Creative Projects

NATURE VS. NURTURE IN FIRST LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

INTRO:

So, today we are going to talk about the nature and nurture debate, our debate consist in three different views which are nativist lead by Noam Chomsky and supported by Steven Pinker, empiricist by Geoffrey Sampson and finally, the functionalist by Halliday.
we draw a poster displayed on a nature vs nurture ring fight between the main representatives, each one exposing their arguments and theories with their fists.



Nature position

Is language something we are born with or something we learn? Is language mainly a biological or a social phenomenon?
According to Chomsky and his nativist view, people are born with some innate abilities that they use to interact with others and understand the world;
This innate capacity for language learning it is part of the genetic makeup of human species and is nearly independent of any particular experience which may occur after birth.
one of the theory that support this state, is the generative grammar theory which says that grammar is a set of rules we use to generate sentences innately grammatical in our language and all this is possible by a Universal Grammar that’s native from the brain, that mean that humans are born with a Language Acquisition Device that allows us to understand languages in terms of universal rules
Pinker, supports this, although he admits that there’s still no evidence enough to prove the existence of Universal Grammar.


Empiricists position

Is language something we are born with or something we learn?
Language is something we learn through the course of our life because we born with a “tabula rasa”. We are able to learn language if we are surrounded by the appropriate environment. There is a substantial difference in language development between children who are born into a normal socially stimulated environment and feral children.
Children learn a set of constructions from their caregiver called ‘frozen phrases’, such as ‘I’m eating it’ and pair it with a function such as ‘performing an action on something’. Over time they start to find patterns, which enable them to develop more complex and abstract constructions. Language cannot be innate as it does not link to genetics at all, states that language is determined specifying whether usage is spoken or written, and other demographic information, like age, gender and occupation, etc.

Functionalist view

And at the middle of the ring we have the Functionalist view, born from Empirism, and this is the posture we acquire as a group. The Functionalist view argues that learning the structure of language is a by-product of the child’s effort to communicate. Here, Halliday defends his posture about that language is a socio-semiotic system to fulfill particular needs (microfunctions) such as hunger, express emotions, ask favors, or functions referred to affiliate with other humans, as referential, expressive or metalingual function. Finally, Halliday says that we use language to accomplish different functions of our ordinary life, and that is, at last, why we learn language in the first place; to communicate!

C. Meza, K. Peña, C. Soto, V. Urrutia