Discussing the article, "Innateness and Language" by Fiona Cowie

There are many theories and there have been many debates over how humans learn a language. It has been an ongoing question since before the 20th century that was only explained with the fact that humans have the ability to reason unlike other animals. But today we know that learning a language is much more complicated due to all the rules of putting a sentence together with the right words with the right meaning (syntax and semantics). So if learning a language is so complex, then we must ask the common question, “How could mere children learn the myriad intricate rules that govern linguistic expression and comprehension in their language — and learn them solely from exposure to the language spoken around them?”
Image result for a child learning a languageAccording to famous structuralist, Noam Chomsky, the human brain is very special because it has a ‘language organ’ that is used for learning a language and eventually mastering it. Inside this ‘language organ’ are knowledges of multiple linguistic rules that we are born with. Once the child is exposed to their family and close peers, they will gain new knowledge from that specific language. The child learns that language’s grammar and how to speak it as well as how to hear and understand it.
Chomsky argued with behaviorist B.F. Skinner on this ‘nativist’ approach. Skinner proposed that individuals learn linguistic behavior (how we speak our language) based on operant conditioning. Operant conditioning in this sense would be that in order to learn, we must be given reinforcements for correct linguistic behavior and punishments for incorrect linguistic behavior. Skinner explains that, “‘knowing’ a language is really just a matter of having a certain set of behavioral dispositions,” which contradicts with Chomsky’s argument that language use is stimulus independent and historically unbound. This means that we can respond to any environmental stimulus with whatever words we want to use (stimulus independent) and we are able to say words and phrases that we have not yet been trained to say regardless of past reinforcements (historically unbound). Mastering a language involves way more than Skinner’s ‘behavioral dispositions’, it involves complex knowledge of that specific language’s rules and just being exposed to the language, listening and interpreting what is being brought in.
Image result for a child learning a language
I would have to agree with Chomsky’s arguments about how a language is learned/mastered because Skinner’s behaviorist approach using operant conditioning may be a way we learn certain behaviors, but it doesn’t necessarily relate to how we communicate. We have innate knowledge in our brain that causes a child to learn the specifics of a language easier than learning a new language when an individual is older and out of that critical period where their brain was still developing. Language isn’t taught to us through reinforcement because like Chomsky said, we are able to say things that no one has taught us because of exposure and the ability to understand and learn with our ‘language organ’.

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