Language Learning Strategies: Does the Whole Equal the Sum of the Parts?

Abstract

Two fundamentally different strategies may be employed by very young children learning their first language. The basic assumptions underlying the study of children's language development, however, have provided means for dealing with only one of these strategies: that which proceeds from the parts to the whole (Analytic). This paper reports on a child who evidently proceeded from the whole to the parts (Gestalt) in producing much of his early language. Since further evidence for a Gestalt strategy exists in the literature, albeit implicitly, such a strategy is probably quite widespread, and any theory of language or language acquisition needs to be able to account for it. It is also speculated that there may be neurological bases for the different language learning strategies.*