It is amazing how humans are able to learn language as
something that is meant to be learned. We are able to understand something that
should confuse us because of the fact that we never hear any of those sounds
before birth. Language is a subject that has scientists interested, and even
after many researches they have not found any specific answer that would
clarify this mystery for us. Noam Chomsky believe that humans have what he
called the language acquisition device (LAD), basically what this means is that
it is a mechanism that allows children to acquire language quickly almost instantly
from their native language speakers or adults. Researchers have found that genes
do help on language matters, but it takes more than one gene that affects
language and it is not easy to know for sure. Some of the factors that help a
lot with language development are family interaction, and intelligence. I
believe that intelligence its not that important to language evolution I mea
maybe it is been prove that it does have an effect, but I do know a lot of
people who have a large vocabulary, and they are not that smart. For example both of my children learn how to speak at different ages, and my daughter still have problems pronouncing some of the words, but intelligence wise they are both very smart. But as I said
I might be wrong because genes are very powerful on every human’s evolution and
transformation aspects, but I just believe that any one could become a very
intellectual person no matter from where they came from as long as they try
hard and their best.
I found this video in which explains in more detail about
language acquisition device and how it works.
Language acquisition is an interesting topic to discuss, and it's remarkable to think that we acquire our native language before the age of 5 or 6. For those that are multilingual speakers, they would be able to pick up more than one language and be fluent at such a young age! I think when you bring in the subject of intelligence though, it becomes a whole other discussion. We would then need to look at the "nature vs. nurture debate." Do we acquire language more through our genetics or is it through learning and our usage of it? What do you think?
ReplyDeleteI believe scientists would be wrong to assume it is just one or the other. Language is such a complex process that it must be a combination of many factors that influence our acquisition of it.