The Genetic Blueprints of Language

Matr. No. 315499

Name: Jalal Dakkak Email: jalal.dakkak@rwth-aachen.de Matr. No. 315499 Course: Media Culture and Mind Date: Thursday 22/12/2011 Essay 3: The Genetic Blueprints of Language

The Genetic Blueprints of Language

Matr. No. 315499

There are about 196 countries that currently exist in the world, and there are roughly 6,500 spoken languages in the world. Some of these countries share or speak either the same, similar or totally different language. But the initial question that arises is that What is language? or What defines language? Well, many definitions arose to try to define the meaning of language and try to gather some conceptions to give language a conventional meaning. For starters, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines language as the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a specific community. Even there was a distinction in the definition of language where it was divided into two meanings, language as a general concept or language as a specific linguistic system like when talking about German, English, French language as a whole system. Walter Whitman, an American poet, said: "Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground." And from his point of view the French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure defined language by stating: "A language can be compared to a sheet of paper. Thought is one side of the sheet and sound the reverse side. Just as it is impossible to take a pair of scissors and cut one side of the paper without at the same time cutting the other, so it is impossible in a language to isolate sound from thought, or thought from sound." After all these theories and attempts to define what language is, other questions would arise. How the initial language of an individual does develop and is acquired? Or in other terms what is Language Development? and Linguistic Acquisition? As a general definition, language development was simply defined as the process by which the human in his early life starts to acquire a certain language by learning it as by hearing this language as it is spoken and by mimicking what has been heard thus here language can be perceived as either vocal as in speech or signs as in physical gestures and movements. To be more precise, acquiring the language is actually is the capability and capacity to perceive, produce and use certain words in order to be able to communicate with the surrounding this type is known as the 1st language acquisition. Further on, many theories and controversies appeared in a trial to find an explanation for how the language is initially acquired by humans. Well as we know when a baby is born he doesnt know or have the capability to speak. After several months this baby starts making uncomprehend sounds and then after some time these uncomprehend sounds become more understandable and as time passes by this child fully speaks a fully understood language with complete sentences and phrases.

The Genetic Blueprints of Language "For children, acquiring a language is an effortless achievement that occurs - without explicit teaching, - on the basis of positive evidence (i.e., what they hear), - under varying circumstances, and in a limited amount of time, - in identical ways across different languages.

Matr. No. 315499

. . . Children achieve linguistic milestones in parallel fashion, regardless of the specific language they are exposed to. For example, at about 6-8 months, all children start to babble . . ., that is, to produce repetitive syllables like bababa. At about 10-12 months they speak their first words, and between 20 and 24 months they begin to put words together. It has been shown that children between 2 and 3 years speaking a wide variety of languages use infinitive verbs in main clauses . . . or omit sentential subjects . . ., although the language they are exposed to may not have this option. Across languages young children also over-regularize the past tense or other tenses of irregular verbs. Interestingly, similarities in language acquisition are observed not only across spoken languages, but also between spoken and signed languages." (Mara Teresa Guasti, Language Acquisition: The Growth of Grammar. MIT Press, 2002) "At around nine months of age, then, babies start to give their utterances a bit of a beat, reflecting the rhythm of the language they're learning. The utterances of English babies start to sound like 'te-tumte-tum.' The utterances of French babies start to sound like 'rat-a-tat-a-tat.' And the utterances of Chinese babies start to sound like sing-song. . . . We get the feeling that language is just around the corner. "This feeling is reinforced by [an]other feature of language . . .: intonation. Intonation is the melody or music of language. It refers to the way the voice rises and falls as we speak." (David Crystal, A Little Book of Language. Yale Univ. Press, 2010)

But the main controversy between the linguistics was about what initially enabled this baby and helped him to acquire and develop such a language, a language that his parents speak and through which he/she would be able to interact with their surroundings. These controversies lead to the appearance of many theories. One of these theories was known as the Nativist Theory adopted by Noam Chomsky. Noam is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT. The Nativist theory deals with the belief that language or language acquisition is an innate feature of a new born. Noam Chomsky was the first to propose this Nativism Theory. He believed that a child is born with the inherited ability to learn any human language and that by using such language that contains certain structures thus it has to be imprinted into this childs brain as if like genetic blue prints thus he claims humans are born prepared to learn language. 3

