Folium: Real Talk – The Idea of Language Instinct via Aeon
Folium: Real Talk – The Idea of Language Instinct via Aeon
…
Connect
…
A key challenge that most linguists face is the question of whether or not humans are predisposed with the knowledge of language, or if they develop linguistic features listening to their parents and others speak. Most four-year-olds know thousands of words and have a sense of grammar and syntax that would put even the most powerful programs to shame. How can so much linguistic sophistication come from listening to parental baby talk? Vyvyan Evans attempts to debunk common belief that babies are born with that ability.
“By the age of four, every cognitively normal child on the planet has been transformed into a linguistic genius: this before formal schooling, before they can ride bicycles, tie their own shoelaces or do rudimentary addition and subtraction. It seems like a miracle.” – Vyvyan Evans
He has no idea what you’re saying…
Evans starts out this article giving an example of a traveler discovering new parts of the world. This traveler is soon confronted with a local native that goes jabbering on in what seems to him as gibberish. He compares that situation to that of a young baby girl who is encountering language for the first time. The baby is hearing the same gibberish but the big difference between the baby and the traveler is that the baby has no idea that the communicator is attempting to communicate. By the age of four, most children have such a complex understanding of their native tongue. But the possibility of these children being such linguistic geniuses is a miracle.
Through Evan’s research, he has found astounding information that you won’t believe. children don’t in fact learn their mother tongue or at least not right down to the grammatical building blocks. He argues the other side saying that children are born with a rudimentary body of grammatical knowledge – a ‘Universal Grammar’ written into the human DNA. Linguists have suggested that such patterns occur because human brains are biased to favor syllables such as “bla” over “lba” and past research has shown that adult speakers display such preferences, even if their native language has no words resembling either “bla” or “lba”.
“In the 1960s, the US linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky offered what looked like a solution. He argued that children don’t in fact learn their mother tongue – or at least, not right down to the grammatical building blocks (the whole process was far too quick and painless for that). He concluded that they must be born with a rudimentary body of grammatical knowledge – a ‘Universal Grammar’ – written into the human DNA.” – Vyvyan Evans
(Ed. This hypothesis was incredibly controversial and still sparks some heavy debate today.)
Another argument Evans strives to delve into further is that of how children don’t receive formal instruction in their mother tongue so how do they acquire competence in grammar? Rationalist linguistics proposes that human babies enter the world pre-equipped to learn language. Language emerges effortlessly and automatically. And this is because we are all born with a Universal Grammar: a pre-specification for certain aspects of grammar. He Evans uses the example of the 13 year old Genie, a girl who was left to rot in her tortuous parent’s home without any formal knowledge of language. He argues that if children aren’t exposed to language within a certain time frame they may never develop the language ability.
…
…
There are many disputes whether or not human children come into the world biologically prepared for language. But I can say that the speech production apparatus, to information processing capacity, to memory storage, we are neurobiologically equipped to acquire spoken or signed language is way more advanced than we understand, more in a way no other species is. It would take a lot more research in order to reach a conclusion on whether or not linguistic knowledge is nature or nurture.
Julie Martin
LEAF Editor and Contributor
…
