What is cognitive functionalism?

Last updated: 15/11/2023
Contributor: Anna W
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Key stage
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English: Language
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Includes answers
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Student activity
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A useful summary of this challenging linguistic theory for A-level English Language teachers and students studying child language acquisition.

It includes a comparative summary of Chomsky's Universal Grammar and Skinner's behaviouralism theory, and includes key studies by cognitive functionalists to help students to understand its importance. 

There's a retrieval practice question task to consolidate students' understanding, with answers for self- or peer-marking in class. 

Cognitive functionalism: what is it?

Cognitive functionalism emerged around 20 years after Chomsky's ideas were published. Rather than seeing languages as governed by the abstract and unknowable Universal Grammar, theorists sought to explain how language could be another example of a skill gained through the brain's ability to find patterns, categorise, draw connections and reason: 'Putting together novel expressions is something that speakers do, not grammars' (Langacker).

Cognitive functionalism is based on a usage view of language acquisition, which means that a child learns language partly by using it – and they learn structures (or grammar) through the same process. Psychologists have shown that young children seem to learn language in a series of patterns, slotting different elements into a series of frames: Where's X? I want an X, More X, It's an X, I'm X-ing, There's an X etc. Once children have been exposed to the variation in these kinds of structures in their language, they then use analogy to help them to understand more complicated syntax.

Analogy can explain why children might say, 'I goed to the shops' as they are drawing an analogy between the verb 'to go' and other regular verbs which form the past tense with an -ed suffix. If they say 'I brung', they are drawing a phonological analogy with 'sound neighbours' such as sung.

 

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