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Cognitive psychological theory
Cognitive psychological theory
Problem solving cognitive psychology
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Language Bioprogram Hypothesis Bickerton first presented his Language Bioprogram Hypothesis in his 1981 book, Roots of Language. He later revisited this hypothesis and published a more succinct version along with comments and critiques from several individuals in 1984 in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences journal. The idea behind the Language Bioprogram Hypothesis (LBH) is that all creole languages hold a certain amount of similarity. These similarities and the origin of creole languages have a deeper implication on how language originated among humans. As such, in its first proposal, Bickerton aimed to provide at least a partial answer to how creole languages originate, how children acquire language, and how human language originated. The first human language is impossible to trace back through time. Universal Grammar Chomsky argued that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language. Since all human brains have these same sets, the assumption is that all languages have a shared underlying, universal grammar. “I think, yet the world thinks in me” is one of C...
In Marianne Mithun and Wallace L. Chafe’s article “Recapturing the Mohawk Language”, the two authors focus on an important aspect of language that I strongly agree on. Mithun and Chafe demonstrate how native Mohawk speakers acquire unconsciously all necessary rules of the Mohawk language. I find that their discovery can be used as an argument to prove professor Ray Jackendoff’s first fundamental rule: mental grammar.
The film goes into basic information about many of the worlds’ countless distinct languages and language families and how they are diversified throughout the world. The film highlights how a single ancestor language can evolve into a variety of unique languages. These languages divide and change until eventually they become mutually. Many of these languages can be traced back and included in language families. Not all languages can be traced back so easily and because the mutually unintelligibility is so high, similarities to other languages cannot be found.
How much does language truly affect the way that we think? In “Nothing is Missing,” Tom Munnecke discusses the limitations that arise when being confined to unique “linguistic shells.” However, after an eye-opening trip to Japan language paradoxes that once hindered the fluidity of his thoughts were depleted. Through his own experiences with thinking and speaking in different languages, Munnecke was able to open his mind and view the world in a more progressive way. The “linguistic shell” that frustrated Munnecke in his early age becomes a lead to many theories that he has about our modern lives. Subsequently, Munnecke is able to relate language, thought, and distance; all of which he concludes have no boundaries within each other. In his memoir
The prehistoric times stand evidence to the power of language as a tool for communication and growth. Language has proven to be an effective medium and factor surrounding the evolution of man. Language has played a big role in the development of individuals and societies. What is spoken and/or written, help in the initiation of imagination, expression of feelings, and conveyance of thoughts and ideas. “The pen is mightier than the sword” (Bulwer-Lytton 1839).
John McWhorter, the author of The Power of Babel, gives a brief history of human languages. The title is from the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. The story tells of the people had only one language and decided to build a tower. Then, God gives them different languages. As a result, the event was the derivation of different cultures and languages. Through McWhorter’s view of how languages derived from the past 150,000 years, he states that the one original language transformed into six thousand new languages. The book has seven chapters and an epilogue. The first chapter is “The First Language Morphs into Six Thousand New Ones” discusses the question, “What happened to the first language?”( McWhorter 16). The second chapter is “The Six Thousand Languages Develop into Clusters of Sublanguages.” Then, The third chapter
Primates and their behavior are used by scientists to estimate the capacities of human ancestors. Since humans and numerous primate species employ vocalizations as their primary means of communication, the vocal aspect of primate behavior has been a principal focus of studies exploring the origins of human language. Studies indicate that in spite of important differences, primate vocalizations exhibit some key features that characterize human language. However, some critical aspects of human speech, such as vocal plasticity, are missing in primate language (Fedurek and
9. Research on the language capabilities of apes clearly demonstrates that they have the capacity to:
Deutscher acknowledges that Whorf, a linguist who claimed that the mother tongue one speaks enables one’s way of thinking, made a mistake in his theory. Deutscher believes that instead of focusing on searching evidence for what stops the language speaker from thinking, the focus should be centered on how our mother tongue may help shape how we think about the world (448). He shares how the German, French, Russian, and Spanish languages compels the native speaker to use grammatical structure with the use of gender when naming objects. Furthermore he continues to say, “And as anyone whose mother tongue has a gender system will tell you, once the habit has taken hold, it is all but impossible to shake it off.” (449). My native language is Spanish, I became fluent in English when I was 5, and I came to learn French at the age of 14. When learning French at a much older age, I did notice how in English I didn’t have to express certain objects, scenes with precise and broad terms. For example, in French and Spanish there are separate gender pronouns for objects, unlike in English where the words “it” or “the” are usually used when speaking about the object. Obviously, the objects
Over the past fifty years ago, followed the prevailing theory see Plato, saying that language is an innate ability ...
One of the first recorded studies was in 7th century B.C. by an Egyptian Pharaoh named Psammetichus who believed that language was inborn, or hardwired into the brain. His experiment was documented by the Greek historian, Herodotus. Psammetichus had two children isolated, when the first word spoken by the children was in Phrygian, an old forgotten language that originated from the province of Phrygia (now modern day northwest Turkey), he concluded that Phrygian was the first language and that it must have been hardwired in the children’s heads. Another ruler, King James IV of Scotland performed a similar experiment in the 15th century. Those children spoke Hebrew. 200 years before King James, the Holy Roman emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen tried a similar experiment, but the children had died before they were able to speak (Fromkin). These first experiments were phylogenetic or only concerned with discovering the first language, and were minorly interested in the ontogenetic studies or the study of language development in infants (Linguistics 201). A century after King James IV, a Mogul emperor of India by the name of Akbar conducted ...
Language is an essential thing needed to communicate and to develop the skills one needs to be a complete, whole, intelligent individual. Language is what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Here we shall define language and lexicon, evaluate the key features of language, describe the four levels of language structure and processing, and analyze the role of language processing in cognitive psychology.
Schnitzer, Marc L. Toward a neurolinguistic theory of language. Brain & Language. Vol 6(3) 342-361, Nov 1978.
In this part, the writer will point out the importance of the biological and neural foundation of language learning by discussing the following :First, the brain anatomy. Second, l...
Language acquisition is perhaps one of the most debated issues of human development. Various theories and approaches have emerged over the years to study and analyse this developmental process. One factor contributing to the differing theories is the debate between nature v’s nurture. A question commonly asked is: Do humans a...
Still today, it is the commonly held belief that children acquire their mother tongue through imitation of the parents, caregivers or the people in their environment. Linguists too had the same conviction until 1957, when a then relatively unknown man, A. Noam Chomsky, propounded his theory that the capacity to acquire language is in fact innate. This revolutionized the study of language acquisition, and after a brief period of controversy upon the publication of his book, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, in 1964, his theories are now generally accepted as largely true. As a consequence, he was responsible for the emergence of a new field during the 1960s, Developmental Psycholinguistics, which deals with children’s first language acquisition. He was not the first to question our hitherto mute acceptance of a debatable concept – long before, Plato wondered how children could possibly acquire so complex a skill as language with so little experience of life. Experiments have clearly identified an ability to discern syntactical nuances in very young infants, although they are still at the pre-linguistic stage. Children of three, however, are able to manipulate very complicated syntactical sentences, although they are unable to tie their own shoelaces, for example. Indeed, language is not a skill such as many others, like learning to drive or perform mathematical operations – it cannot be taught as such in these early stages. Rather, it is the acquisition of language which fascinates linguists today, and how it is possible. Noam Chomsky turned the world’s eyes to this enigmatic question at a time when it was assumed to have a deceptively simple explanation.