ASSIGNMENT | 1.) What are the seven functions of language?

book required: Children’s Thinking 6th edition

1.) What are the seven functions of language? Using the model proposed by Halliday in Table 9.1, provide examples of each of the functions of language from your personal experience. Think about the way that you have employed each of these functions of language in the past day or week and provide specific examples. 

2.) What constraints on word learning have been proposed and how might these help children to learn words? Specifically, what are the whole-object assumption, the taxonomic assumption, the mutual-exclusivity assumption, and syntactic bootstrapping? How are each of these assumptions thought to help children learn the meaning of words? Giving some examples of underextension and overextension, show some limitations of children’s initial understandings of word meaning.

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3.) What is the Social-Interactionist Perspective on Language Development? Describe the importance of communicative intentions, gestures, child-directed speech, and socioeconomic factors. How does this perspective reflect some of the concepts from Vygotsky’s Social Development Theory? How does this perspective differ from Chomsky’s nativist perspective? 

4.) What observations have led theorists to conclude that language is innate? Distinguish between Chomsky’s concepts of surface and deep structure. What are the six pieces of evidence that he uses to support his claim that language is innate? How does positing a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) mirror some of the claims that we have discussed before regarding modularity theory? To what extent might the concerns raised about modularity theory also apply to the nativist approach espoused by Chomsky?