5. Cognitive Development Unit, MRC, London, UK

    John Morton

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© 1993 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Petitto, L.A. (1993). On the Ontogenetic Requirements for Early Language Acquisition. In: de Boysson-Bardies, B., de Schonen, S., Jusczyk, P., McNeilage, P., Morton, J. (eds) Developmental Neurocognition: Speech and Face Processing in the First Year of Life. NATO ASI Series, vol 69. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8234-6_30

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8234-6_30

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4251-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-015-8234-6

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