American Imago. XXVIII, 1971: Theories of Language Acquisition. Harold J. Vetter and Richard W. Howell. Pp. 31-64.

The authors present a theoretical review of the changing concepts concerning the child's acquisition of language. Prior to Chomsky's concepts of 'generative grammar', theoretical approaches to language development relied heavily upon operant conditioning models. Current studies suggest that the child constructs his language on the basis of a primitive evolving grammar that is partly programmed at the time he is ready to learn to speak. Vetter and Howell attempt to trace the development of vocalization from prelinguistic stages to the first clearly discernible language behavior and the stages that intervene before the child approximates adult speech. The most challenging problem for developmental linguistics is the discovery of the processes that enable the speaker to go from meaning to sound, and the listener from sound to meaning. The authors attempt to answer the question of what constitutes an adequate theory of language ontogenesis. They suggest that such a theory will have to be congruent with theories of cognitive development and will have to take into account disparities of various forms between 'language competence' and 'language performance'.