ECOLOGY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION. Jonathan Leather and Jet van Dam
(Eds.). Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003. Pp xiv + 225. $88.00 cloth.
This volume contains 11 papers on various aspects of language
acquisition both in first language (L1) and second language (L2) from an
ecological perspective. This approach departs from generative grammar by
rejecting both its theoretical and methodological axioms. It first
questions the generative assumption that language is a mental state
determined by human biology and experience. In its stead, proponents of
the ecological view treat language as an entity inseparable from the
speakers and their social network (Leather & van Dam, chapter 1).
Methodologically, they dismiss generative grammar's essential tenet
that competence should be investigated independently of performance; along
with this, they also reject idealization in the study of language and
language acquisition. Leather and van Dam also presume a priori the
nonexistence of context-free meanings (cf. Higginbotham, 1988). As for language acquisition, they
claim that the notion of primary linguistic data is too narrow; rather,
data in other forms such as gestures and deictic motion are equally
relevant in language acquisition. Although both the generative and
ecological approaches emphasize individual language learners, for the
former, language development constitutes the normal human biology,
triggered by sensory input (Chomsky, 1995),
whereas for the latter, it results from the interaction of the individuals
and their cultural environment.