Determining the Domain of Postproverbials in Human Language Development Theories and Stages

Matatu ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 448-461
Author(s):  
Taiwo Adesoji Ayodele

Abstract Language acquisition is a fundamental phenomenon in the linguistic enterprise. Chomsky claims that, “the human brain provides an array of capacities that enter into the use and understanding of Language (the language faculty (FL))”. Using the descriptive approach, this paper explores, justifies, and determines the place of the human linguistic capacity to articulate and engage postproverbials vis-a-vis Chomsky’s model of grammar and few scholarly positions. This article aims at providing evidence that, compared to others; Chomsky’s idea of linguistic competence is the most appropriate account for the use and understanding of postproverbials. The study revealed that the first sentences/the intermediate proficiency stage presents humans with the capacity to develop, use, and understand postproverbials, and this attains full development at the advanced fluency stage to establish postproverbial as one of the capacities that the human brain provides, located in the FL, and that its use and understanding is consciously employed.

Author(s):  
Angela D. Friederici ◽  
Noam Chomsky

The language faculty is grounded in the human brain and allows any infant to learn any language. In her book, Angela D. Friederici offers a neurobiological theory of human language by integrating data from adult language processing, language development and brain evolution across primates. Describing the brain basis of language in its functional and structural neuroanatomy as well as its neurodynamics, she argues that differences in the brain that are species-specific may be at the root of human language.


2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glyn Hicks ◽  
Laura Domínguez

This article proposes a formal model of the human language faculty that accommodates the possibility of ‘attrition’ (modification or loss) of morphosyntactic properties in a first language. Modeling L1 grammatical attrition entails a quite fundamental paradox: if the structure of the language faculty in principle allows for attrition of morphosyntax, why is it apparently so heavily constrained and rarely attested? We demonstrate that the attrition paradox can be resolved with a model that integrates a formally explicit generative grammar (eschewing classical parameters in favor of functional feature assemblies; see Chomsky, 2000, 2001) into a generalized model of language acquisition that decouples linguistic input from acquisitional intake (following Lidz and Gagliardi, 2015). This implementation makes specific predictions about the input and intake conditions that favor and disfavor L1 attrition. We explore these predictions for one of the most widely studied areas of attrition, namely the realization of pronominals.


1972 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Chomsky

This study of language acquisition in children between the ages of six and ten investigates their linguistic competence with respect to complex aspects of English syntax. Thirty-six children were tested for knowledge of nine complex syntactic structures. Five of the structures proved to be acquired in sequence, revealing five developmental stages in acquisition of syntax. The nature of specific disparities between adult grammar and child grammar are discussed, and the gradual reduction of these disparities as the children's knowledge of their native language increases is traced. Of particular interest is the regular order of acquisition of structures, accompanied by wide variation in rate of acquisition in different children.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyang Yu

The human brain and the human language are precisely constructed together by evolution/genes, so that in the objective world, a human brain can tell a story to another brain in human language which describes an imagined multiplayer game; in this story, one player of the game represents the human brain itself. It’s possible that the human kind doesn’t really have a subjective world (doesn’t really have conscious experience). An individual has no control even over her choices. Her choices are controlled by the neural substrate. The neural substrate is controlled by the physical laws. So, her choices are controlled by the physical laws. So, she is powerless to do anything other than what she actually does. This is the view of fatalism. Specifically, this is the view of a totally global fatalism, where people have no control even over their choices, from the third-person perspective. And I just argued for fatalism by appeal to causal determinism. Psychologically, a third-person perspective and a new, dedicated personality state are required to bear the totally global fatalism, to avoid severe cognitive dissonance with our default first-person perspective and our original personality state.


Languages ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Draško Kašćelan ◽  
Margaret Deuchar

Research on code-switching was the province of specialists in linguistics alone in the latter part of the twentieth century and is still a valuable source of insights into the human language faculty [...]


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 60-71
Author(s):  
Alessandro Benati

In this paper, the role and nature of language and language development will be discussed. Research and theory in second language acquisition has demonstrated that (i) language is an abstract, implicit and complex system. Input (ii) plays a key role in language development; despite the fact that some knowledge of language is innate (iii). Overall, language development (iv) is ordered and stage-like and instruction (v) has a limited role. Theoretical and pedagogical implications will be highlighted.


1996 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 718-718 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Bley-Vroman

AbstractWhile child language development theory must explain invariant “success,” foreign language learning theory must explain variation and lack of success. The fundamental difference hypothesis (FDH) outlines such a theory. Epstein et al. ignore the explanatory burden, mischaracterize the FDH, and underestimate the resources of human cognition. The field of second language acquisition is not divided into camps by views on “access” to UG.


2017 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine E. Snow

The lessons I have learned over the last many years seem always to come in pairs – a lesson about the findings that brings with it a lesson about life as a researcher...Lesson 1. Even as a doctoral student, I believed that the sorts of social interactions young children had with adults supported language acquisition. In 1971, when I completed my dissertation, that was a minority view, and one ridiculed by many. I was, unfortunately, deflected from a full-on commitment to research on the relationship between social environment and language development for many years by the general atmosphere of disdain for such claims. In the intervening years, of course, evidence to support the claim has accumulated, and now it is generally acknowledged that a large part of the variance among children in language skills can be explained by their language environments. This consensus might have been achieved earlier had I and others been braver about pursuing it.[Download the PDF and read more...]


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