A Brief Discussion About ‘Wolf Child Story’ and ‘Poverty of Stimulus’ Argument

【Abstract】： The thesis mainly discusses the significant influent the ‘Poverty of Stimulus’ Argument has had on theories of language acquisition as well as its vulnerability using the ‘Wolf Child Story’ as an evidence to illustrate it. Some conclusions are drawn about language acquisition.

【Key words】： Wolf Child Story; Poverty of Stimulus Argument; language innateness.

Concerning how language is acquired by human beings， it is undoubted that the most influential explanation about it is the Language Acquisition Device first proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s， which is a hypothetical module of the human mind posited to account for child’s "innate predisposition for language acquisition， and an instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language. This theory asserts that humans are born with the instinct or ‘innate facility’ for acquiring language. The main argument in favor of the LAD is the argument from the poverty of the stimulus， which argues that unless children have significant innate knowledge of grammar they would be unable to learn language as quickly as they do， given that they never have access to negative evidence and rarely received direct instruction in their first language.

Chomsky’s hypothesis about language acquisition has had an significant influence on the study of language acquisition and whether it is true or not is closely related to many aspects of the linguistic study. So it has attracted so many linguists to devote to it. But recently some shows that there are some vulnerability in this theory and it is the output of the lack of recognition about the richness of language data and the complexity of the learning mechanism， which means a great challenge to the theory of ‘poverty of stimulus’.

These opponents believes that the language input is enough for child’s language development and that the innate knowledge about language is unnecessary for children to acquire a language. Apart from many affirmative evidence to support it， the famous ‘Wolf Child Story’’ may be a good candidate to be taken as a reversed evidence which shows that the LAD dose not work if there are not ‘stimulus’. In 1980’s， the term ‘poverty of stimulus’ first appeared in Chomsky’s academic works and in the meanwhile he pointed out that there exists a deductive gap between the highly impoverished language environment and the highly specific and intricate system of language competence. If language learning is like this， the ‘wolf child’ may certainly acquire language even if there are not enough input. But "it turned out that the ‘wolf child’ didn’t acquire human language which had been believed to be inborn. From this， can we draw a conclusion that language input plays a decisive role in child’s language acquisition which depends mainly on the language environment they are subordinate to， and it is unnecessary to take the innate language competence into consideration？

On the one hand， there is no doubt that our human beings possess some ability or we can say some mechanism which enables us to acquire languages， making humankind different from other insects or animals like bees or cats. So this mechanism is unique to humans， or rather， it is inborn. But on the other hand， the ‘wolf child’ is an except. Of course he has possessed the mechanism we mentioned above， but why did he fail in acquiring a human language？ In my opinion， there are two factors in the process of acquiring languages， one is the innate mechanism， and the other is the social practice and the need for communication. These two factors are both indispensable， in which the latter functions like a trigger. The ‘wolf child’ didn’t acquire a language because he lacked in the second factor.

Lastly， we may explain the ‘Wolf Child Story’ using the cognitive concept of semantics. Cognitive linguists believed that the so called semantics is just one’s simulation about his experience in the actual world. If so， because the ‘wolf child’ was isolated from the human community and he didn’t has such chance to experience the world， and so no semantic concept was formed in his mind. Consequently he couldn’t acquire a language.

All in all， language acquisition is not simply due to the child’s innate language competence or absolutely due to the language environment. Only if these two factors works together， could one succeed in acquiring a language.

References：

Dunja Jutronic. Arguments Against Language Innateness Thesis. [J]. Metodicki ogledi， 2003

Dunja Jutronic. On that one poverty of the stimulus argument. "[J].Nordlyd ： Troms? university working papers on language amp; linguistics / Institutt for spr?k og litteratur， Universitetet i Troms?， 2008.

楊小璐。關于刺激貧乏論的爭論。外語教學與研究，2004。

鄧勁雷。語言天賦說的理據缺陷。黃岡師范學院學報，2008.