What theory describes language knowledge as interconnected units activated through exposure to them together?

What theory describes language knowledge as interconnected units activated through exposure to them together?

• A. Connectionism
• B. Competence
• C. Cognate
• D. CLT

Answer: (A)

Connectionism describes language knowledge as a network of interconnected units that are activated together when language elements co-occur. In this view, knowledge isn’t stored as explicit, rule-based instructions; it emerges from distributed representations across many units whose connections strengthen with experience. When you’re exposed to language, patterns of co-occurrence across sounds, words, and meanings activate related units, and through repeated exposure the network learns to respond to cues by activating the appropriate related elements. This accounts for both regular patterns and irregular forms through the same learning process of adjusting connection strengths based on usage. Other options don’t fit because competence refers to knowledge itself rather than the networked processing, cognate is about related words across languages, and CLT describes a teaching method, not a theory of how language knowledge is organized.

Connectionism describes language knowledge as a network of interconnected units that are activated together when language elements co-occur. In this view, knowledge isn’t stored as explicit, rule-based instructions; it emerges from distributed representations across many units whose connections strengthen with experience. When you’re exposed to language, patterns of co-occurrence across sounds, words, and meanings activate related units, and through repeated exposure the network learns to respond to cues by activating the appropriate related elements. This accounts for both regular patterns and irregular forms through the same learning process of adjusting connection strengths based on usage. Other options don’t fit because competence refers to knowledge itself rather than the networked processing, cognate is about related words across languages, and CLT describes a teaching method, not a theory of how language knowledge is organized.