Acquiring the Human Language-Playing the Language Game

Chomsky’s theory for learning language applies to all aspects of language including nouns, verbs, consonants and Vowels (Lukin, et tal, 2008). His theory offers an explanation that a child could not possibly learn a language through imitation alone because the language spoken around them is highly irregular, by which adult’s speech is often broken up and can be ungrammatical (O 'Brien, 1999).

First, children¡¯s acquisition of language is an innate mechanism that enables a child to analyze language and extract the basic rules of grammar, granted by Chomsky. It basically states that humans are born with a language acquisition device that, the ability to learn a language rapidly as children. However, there is one important controversy in language acquisition concerns how we acquire language; since Chomsky fails to adequately explain individual differences. From the behaviorists¡¯ perspectives, the language is learned like other learned behaviors. It is learned through operant

I previously watched a video called, “What do Babies Think?” In the video, there was a lady named Alison Gopnik. In her video she explained how babies are continually are processing probabilities in their head. Alison also explained an experiment on how a four year old thinks or process things in the brain. In the experiment, she had a four year old boy try to use blocks to make a light come on. The boy tried five different hypothesis, and finally ended up finding the correct way after trial and error. By using the experiment with the child, she showed how a four year olds mind thinks/understands processes.

The case of “Genie” is a tragic look at the effects of child abuse and neglect on childhood development. Genie’s case was particularly extreme, as she lived the first 13 years of her life in isolation and confinement. With little to no human interaction throughout her entire life, she developed no language skills. Researchers were extremely interested in this case, as it gave them a chance to explore two theories of language development. One theory is Noam Chomsky’s view that children are born with an innate ability to learn and understand language. Chomsky termed this structure in our brain the “Language Acquisition Device” (LAD). An alternate theory by Eric Lenneberg stated that language development is a result of our environment, and stressed the importance of critical periods. Lenneberg believed that the critical period for language development only lasted until around 12 years of age, and inability to develop language during these critical periods would result in major deficits.

The ability comes from emphasizing learning, emphasizing culture, and stressing evolution. Berger even mentioned the idea of all babies yearning to learn and language is considered to be one more aspect of neurological maturation. Eager attempts to communicate are visible in the first weeks and months on an infant's life. This connects with my personal story in the matter that my younger brother had the ability to speak and understand his native tongue before the age of two. I don’t recall whether he was eager or not, but what I do know is that this ability has opened up many gates for him and has opened the idea of diversity. Also, in chapter four, The First Two Years: The Social World, Treasure had Allocare in the beginning because my grandmother took care of him and it's very common in North America and majority of the

However, it can be argued with (Bruner 1964) that social interaction doesn’t explain all the complexities of language acquisition. Almost every day the language we hear is often incorrect, poorly defined, incomplete and full of hesitations, mispronunciations and other errors, and yet despite this we still learn to talk following the correct grammatical rules. Again this indicates the idea of Chomsky’s (1968) LAD model that children are born ‘hard-wired’ with the innate knowledge of linguistic rules and so these rules help the baby make estimations and presumptions about the language it is hearing. From these estimations and presumption the child can work out grammatical sets of rules and when more language is exposed to them, the more their language develops. Even within Chomsky’s (1968) LAD theory, undoubtedly he believed the role and promotion of the ‘nature’ aspect is the core foundation on which language can develop. But his theory also requires the role of nurture

For my spring break video, I chose the video about that girl that had been kept from the language speaking society. Genie’s case had been one of the largest cases like never before seen. Being deprived of the outside society, It happened to be difficult for Genie to learn language. Scientist claim that for one to be fluent in language you must learn before a particular age. Genie, caught on to gestures and simple phrases, but not enough to speak a full fluent sentence. Being deprived of the outside society for such a long time, did not help in the process of learning language in Genies situation. Human interaction is a key point in learning language. People learn from interaction. This video very much validates that at a young age interaction

“For the Love of Language” is written by Geoffrey Cowley was published in October of 2000 by Newsweek special issue. This article talks about the development of language as a child grows from a new born to a toddler. The first significant point that Cowley makes is that “simple conditioning is a part of the story. Anyone bombarded by a particular language hears certain sound combinations more often than others, and babies are quick to home in on the most probable combinations” (13).

Moreover, the main topic of this video is the learning of other language in the childhood.

After the age of seven, there is a major change when the child goes through puberty. Babies always try to mimic the sounds of their parents or whomever they hear, and how they hear the language. It is all started after a child differentiates the sounds and how they are they learn through different languages and how and why. it changes after puberty. As I continued watching the video of her explaining the research, I realized I completely understood and I agree with the research.

She argues that by using these types of questions, rather than having students memorize correct answers, students can think deeper about class topics thus developing an understanding. Cazden considers open and closed questions, “there is a crucial difference between helping a child somehow get a particular answer and helping that child gain some conceptual understanding from which answers to similar questions can be constructed at a future time” (p.93). Through the language teachers use when asking questions students can be encouraged to think in a deeper way than they would if not prompted, or students can try and reach a conclusion that the teacher has in mind. Cazden points out that by using language in a certain way (for example a closed question disguised as an open question), it can install a pattern of communication that gives an “illusion that learning is actually occurring” (p. 93).

Acquiring language is one of the most important processes in human life. Unlike animals, human beings are able to acquire a native language and they do so in a procedure that takes time. During this procedure, human beings start to learn alphabet, forming words, forming sentences and after all they learn how to communicate with other people. In his book “A Dictionary of Phonetics and Linguistics (2008), David Crystal mentions that this acquisition procedure is not only required for one’s mother tongue, but it is also used when children come to learn a foreign language or a second language. This definition that Crystal gives in his book has a relationship with the theory of “Language Acquisition Device” made by Noam Chomsky.

With this being said, there is more than one theorist that is trying to master this enigma. How children learn language is such a mystery to scientist, it is still being studied often. Children acquire their language in such a way that yet to this day cannot be described with just one accurate theory.

Words are the essential part of communication in all of the world’s different languages. Most adults understand thousands of words, and the majority of people master a vast vocabulary of words. Word learning and language are perhaps two of the more complex developmental achievements in human evolution, they stand out because of the conceptual and linguistic organization (Waxman, & Lidz, 2006). This complex process has been very well studied in human infants and literature about this topic is abundant. Infants gather words and phrases from the human language to which they are exposed to and make important advances in areas such as conceptual and linguistic domains. Furthermore, infants learn words with extraordinarily speed; this gathering of words is so fast that some researchers argue that there must be specialized mechanisms that deal with word learning (Gleitman, L. R., Cassidy, K., Nappa, R., Papafragou, A., & Trueswell, J. C. 2005). These specialized mechanisms for word learning are associated with fast mapping, which means that a word meaning is deduced from very few exposures to that specific word. The ability of children to fast map is regarded as proof of the astonishing efficiency of early word learning (Dollaghan, C. A. 1987). There is certainly great knowledge about word learning in human infants; however, this subject has not been studied extensively in animals.

According to Krashen, there are two ways of developing language ability.  Acquisition involves the subconscious acceptance of knowledge where information is stored in the brain through the use of communication. This is the process used for developing native languages.  Learning, on the other hand, is the conscious acceptance of knowledge ‘about’ a language (i.e. the grammar or form). Krashen