Language acquisition: Nature or nurture?

During the late 1950s, psychologists differed on how language is acquired. Skinner argued that language acquisition is based on instrumental conditioning, while Chomsky stressed that people are born with an innate capacity for acquiring a language/s, also called nativism. This paper argues that language is acquired through both nature and nurture, because these two theories can help fully explain language acquisition, instead of separately, although it is still unclear how much nature or nurture guides and impacts language acquisition.

Language is acquired through both nature and nurture, because these two theories can fully explain language learning, instead of separately.

Chomsky’s examples and some studies on the brain and language acquisition prove that children acquire their first language through a "language faculty," which is a biologically independent system in the brain that "has an initial state which is genetically determined, like. . . the kidney, the circulatory system, and so on" (Chomsky, p.

13, cited in Knezek, 1997). This is evident in how all humans, except, those with language problems, understand particular ambiguities of language in the same manner (Knezek, 1997).

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Chomsky’s example is how children understand the meaning of a “brown house” across all cultures, referring to it as a house that is brown in the outside, and not inside (Knezek, 1997). This is remarkable because it shows how human beings make universal assumptions about the same words.

Furthermore, studies showed that children, by the age of four or five, normally have the language competence of adults, whatever their culture might be (Knezek, 1997). On the other hand, nativists can also not explain all the processes of language acquisition.

Behaviorists argued that Chomsky cannot explain why people have special parts of the brain that are focused on language or why humans can converse through language while other animals cannot (Knezek, 1997).

Most likely, people also evolved their language capability by having their brain store the same skills and knowledge needed for language acquisition (Knezek, 1997). Furthermore, the universality of human language acquisition that animals lack can also be explained through the differences in brains and speech organs of human beings and other animals (Knezek, 1997). Human beings acquire language through nature and nurture.

Up to now, people do not have a complete understanding of language acquisition processes, and studies show different results on why and how people acquire their languages as children, and even, as adults. At present, this paper shows that through evidence and examples, people acquire languages through their inherent capability for acquiring them and on how they make inductions about learning languages.

Reference

Knezek, M. (1997). Nature vs. Nurture: The Miracle of Language. Pyschology. Retrieved May 30, 2010, from http://www. duke. edu/~pk10/language/psych. htm