The Genetic Blueprints of Language

Matr. No. 315499

By innate [linguistic knowledge], Chomsky simply means "genetically programmed." He does not literally think that children are born with language in their heads ready to be spoken. He merely claims that a "blueprint is there, which is brought into use when the child reaches a certain point in her general development. With the help of this blueprint, she analyzes the language she hears around her more readily than she would if she were totally unprepared for the strange gabbling sounds which emerge from human mouths. (Aitchison, 1987, p. 31) Chomsky furthered deep into his theory where he proposed the presence of what he called a language acquisition device (LAD) where this device was a brain mechanism that is used to detect and learn the rules of language. He also considered this (LAD) as an innate part of the brain which is activated when a new language is heard thus it equips the child with the necessary tools to learn the language he is hearing and interact accordingly with his surroundings. Chomsky made an argument that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language where these set of rules are known as universal grammar, he also points out that a child cant learn a certain language only by imitating or mimicking what he hears from his surroundings hence the language spoken around this child can sometimes be highly irregular, complex or even ungrammatical however all children regardless of their intellectual ability usually become fluent in their native language within five or six years. Noam Chomsky theory regarding language acquisition has been around for more than fifty years. Since then, many arguments had arisen to support his theory in some manner. Neurologically speaking, recent evidence suggests part of the human brain (crucially involving Broca's area, a portion of the left inferior frontal gyrus), is selectively activated by those languages that meet universal Grammar requirements. (Musso, et al., Broca's area and the language instinct) Also, the presence of the creole language; a stable natural language developed from the mixing of parent languages; is used to support to Chomskys Theory. According to the article published on Wikipedia that handled the discussion of the Universal Grammar Theory which is the base of Chomsky Theory, and I quote The presence of creole languages is cited as further support for this theory, especially by Bickerton's controversial Language bioprogram theory. These languages were developed and formed when different societies came together and were forced to devise their own system of communication. The system used by the original speakers was an inconsistent mix of vocabulary items known as a pidgin. When these speakers' children were acquiring their first language, they used the pidgin input to effectively create their own original language, known as acreole. Unlike pidgins, creoles have native speakers and make use of a full grammar. The idea of universal grammar is supported by the creole languages by virtue of the fact that certain features are shared by virtually all of these languages. 4

The Genetic Blueprints of Language

Matr. No. 315499

For example, their default point of reference in time (expressed by bare verb stems) is not the present moment, but the past. Using pre-verbal auxiliaries, they uniformly express tense, aspect, and mood. Negative concord occurs, but it affects the verbal subject (as opposed to the object, as it does in languages like Spanish). Another similarity among creoles is that questions are created simply by changing a declarative sentence's intonation, not its word order or content (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar) December 2008 Noam Chomsky setup an argument known as The Poverty of the Stimulus Argument where he showed that the linguistic acquisition is not only simulated by the environment and surrounding but there has to be some amount of innate structure in the person. Professor Jeffrey Lidz from the Department of Linguistics in Maryland University and Professor Sandra R Waxman from the Department of Psychology in Northwestern University together they discussed the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument (POS) in a joint published discussion under the title of Reafrming the poverty of the stimulus argument: a reply to the replies, where it was stated: In general, the logic of the POS argument is to show that a piece of linguistic knowledge is not sufciently triggered by the environment and hence involves some amount of innate structure in the learner. Any POS argument requires four parts. To illustrate these parts, we follow the terminology of Pullum and Scholz (2002). First, the acquirendum identies a particular piece of syntactic knowledge. Second, the indispensability piece identies what kind of input would be necessary for the learner to acquire the acquirendum. Third, the inaccessibility piece demonstrates that the indispensable evidence is unavailable to the learner. Fourth and nally, the acquisition piece of a POS argument shows that nonetheless the syntactic knowledge is present at the earliest possible age. Together, these pieces support the conclusion that learners have succeeded in acquiring a piece of syntactic knowledge that could not have been extracted from the environment without some inherent constraints on the hypothesis space (J. Lidz, S. Waxman / Cognition 93 (2004) 157165) Eric Heinz Lenneberg; a linguist and neurologist who pioneered ideas on language acquisition and cognitive psychology, particularly in terms of the concept of innateness; built a strong evidence for Chomskys Theory in his concept known as The Critical Period suggested that there is a biologically pre-determined period of life during which language can be acquired most easily. Beyond this time language becomes increasingly difficult to acquire. By that Lenneberg provided a strong support for the Chomsky claim that language development and acquisition had some innateness and its not totally stimulated by the surrounding environment. (Biological Foundations of Language, 1967)

The Genetic Blueprints of Language

Matr. No. 315499

Finally, in a search for a theory that describes the process of language acquisition and development Noam Chomskys Nativism Theory stood out the most. This theory has been around for more than fifty years. Many theories had arisen in an attempt to dispute and contradict Chomskys Theory but so far none was successful in a fulfilling way. On one hand, there is no doubt about the effect of environment, society and surroundings in the aiding of language acquisition. But the other hand, there has to be a potential and capability that the brain possesses which triggers and guides the process of language development in addition to the effect subdued by the surrounding environment.

The Genetic Blueprints of Language

Matr. No. 315499

References:
Musso, et al., Broca's area and the language instinct James R. Hurford, Nativist and Functional Explanations in Language Acquisition (1995) Chomsky, N. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. MIT Press, 1965.ISBN 0-262-53007-4. Cook, Vivian James. Chomskys Universal Grammar: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988. 1-2. Konieczna, Ewa. First Language Acquisition. Uniwersytet Rzeszowski. 2008. univ.rzeszow.pl.20 September 2008 <http:// www.univ.rzeszow.pl>. Chomsky, N. (1981). Principles and parameters in syntactic theory. In Hornstein, N. & Lightfoot, D., Explanation in Linguistics, London: Longman. Crain, S., & Thornton, R. (1998). Investigations in Universal Grammar: A Guide to Experiments on the Acquisition of Syntax and Semantics. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Crain, S., & Nakayama, M. (1987). Structure Dependence in Grammar Formation Language, 63, 522-543. McDaniel, D., Chiu, B., & Maxfield, T.L. (1995). Paramaters for Wh-Movement Types: Evidence from Child English. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 13, 709-753. Mara Teresa Guasti, Language Acquisition: The Growth of Grammar. MIT Press, 2002 David Crystal. A Little Book of Language. Yale Univ. Press, 2010 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar December 2008 J. Lidz, S. Waxman / Cognition 93 (2004) 157165 Biological Foundations of Language, 1967