<p>Language cannot be learned without linguistic input. Hence, the environment plays an important role in childrens’ language development. In this paper it is examined how important the environment’s role is. Two views are described: Universal Grammar and Emergentism. They are in this paper considered to represent two basic stances; the innate stance and the “non-innate” stance. The overall aim is to present evidence in favour of either Emergentism or Universal Grammar. It is achieved by a theoretical discussion and the findings from an observation. In the observational study the aim is to see if and, if so, how adults provide clues for children to develop their syntax. This is achieved by looking at target-words and how the adults use context and prosody to supply children with them. The findings show that the adults extensively use context when talking to children. The theoretical discussion together with the findings, are here found to support Emergentism, the non-innate view.</p>

Language cannot be learned without linguistic input. Hence, the environment plays an important role in childrens’ language development. In this paper it is examined how important the environment’s role is. Two views are described: Universal Grammar and Emergentism. They are in this paper considered to represent two basic stances; the innate stance and the “non-innate” stance. The overall aim is to present evidence in favour of either Emergentism or Universal Grammar. It is achieved by a theoretical discussion and the findings from an observation. In the observational study the aim is to see if and, if so, how adults provide clues for children to develop their syntax. This is achieved by looking at target-words and how the adults use context and prosody to supply children with them. The findings show that the adults extensively use context when talking to children. The theoretical discussion together with the findings, are here found to support Emergentism, the non-innate view.

Unga barn föredrar redan från födseln att lyssna till positivt tal, vilket karaktäriserar barnriktat tal. Idenna studie kontrasterades neutral och positiv känsla i ett ordinlärningsparadigm där tittiden hos 16-månader gamla, svensktalande barn (N=12) analyserades när de testades på två påhittade ord.Målorden presenterades antingen i positivt barnriktat tal eller neutralt barnriktat tal. Detta gjordes föratt se om det positiva barnriktade talet underlättar inlärningen av nya ord. Deras tittid på detefterfrågade objektet analyserades sedan med en tvåvägs-ANOVA. Det fanns inga signifikantaskillnader mellan röstlägena. Slutsatsen som drogs var att hypotesen, att tittiden för det objekt sompresenteras i positivt tal är längre, inte kunde bekräftas men inte heller förkastas på grund av problemmed datainsamlingen samt dataanalysen. Inför framtida studier rekommenderas att utöka antaletdeltagare, samt undersöka andra variabler som kan påverka den tidiga ordinlärningen. / Already from birth young children prefer to listen to positive speech, which is a characteristic of childdirected speech. In this study neutral and positive tone was contrasted in a word-learning paradigmwhere the eye-movement of 16-month-old Swedish speaking children (N= 12) were analysed whenthey were tested on two made-up words. The words were either presented in neutral child-directedspeech or positive child-directed speech. This was done to see if the early word-learning is facilitatedby positive tone. The looking time was then analysed by a two-way ANOVA, and there was nosignificant difference between the two emotions. The conclusion drawn was that the hypothesis, thatthe looking time of the children that presented with positive child-directed speech would be longer,could not be confirmed nor rejected due to problems with collecting data and data analysis. Prior tofuture studies it is recommended to expand the number of participants, as well as examine othervariables that may affect early word learning.