Language Development

What make humans different from animals? We can assume that both humans and nonhumans have language skills. However, the distinction is, while humans can use language in an intelligent manner, nonhuman’s use it just to signaling things and not in a sophisticated approach. The evolution of language may have required the evolution of vocal flexibility such as seen in human infants at a very early stage. In a research conducted, it has shown that human fetuses are able to memorize auditory stimuli from the external world. Whereas French newborns preferred to produce rising melody contours, German newborns more often produced falling contours (this patterns are consistent with the intonation patterns in both of these languages). This can be related to their ability to discriminate sounds even from their mother’ womb, such as their ability to separate male to female voice or from happy to neutral vocal. It has also shown in the ‘Werker’s Sound Discrimination Research’, infants are able to discriminate sounds until they are 10 months.  In the 1^st year, differential attention to native versus nonnative accents decreases as infants develop a sense of language constancy for the common native language.

The development of language in infancy and early childhood is one of the most crucial skills that can be accomplished by humans. Infants start to say their first words around 1 year of age and around 3 years they become capable of knowing more than 1500 words. Then they also become capable of putting words together and start to use language grammatically significant. Language development is also a good example for social learning through interaction with individuals and environment. Therefore, parenting is very important in such a period. Promoting child’s language development by using natural everyday activities, adjusting the way you talk to help children, developing more advance language skills, improving interaction are just several things that can be done while children developing their language skills.

Well then, the question stands still. Do our genetics or environment play a greater role in language acquisition? There are mainly three aspects of how a language learning ability develops. First one is: Learning Theory, which indicates that language acquired through reinforcements from environment (which cannot clarify the sophisticated language). Second one is: Interactionist Approach, which indicated that, there should be appropriate conditions of both biological and social in order to learn language. And the third one is: nativist/innatist perspective, which is pioneered by Noam Chomsky. It is believed that children are born with the ability to learn language. He proposed that children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD), an innate ability to understand the principles of language. Once exposed to language, the LAD allows children to learn the language at a remarkable pace. Linguist Eric Lenneberg suggests that like many other human behaviors, the ability to acquire language is subject to what are known as critical periods.

We can dramatically see the proof of the ‘sensitive time in language learning’ from the feral children. In the story of Genie, who has kept in a small room for 13 years without any communication to outside world, she founded with lack of many crucial skills. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) provided funding for scientific research on Genie’s case. She soon began to make rapid progression in specific areas, quickly learning how to use the toilet and dress herself. Over the next few months, she began to experience more developmental progress, but remained poor in areas such as language. She has not only miss the critical period for learning language, she was also horrifically abused. In the end, researchers were left to wonder whether Genie had suffered from cognitive deficits caused by her years of abuse or if she had been born with some degree of mental retardation.

References:

[1] Functional Flexibility of infant vocalization and the emergence of language, D. Kimbrough Oller, Eugene H. Buder, Heather L. Ramsdell, Anne S. Warlaumont, Lesya Chorna, and Roger Bakeman

[2] Newborns’ Cry Melody Is Shaped by Their Native Language, Birgit Mampe, Angela D. Friederici, Anne Christophe, and Kathleen Wermke

[3] The Development of Language Constancy: Attention to Native Versus Nonnative Accents, Christine Kitamura, Catherine T. Best, Robin Panneton

[4] The Hanen Centre, Learning Language and Loving It

[5] Lenneberg, E. (1967), Biological Foundations of Language, New York: Wiley

[6] Rymer, R. (1993), Genie: A scientific tragedy, New York: Harper Collins