The Competition Model is a psycholinguistic theory of language acquisition and sentence processing developed by Elizabeth Bates and Brian MacWhinney. The Competition Model posits that the meaning of language is interpreted by comparing a number of linguistic cues within a sentence, and that language is learned through the competition of basic cognitive mechanisms in the presence of a rich linguistic environment. It is an emergentist theory of language acquisition and processing, serving as an alternative to strict nativist and empiricist theories. According to the Competition Model, competitive cognitive processes operate on a phylogenetic scale, an ontogenetic scale, and a synchronic scale, allowing language acquisition to take place across a wide variety of chronological periods.
Famous quotes containing the words competition and/or model:
“Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.”
—Walter Savage Landor (17751864)
“For an artist to marry his model is as fatal as for a gourmet to marry his cook: the one gets no sittings, and the other gets no dinners.”
—Oscar Wilde (18541900)