Cognitive Linguistics: Tomasello’s Usage Bsed Theory of Language Acquisition

Abstract

In this dissertation, we will spot light on a new theory within Cognitive linguistics which is the Usage Based Theory of Language Acquisition introduced by the Emergent Michael Tomasello. This study aims at introducing this theory as a new attempt to language acquisition, to see what the new paradigms are brought by this theory and to see to what extent it is valid for other languages. The Usage Based theory introduced the usage-events, the socio-cultural dimension of language and human’s cognitive skills. Thus, depending on a descriptive method, we compare two already done studies by applying the usage based model, more exactly Tomasello’s Verb-island Hypothesis on young children of different languages (the English child Travis and Mandarin Chinese speaking children CY and ZHZ). The current comparative study shows that the verb Island Hypothesis is applicable for the English child whereas it is not the case for the Mandarin speaking children. This is an evidence that the Usage Based Theory is not valid for all languages at least not for the Mandarin Chinese.