Emergentism
By definition, the Competition Model is an emergentist theory of language acquisition. Rather than viewing language acquisition as a process that is based on innate, language-specific mechanisms (e.g., Chomsky's concepts of the language acquisition device and universal grammar) or as completely dependent upon one's experience with language or the influence of the environment, the Competition Model views language acquisition as a process consisting of a series of competitive cognitive processes that act upon an analog signal - language. By applying general cognitive processes to the language stimulus in the presence of a rich and stimulating environment, we are able to connect intrinsically meaningless symbols (words and sentences) to their referents, allowing us to infer meaning. Thus, in addition to relying on traditional mechanisms of human information processing, the Competition Model posits that language acquisition must be embodied and situated in order for learners to derive meaning from language.
Read more about this topic: Competition Model, Theoretical Components