Kitara Smith Analytical Essay #3 3/8/18

Language is Not Innate

Social interaction is when humans communicate with one another to share ideas. Initial linguistic input is more broadly defined as language an infant is exposed to. Adults have a modular, language, that is culturally shaped. Through education and experiences, abilities become a module. This biologically determined modular lets us learn language but that does not mean the language is innate. Innateness implies humans do not require social interaction to learn a language, it is just something a person is born knowing. Pinker and Tomasello both agree humans are born with a cognitive device, biologically determined, but disagree on the innateness of this device. Pinker believes we are born with a language acquisition device (LAD) whereas Tomasello believes we are born with a non-modular general cognitive device. Domain specificity supports the LAD and the idea of poverty of the stimulus. This is where social interaction is helpful but not necessary. However, domain general supports the non-modular cognitive device where humans are born with parameters to use the social interaction that fully develops the grammar. Therefore, social interaction from parents is important in order to master grammar. Pinker believes that humans are born with a domain specific LAD to learn language, but LAD does not incorporate the role of social interaction. On the other hand, Tomasello’s general cognitive device includes the important role of social interaction which is necessary to master grammar. Social interaction is necessary for language acquisition.

Pinker supports the hypothesis of domain specificity (LAD) -that we have a mental capacity for language where social interaction is not necessary- but language is not innate. Pinker believes there are levels that need to be unlocked in the brain as humans develop but has no evidence to back up this hypothesis. “Children develop complex grammars rapidly without formal instruction and give consistent interpretations to novel sentence constructions that they’ve never encountered” (Pinker, 22). With no formal evidence for proof, the environment is necessary for children to gain information to form syntactical sentences. Language is social not necessarily biological. In contrast, Pinker supports “language as an evolutionary adaptation.” (Pinker, 24). However, language is not an instinct because we still have to learn how to communicate by interacting with other humans. If there is no other person to communicate with, then a human will not develop syntactic language. Also, different people from different cultures learn different sentence structures, so it does not make sense that learning language does not require social interactions with specific cultures. “Sophisticated linguistic form in a non-industrialized people has an applicative sentence construction different from others” (Pinker, 27). Babies from one culture hear frequencies more than babies from another culture so will say certain phonemes before others based on what they are exposed to the most. Babies do not prefer a speech sound; therefore, we have a general cognitive device. On the other hand, Pinker believes a person’s success is innate. “Web spinning does not depend on having had the right education or aptitude for architecture” (Pinker, 18). I do not agree with Pinker’s comparison of words to webs because a person’s language is highly influenced by culture and their environment.

Tomasello supports the hypothesis of domain general cognitive device, where humans are not born with a modular. Humans are born with abilities that may develop into a modular through experience; but by depriving people access to high quality education, they will also be deprived of learning the grammar and syntax used in the majority of society. Imitation does play a part in the dialect and spelling of a language. Children develop a dialect from people they hear in their culture. Pinker may not support that imitation is necessary to develop language; however, social interaction does matter because different languages have different sentence structure. Therefore, a child’s acquisition will be slower or faster than children from other languages since some languages are more complex than others. Language is complex so there has to be some form of training or learning to master this faculty. Theories require supported by research. “Pinker only relied on logical arguments or formal considerations, not behavioral observations in the scientific study of human behavior. Therefore, he could not account for many natural language phenomena nor his argument that abstract syntax cannot be learned by observing language use” (Tomasello, 1995, 131). In order to support a claim, there needs to be some sort of factual evidence. Pinker relied on Chomsky’s evidence of this concept, and his experimental evidence is more theoretical than scientific. In an experiment, “children generalized variations they observed in recurrent tokens of the same utterance. They created novel utterances for themselves via usage based syntactic operations where they began with an utterance level schema and modify it for the exigencies of the particular communicative situation” (Tomasello, 2001, 61). In other words, children hear people around them and reproduce those syntactic sentences by imitation, then adjust the grammar according to the current situation. This is the expression and understanding of communicative intentions as a result of social interaction.

The cognitive device supports the claim that social interaction is necessary to master grammar whereas LAD does not believe social interaction is required to learn a language. Although domain specific LAD is seen as something we are born with to acquire language, the domain general cognitive device can be used to acquire language because social interaction is important when learning a language.

Word count: 895

 

 

 

 

Work’s Cited

Pinker, Steven. “An Instinct to Acquire and Art.- Chatterboxes.” The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind, vol. 71, no. 3, 1995, pp. 15–35. Penguin Books, doi:10.2307/416234.

Tomasello, Michael. “Language Is Not an Instinct.” Cognitive Development, vol. 10, no. 1, 1995, pp. 131–156., doi:10.1016/0885-2014(95)90021-7.
Tomasello, Michael. “First Steps toward a Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition.” Cognitive Linguistics, vol. 11, no. 1-2, 2001, doi:10.1515/cogl.2001.012.