The acquisition of language has long been a debate in the world of linguistics, starting with B.F Skinner and Noam Chomsky in the 1950’s. Skinner, a leading behaviorist argued that language is just another behaviour learned through stimulus reinforcement, whereas Chomsky argued that it is unique. In his novel “The Language Instinct”, Pinker discusses the ins and outs of language while siding with Chomsky’s viewpoint. To further explain how language is not just a learned skill and to develop his own argument, Pinker goes as far as calling language an ‘instinct’.
Instincts are present immediately after birth, such as the ability to breath and suck, and often relate to basic needs. Infants don’t have the ability to produce language upon birth, so because language doesn’t fit the accepted definition of an instinct, Pinker could not compare language to any known human instinct. Instead, he qualifies his claim by saying that language is like an instinct and using the metaphor that “people know how to talk in more or less the sense that spiders know how to spin webs” (Pinker 5). However, this metaphor can be questioned because spiders are born with the ability to make webs and quickly display this
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There are many cultural inventions around the world that differ in their sophistication such as “count[ing] by carving notches on bones” all the way up to “using computers” (Pinker 14). These are deemed constructs or inventions, they are not truly instincts because not all humans develop and use the same tools. Language however, is present in roughly the same sophistication across all civilizations in the world. Some languages may seem more complex with their word formations and grammar rules, but it’s not the same difference as stone tools to
Mark Blumberg, a neuroscientist wrote a book titled Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior which revolves around the topic of animal and human behaviors. An instinct is an innate behavior as mentioned several times in the book which simply means that an animal or human is born with a certain behavior or it occurs naturally.
How can it be that something so uniquely human and commonplace in our everyday existence as language, could transcend the limits of our immediate understanding? We all know how to speak and comprehend at least one language, but defining what we actually know about that language an infinitely more demanding process. How can a child without previous knowledge of the construction and concepts of language be born into the world with an innate ability to apprehend any dialect? Mark Baker, in his book The Atoms of Language, seeks to address these unsettling questions, proposing as a solution, a set of underlying linguistic ingredients, which interact to generate the wide variety of languages we see today.
Sometimes we think that words are a way to express what we have on our minds. Right? Think again. Guy Deutscher justifies just that. Our mother tongue does train our brains into thinking a certain type of way, also altering our perceptions of reality. In the NY Times article, “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?,” Guy points out that the mother tongue is Hebrew and leaves us with how we perceive the world. Guy’s protestor, Benjamin Lee Whorf, exclaims that language doesn’t have a particular word for a concept and that the concept itself could not be understood by the speaker. Guy argues that he does not have enough evidence that will substantiate the theory. He claims that Whorf is wrong on so many
Auditory ability gives us the clearest picture of prenatal learning. Newborn babies show a marked preference for voices heard during the prenatal period. DeCasper and Spence (1986) demonstrated that babies recognize a story read to them twice a day in the last six weeks of pregnancy when compared to an unfamiliar story that was heard for the first time after birth. A study by DeCasper and Fiefer (1980) indicates that infants as young as three days old prefer their mothers voice, which may be a result of their prenatal exposure to the maternal voice. A third study by Kisilevsky et al (2003) tied the results of the two previous studies together.
For instance, the monster states “[Language] was indeed a godlike science, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it (Shelley 110)” where language and communication fascinated him enough that it compelled him learn it in order to assimilate into society. This ability to learn language is genetic, as upheld by the argument presented in “Nature or Nurture”. They state that although grammar acquisition is genetic – an inbuilt ability to learn grammar without anyone teaching it – nurture is highly important in developing all parts of language, such as vocabulary and accent (“Nature or Nurture” 3)”. This is seen in Frankenstein where the monster learns language and communication by observing the DeLacey family and perfects it to the extent that Mr. DeLacey asks and assumes that the stranger/monster is his native countrymen and French due to the his accent (Shelley 134).
“We can know so much because in a sense we already knew it” (Chomsky, 1976 p.7). Within this quote are the foundations for Chomsky’s theory of an innate predisposition to learn language by his imagination of a mind that holds a priori knowledge. It is suggested by Chomsky (1976) that this innate knowledge is within the human mind at birth and is unlocked by experience. Essentially, Chomsky’s argument is that there is some sort of biological basis only evident within humans that permits the acquisition of language across different cultures, notwithstanding the complexities or differences between them. Christiansen and Chater (2008) provide for Chomsky’s position by noting that children can obtain their native language before being able to carry out tasks such as tying laces or riding a bicycle.
There are three main theories of child language acquisition; Cognitive Theory, Imitation and Positive Reinforcement, and Innateness of Certain Linguistic Features (Linguistics 201). All three theories offer a substantial amount of proof and experiments, but none of them have been proven entirely correct. The search for how children acquire their native language in such a short period of time has been studied for many centuries. In a changing world, it is difficult to pinpoint any definite specifics of language because of the diversity and modification throughout thousands of millions of years.
Lightbown, P., & Spada, N. M. (2006). How languages are learned (3rd ed.). Oxford [england: Oxford University Press.
Biological foundation of language may contribute significantly to such universality. The issue here is not whether language is innate, for, clearly, language must be learned. Nor is the issue whether the aptitude for learning a la...
In the discussion of nature verse nurture, one controversial issue is language. Arguing on the side of nature, children across the world seem to exhibit universal stages of linguistic development. Infants as young as seven months old are able to recognize simple linguistic rules from a string of sounds. When a child is first learning to speak, they typically combine words in ways that an adult would not. They can also speak and communicate clearly without adult correction. These observations suggest that we are born with the capacity to communicate verbally and through the use of kinesics, or gestures. However, nurture also plays a large role in the use of language. Linguistics differ amongst children from region to region based on the way the people around them speak. Thousands of languages such as: Spanish, English, Italian, and Creole are spoken around the world. Vernacular and accents also vary within each language and is acquired through a learning process, not genetics(Brown, 10/1/13). Another major environmental factor is correction from parents and adults. A child may be born with the ability to speak, but grammatical correctness and annunciation requi...
Language is multifaceted. It contains both verbal and non-verbal aspects that children seem to acquire quickly. Before birth, virtually all the neurons (nerve cells) are formed, and they migrate into their proper locations in the brain in the infant. When a baby is born, it can see and hear and smell and respond to touch, but their perceptions are limited at such a young age. The brain stem, a primitive region that controls vital functions like heartbeat and breathing, has completed its wiring. Elsewhere the connections between neurons are wispy and weak. But over the first few months of life, the brain’s higher centers explode with new synapses. “For the large majority of people, the dominant area in language processing is in the middle of the left hemisphere of the brain, in particular in Broca’s Area and Wernicke’s Area” (Siegler, 1998, p. 142). This helps an ...
Babies begin to develop language skills long before they embark on speaking. The foundation for learning language begins before birth by the baby listening and recognizing his/her mother’s heartbeat and voice in the womb. “In a study, researchers played a 2-minute recording of a popular Chinese poem to 60 pregnant women and their unborn babies while monitoring total heart rates. Heart rates rose while the babies listened to their own mother's voice, but they fell and stayed lower while the stranger recited. Obviously, the babies were paying close attention, leading the researchers to suspect they were not only recognizing morn, but beginning to learn the ins and outs of language” (Dawidowska and Harrar (2003))....
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.