Page "Language acquisition" Paragraph 10

Emergentist theories, such as MacWhinney's competition model, posit that language acquisition is a cognitive process that emerges from the interaction of biological pressures and the environment.

According to these theories, neither nature nor nurture alone is sufficient to trigger language learning ; both of these influences must work together in order to allow children to acquire a language.

The proponents of these theories argue that general cognitive processes subserve language acquisition and that the end result of these processes is language-specific phenomena, such as word learning and grammar acquisition.

The findings of many empirical studies support the predictions of these theories, suggesting that language acquisition is a more complex process than many believe.