language
November 7th 2007 00:24
In 1800, a young boy was found in a forest in France, he was called the wild boy.
Despite many efforts and eventually some progress, the boy never learnt to talk. He was thought to have passed language learning periods.
Chomsky, theorist of the language in the 1950’s and onwards, thought that humans have a predisposition for speaking when brought up in the right environment.
When we think of it, none of all the things, we, humans learn, are as complex as the mastery of a language; and yet by the age of three or four, children are able to master their native language, with its countless words and subtle grammatical rules.
Most language theorists agree that the learning of a language “requires innate mechanisms that predispose children to it, coupled with an environment that provides adequate models and opportunities to practice.”
So far, 3000 separate languages are known in the world today.
We think that Grammatik is something that we learn, generally at school, but if we listen carefully to children around four years of age, we will then realize that they already have acquired most of the essential grammatical rules, if growing up in the right environment.
Of course they can’t describe or explain those rules (nor can most adults too anyway!), and yet they use it everyday!
Chomsky again stressed the idea that grammatical rules are fundamental properties of the human minds.
He was also convinced that there is a universal grammar, meaning by that, that every language does apply to the same fundamental principles, and same structures.
All languages include a set of symbols called morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of a language. For example, dog (which is a word too) is a morpheme, and “dogs” two of them, “dog” and “s”.
All languages are hierarchically structures and have rules, referred as the grammar of the language.
Grammar includes rules of phonology, which is how to arrange phonemes (vowels and consonants) to produce morphemes; and rules of morphology which specify how to arrange morphemes to produce words.
And finally, rules of syntax, which is how to arrange words together to produce phrases and sentences.
Of course all those rules differ from one language to the other, but the base and structure of it follow the same fundamental nature of the rules of language.
A person’s knowledge of the grammar of its language is generally more implicit than explicit.
If we compare humans to other animal species in this world on the subject of language, it seems that humans enter the world equipped in many ways for languages. We are born with anatomical structures in the throat that enable us to produce a broader range of sounds than any other mammal can produce and, we have in our brain an area specialized for language!
Despite many efforts and eventually some progress, the boy never learnt to talk. He was thought to have passed language learning periods.
Chomsky, theorist of the language in the 1950’s and onwards, thought that humans have a predisposition for speaking when brought up in the right environment.
When we think of it, none of all the things, we, humans learn, are as complex as the mastery of a language; and yet by the age of three or four, children are able to master their native language, with its countless words and subtle grammatical rules.
So far, 3000 separate languages are known in the world today.
We think that Grammatik is something that we learn, generally at school, but if we listen carefully to children around four years of age, we will then realize that they already have acquired most of the essential grammatical rules, if growing up in the right environment.
Of course they can’t describe or explain those rules (nor can most adults too anyway!), and yet they use it everyday!
Chomsky again stressed the idea that grammatical rules are fundamental properties of the human minds.
He was also convinced that there is a universal grammar, meaning by that, that every language does apply to the same fundamental principles, and same structures.
All languages include a set of symbols called morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of a language. For example, dog (which is a word too) is a morpheme, and “dogs” two of them, “dog” and “s”.
Grammar includes rules of phonology, which is how to arrange phonemes (vowels and consonants) to produce morphemes; and rules of morphology which specify how to arrange morphemes to produce words.
And finally, rules of syntax, which is how to arrange words together to produce phrases and sentences.
Of course all those rules differ from one language to the other, but the base and structure of it follow the same fundamental nature of the rules of language.
A person’s knowledge of the grammar of its language is generally more implicit than explicit.
If we compare humans to other animal species in this world on the subject of language, it seems that humans enter the world equipped in many ways for languages. We are born with anatomical structures in the throat that enable us to produce a broader range of sounds than any other mammal can produce and, we have in our brain an area specialized for language!
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