History of theories in language acquisition

[Robin Campbell]

Besides Brian McWhinney excellent suggestions, we should not overlook Georges-Louis LeClerc, Comte de Buffon, from the 18th century. His enormous Histoire Naturelle (1749) contains a section dealing with language development (Natural History of Man, Section II) in which he proposes a least effort theory for phonological development, and reaches conclusions which anticipate some of those proposed by Roman Jakobson 200 years later. Another neglected writer, from the late 19th century, was the French psychologist Bernard Perez. His 1878 book Les trois premières années de l’enfant, étude de psychologie expérimentale (Paris: Germer Baillière. Later editions to 5th, 1892, Paris: Alcan) contained a long chapter dealing with language development.

I very much agree with MacWhinney that Brown's work would have proceeded as it did, had there been no Noam Chomsky. Indeed, I regard Chomsky's influence on psycholinguistics and language development as baneful and destructive, even malignant.

Robin N Campbell
Psychology, Stirling
r.n.campbell at stir.ac.uk
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