acquisition (n.)

In the study of the growth of LANGUAGE in children, a term referring to the process or result of learning (acquiring) a particular aspect of a language, and ultimately the language as a whole. Child language acquisition (or first-language acquisition) is the label usually given to the field of studies involved. The subject has involved the postulation of ‘stages’ of acquisition, defined chronologically, or in relation to other aspects of behavior, which it is suggested apply generally to children; and there has been considerable discussion of the nature of the learning strategies which are used in the process of acquiring language, and of the criteria which can decide when a STRUCTURE has been acquired. Some theorists have made a distinction between ‘acquisition’ and development, the former referring to the learning of a linguistic RULE (of GRAMMAR, PHONOLOGY, SEMANTICS), the latter to the further use of this rule in an increasingly wide range of linguistic and social situations. Others see no clear distinction between these two facets of language learning, and use the terms interchangeably. The term child language development has also come to be used for DISCOURSE-based studies of child language.

In early GENERATIVE linguistics, the term language acquisition device (LAD) was introduced to refer to a model of language learning in which the infant is credited with an INNATE predisposition to acquire linguistic structure. This view is usually opposed to those where language acquisition is seen as a process of imitation-learning or as a reflex of cognitive development. See also BEHAVIOURISM, EMERGENTISM, INNATENESS.

Acquisition is also used in the context of learning a foreign language: ‘foreign-’ or ‘second-language’ acquisition is thus distinguished from ‘first-language’ or ‘mother-tongue’ acquisition. In this context, acquisition is sometimes opposed to learning: the former is viewed as an environmentally natural process, the primary force behind foreign-language fluency; the latter is seen as an instructional process which takes place in a teaching context, guiding the performance of the speaker.