Tomasello’s Theory Of Construction Grammar Acquisition

The question of children’s language acquisition has always been a concern of philosophers, psychologists, and linguists ever since the past, and it is a highly debated theoretical issue as well. In the 1950 s and 60 s, influenced by the structuralism, on the issue of the language acquisition, linguists attempted to analyze children’s language the way they analyze the adults’ language, which was unable to explain the transition from children’s language to adults’. Cognitive linguists, represented by Chomsky, believes that children are born with the same innate rules of grammar as the adults. However, they cannot explain the issue of transition of adults’ language from children’s, neither can they explain why the innate rules of grammar may generate the children’s language, which is different from the adults’ language.Due to the limits of the above studies, Tomasello provides us with a new method of children acquisition studies. He believes that children’s language acquisition is not start from an abstraction but from the different constructions that are accumulated gradually from the direct experience, and summarizes that there are several developing stages of children’s language acquisition. The first stage is the holophrases stage. children at this stage use single language signals to express his/her own communicating intention about the whole experiencing situations. This stage does not involve the syntactic markers. The second stage is the pivot schemas and other word combinations and expression. At this stage, children is able to use multiple words to express his/her communicating intentions, and thus the experience situations can be divided into at least two components. Just like the previous stage, this stage does not involve syntactic markers. The third stage is the item-based Construction, such as verb island construction. The children at this stage is capable of using syntactic markers, such as words order or grammatical morphology to clearly express the participants roles in some specific situations. The way they deal with the diverse item-based constructions are different. The last stage is the abstract construction. The children at this stage will explain the relevant abstract concepts with concrete examples, and express their communicating intentions with adults-structured language. Based on his studies on the process of children’s language acquisition, Tomasello thinks that children’s linguistic knowledge is gradually constructed through their contact with the outside world when their cognition has developed to a certain extent.Tomasello’s Theory of Construction Grammar Acquisition, as one of the new language acquisition theories, represents one new research direction. With the ongoing of the research, Tomasello’s Theory of Construction Grammar Acquisition will face more debates and challenges. In the last part of the thesis, the author, through the theoretical conclusion and comparing and absorbing the latest research findings of cognitive psychology andcognitive linguistics, reviews the core thoughts of Tomasello’s Theory of Construction Grammar Acquisition, and with this basis, makes a most objective evaluation of his theory.