The Linguistic Development Of Genie By Susan Curtiss Essay

Nature and nurture both play a significant role in language development. Language development refers to how children understand, organise, speak and use words in order to communicate at an effective, age-appropriate level (Karen Kearns, 2013, P.105). For centuries, theorists have been debating the roles of nature versus nurture. Although, each child’s language will develop at their own pace and there will be many individual differences based on culture, ethnicity, health and ability. As well as physical, social, emotional and cognitive development in which will contribute to a child’s language development.

* After a year of treatment, she even started putting three words together occasionally. In children going through normal language development, this stage is followed by what is known as a language explosion. Children rapidly acquire new words and begin putting them together in novel ways. Unfortunately, this never happened for Genie. Her language abilities remained stuck at this stage and she appeared unable to apply grammatical rules and use language in a meaningful way.

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

Do we learn language from our experiences and environment, or are we just born with the ability? “Genie” seemed to be a great “experiment” that helped me understand this questions. She was exposed to almost no language in a critical time in her life. Genie was kept in almost complete isolation for her entire life. She was strapped to a potty chair in a room always alone and had no outside stimulation. When Genie was found she had many different characteristics that did not fit with her age. She could barely walk almost infant like in the way her arms and legs looked. Her language was minimal, slow using mostly grunting sounds and would spit a lot, probable due to lack of

In 1970, the case of Genie emerged, an abused child was mentally and physically delayed due to the social isolation condition she was raised. Genie’s case is studied and analyzed by many different aspects, such as phonology, semantics, morphology, and other research areas. Victoria Fromkin’s article “The Development of Language in Genie: A case of Language Acquisition Beyong the “Critical Period”” analyzed Genie’s case from five major aspects, which include linguistic comprehension, speech production and phonological development, sentence structure, cognitive development, and linguistic development in relation to normals. His analysis helps us to understand the language learning process and how the environment plays an important of language learning.

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.

Lastly, it is important to include Norm Chomsky every time we talk about language acquisition. Through his studies we can say that children can learn a new language because of their innate ability in their brain to be able to classify different words, specifically grammatical terms. He suggested that we have a device in our brain which he called a Language Acquisition Device that allows children to notice the differences between two languages. In my opinion if all of us have this device. All the child needs to stimulate it to be able to learn those important first words that a child is going to need as they further exposed into a language.

The debate between many researchers is the argument of whether nature or nurture play a more important role in development. In this essay I will be looking into both aspects of nature and nurture focusing specifically on their influence towards language development in children. A main controversial question I will be looking into is the question of whether are we born already equipped with mechanisms which help us to learn language, or is language learned throughout a child’s environment by, for example, imitation and repetition? Studies done by some opposing researchers claim to show that nature and nurture promote language development

Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky are two influential thinkers who have impacted the speech and language pathology field with their key theories. Piaget believed that there are four main stages in a child’s development that lead to a child learning language. Without these stages, Piaget argues that a child cannot cognitively grow at an appropriate pace (Kaderavek, 2105, p. 18 and p. 23). However, Vygotsky argues the Social Interactionist Theory, which states children develop language through social interacting with adults who are linguistically knowledgeable and the influence of the Zone of Proximal Development (Kaderavek, 2105, p. 18 and p. 23). With including these theories from Piaget and Vygotsky, this paper will explore how both of these

Language is a communicative system of words and symbols unique to humans. The origins of language are still a mystery as fossil remains cannot speak. However, the rudiments of language can be inferred through studying linguistic development in children and the cognitive and communicative abilities of primates as discussed by Bridgeman (2003). This essay illustrates the skills infants have that will eventually help them to acquire language. The topics covered are firstly, the biological aspects, the contribution of the human brain to language development? Secondly, key theories of language development will be considered. Is the development innate? Is there a critical period? Thirdly, what must be learned? What are the rudiments infants must

Not long after being admitted to the hospital, Genie seemed to recognize only her name and the word “sorry.” She scored as low as normal one-year-olds on maturity and preschool attainment scales. According to Piaget, there are six substages contained with the Sensorimotor stage of development. It seems as if Genie may have passed up substages three through six of the Sensorimotor stage. Throughout her first seven months of instruction, she identified hundreds of new words and began to speak. Eventually, Genie began using two-word phrases, much like most eighteen-month-olds do. Then, in turn, she progressed to using three-word phrases. She had a referential style of language learning since most of the words she used were ones that referred to objects. Furthermore, Genie never asked questions and didn’t comprehend a great deal of grammar. She never had a speech “explosion” like most children after reaching the two-word stage. Her language was in no way fully-developed.

From a baby 's first word to their first complete sentence, there 's a lot to debate with their language development. The average child has a vocabulary of up to six-thousand words by the time they turn five years old (Brighthubcom, 2016). Language development is one of the most critical roles for an educator in both early childhood and primary settings. It is this ability of language development that is particularly interesting in the nature vs nurture debate. In order for educators to provide effective communication, it is important that they have the knowledge and understanding of the four key concepts of language, such as phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic development and the underlying theoretical perspectives that explain the processes of language acquisition and development.

Children acquire language since they were born. They communicate with their parents. Furthermore, children and parents interact with each other using a language that we often call the first language or mother tongue. At an early age, children are only learning one language that is the mother tongue. By age and speech development, children improve to acquire a second language from the school or the environment around them. In terms of speed of langgauge acquisition, children are factorized by both the child and the child’s learning environment. Therefore, it is important to understand how children acquire second language. This paper is provided

Linguistics has impacted cognitive psychology as the quest to understand language acquisition and the structure of language itself is undertaken. Linguistics is a complex and multifaceted; it includes language structural patterns and language development (Barsalou, 2005). The process of language development is complicated and dense, as the study of language is examined; the role of cognition is inherently examined and analyzed. Sternberg (2006) also explores language as an innate process and presents the idea that humans are born ready for language as a biological and cognitive process.

This term paper aims at reviewing various stages of language development in human being early life in regards to language development. The paper also analyzes various theoretical issues and hypothesis that contributes to change of speech and how human beings corporate the changes in their daily development as far as language is concerned. Adult language and child language are quite different especially because adults have more exposure to the society norms than the children. It will also take in to consideration various processes of learning, how children acquire linguistic inputs such as forms meanings and word use during their talking processes. This term paper will focus on the child development in terms of language and gender. It is a paper on how children under the age of 10, learn language adaptation to their first language during their early developmental stages. It will identify theories for learning of a language, childhood development as well as look into the societal norms of gender socialization.