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:
“Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further, but cooperation, which is the thing we must strive for today, begins where competition leaves off.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The Battle of Waterloo is a work of art with tension and drama with its unceasing change from hope to fear and back again, change which suddenly dissolves into a moment of extreme catastrophe, a model tragedy because the fate of Europe was determined within this individual fate.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)