¡Descarga The Science of Language: Psycholinguistics and Language Acquisition - Prof. Escutia López y más Apuntes en PDF de Filología Inglesa solo en Docsity! Assignment 1 Subject: Psycholinguistics Teacher: Marciano Escutia López Realisation: Rafael Accorinti Elvira Calderón Ana Casado Language Speeches Language has been always a relevant matter for all humans in order to communicate with others by sharing feelings and ideas for maintaining a culture. Due to its world-wide importance, this topic has been introduced and deeply explained by professor Paul Bloom at Yale University and by professor Robert Sapolsky at Stanford’s linking different ideas relating language as second language and mother tongue, its acquisition regarding babies, to what extent is language a cognitive inherent activity found in the brain, how this languages are constructed and a brief explanation of non-human communication. The meaning of language explained in both speeches refers to the human ability to interact with others by using words compiled together following a set of linguistic rules. Therefore, this scientific notion of language is restricted firstly to systems like Dutch, English or Spanish although it can be argued that language can refer also to music, art or what animals do. The principal characteristic of all languages is that they are present in every culture aiming at describing true abstract concepts or lying about them from the past, the present or the future. These languages can be spoken by every single person who has no neurological problems or who has not been isolated from the society, because language must have been heard before in order to learn it. This statement is reinforced by Darwin's words as 'all humans instinctively need to speak rather than write or read'. As an example of this, ancient cultures who had no language in common created the pidgin in order to communicate with each other by mixing up different languages. Once the pidgin had been established by a set of grammatical and syntactical rules, it received the name of 'creole'. Therefore, it can be stated that language is part of human nature and its peculiar characteristic of creativeness and the possibility of obtaining infinite number of results with a finite vocabulary makes language even more interesting to study. However, where is language found? Is it innate or is actually learnt through time? In order to give response to these questions, the very well-known linguistic Noam Chomsky had came to a theory where he stated that there is a part of the brain responsible for language acquisition as this capacity to speak is primary inherent. He also added by another theory named The Generativity of Language that all children create new constructions, words and sentences although this might have not been reinforced previously. Studies made in Nicaragua with deaf children proved latest Chomsky's point that children can make up their own language in order to communicate, first by using words and after by adding a hierarchical linguistic construction. The reason for this is then the existence of an innate structure of language that enables kids to generalize the rules of language such as grammar and syntax. Moreover, language acquisition is further supported by the model based on the poverty of stimulus which suggest that more language is generated than heard or rewarded as some cultures do not consider speaking to their babies because they cannot produce a word but these still acquire language in the end. Further studies have came to the conclusion that language relates more to underlying cognition rather than being a primary motoric activity where some proves are, in first place that deaf babies
