Q. All children have an
innate capacity for language but it depends on where the child is brought up
he/she will acquire English or Japanese so both heredity and environment play
an important role in language development but the question is how do they
interact?
“Psycholinguistics is
the study of the interaction between language factors and psychological aspects” (H, 2011). When
dealing with language acquisition either innate or behaviorist it must interact
with the notion of mind connections or one’s psychology. So one can say in
comprehending, producing, and acquiring the language both the heredity and
environment play an important part. Firstly, in the case of “Nativist
theories”, there is a pre-wired system for language learning. The knowledge for
language acquisition is innate and originates in human nature. According to
these theorists such as Plato, Kant, and Chomsky, language acquisition is an
innate ability and the brains of humans contain a special device for this
language acquisition known as LAD (Language Acquisition Device). It is believed
that all children are born with this capacity and will acquire the language of
the community in which they are born. This innateness hypothesis was presented
by Chomsky and George Yule describes it as: “the
innateness hypothesis would seem to point to something in human genetics,
possibly a crucial mutation or two, as the source” (Yule, 2017)
Secondly, in the case of behaviorists
language is entirely learned behavior. According to the behaviorists such as
Aristotle and Skinner, there are no limits to what a human being can become,
given time, opportunity, and the application of very general laws of learning.
Social interaction plays an important role in the learning process and the
acquisition of language.
Both heredity and environment play an
important role in language development and interact with one another for its
acquisition. For instance, a child who has an innate capacity for the language
will acquire language only if the environment in which he/she is brought up is
favorable for language acquisition. For instance, “the Greek writer Herodotus
reported the story of an Egyptian pharaoh named Psammetichus who tried the
experiment with two newborn babies more than 2500 years ago. After two years of
isolation except for the company of goats and a mute shepherd, the children
were reported to have spontaneously uttered, not an Egyptian word, but
something that was identified as the Phrygian word bekos” (Yule, 2017).
From this example, one can observe the
impact of the environment on language acquisition. The babies in the absence of
any human voice adapted what the goats might be saying. Similarly, a child not
having an innate capacity for language (due to some physical deformity or
mental) cannot acquire language no matter how favorable the environment is for
language acquisition.
All in all, one can say that all
children have an innate capacity for language but it depends on where the child
is brought up he/she will acquire English or Japanese so both heredity and environment
play an important role in language development and interact with one and other
for language acquisition.
Contributed by, Syeda Areeba Fatima
Read Le Vygotsky Cognitive Theory
