The Theories Of Why Language Develops

A, B, C, D…

How in the world that those letters started to make sense to us? How from that letters we are able to form words that brought us where we are now? How from that letters, are we able now to form our thoughts and just say it right away with a quick movement of our lips? As you began to further read this paper, certain theories on how and why language develop will come through. Let’s start first with what really is Language?

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Language is a system of conventional, spoken or written symbols by means of which human beings used to communicate with each other. Also, Language in its form is an 'original noise' used in actual social situations (“Definition of Language”, 2018). To dig deeper with Language's definition, Atlantic International University (n.d) stated that Language is much more than spoken or written words rather it has five distinct characteristics that comprised its true definition; it is a system, is dynamic, has dialect, is sociolect and idiolect.

Language is a system as it has varying linguistic levels. Phonological, the basic level where it relates the differences in sounds to differences in meanings. Lexical level comprises of morphemes with attached definitions. Syntactic level, where words are specifically arranged in a sentence to relay a thought. Language is always changing, thus it is dynamic. So much that certain words and phrases are lost in the past. The literature of Shakespeare exemplifies this one (Atlantic International University, n.d).

Language has dialect as it describes the regional differences of language (e.g., South American English is very distinct from North American English). Language is sociolect for it is directly related to the speaker's social class. For example, just like how kings and queens would use formal language all the time different on that of a pauper. Language is idiolect for it refers to speech habits of an individual where it includes voice quality, pitch, intonation, word choice, and many other factors (Atlantic International University, n.d).

Many scholars and thinkers also had their shares in giving Language’s definition. Wilhelm Von Humboldt, thinker from the Enlightenment Era stated in his 1810/11 Schriften Zur Sprache that “Every language creates certain intellectual boundaries for its speakers”. As Von Humboldt elaborates, Language is “an independent entity that guides human beings as much as it is created by them”. Edward Sapir, a linguist who agrees with Von Humboldt, for him language as it was created and employed to communicate a particular world view, reinforces this world view by the very act of communicating (Luck, 2020:18&19).

Noam Chomsky, the most influential linguists of the twentieth century professed that human brain is biologically programed to learn language, so language faculty for him, is innate (Barman,2012:104). Chomsky says that language composes of finite or infinite sentences where each finite length are constructed out of a finite set of elements (“Definition of Language”, 2018). Now that we are all familiar, on what is Language from its technical definition and from some insights of greatest scholars and thinkers, We can now move on how Language developed among us, humans.

Animals may not be able to form words or sentences like us, but they can certainly communicate through the use of sounds and movements. Primates, do have an advanced system of communication, including vocalization, hand gestures, and body language (Bryant,2010). The late Koko the gorilla, had mastered over 1,000 ASL(American Sign Language) signs and could understand 2,000 spoken English words. Kanzi, a bonobo monkey, has the ability to communicate using lexigram keyboard. Two more studies discovered that Kanzi was able to correctly respond to over 70 percent of 660 spoken requests and could also make primitive tools when instructed how (Cromwell,2018).

But, despite of these two exceptional primates who are able to grasp the idea of Language in communication, they are still not able to achieve what has the human race has reached which is the “spoken language.” The ability to express our train of thoughts into spoken words (Bryant,2010). Language development paved the way for this exceptional breakthrough of the human species. What is Language development? Language development is the process through which children acquire, or learn language. This acquisition of language usually happens in a fairly consistent order without requiring explicit teaching or effort from others (“Language Development”, n.d).

From an article coming from Guedim (2020), he stated that there are five(5) main theories of language development namely: (1) Daniel Everett’s Theory: Language Scratches the Communicative Itch, (2) Chomsky's Nativistic Linguistic Theory: Universal Grammar, (3) B.F. Skinner Behaviorist Theory, (4) Vygotski's Social Interactionist Theory, and (5) Piaget’s Constructivist Theory. From these given theories, only three were chosen to be explained further in this paper. The following are, Chomsky's Nativistic Linguistic Theory: Universal Grammar, B.F. Skinner Behaviorist Theory and Piaget’s Constructivist Theory.

The nativist linguistic theory, pioneered by Chomsky, postulates that every human being is born with innate language ability and suggests that a human baby's brain comes to the world pre-equipped with language-learning systems. Language Acquisition Device (LAD), a hypothetical concept of a built-in tool, a brain device, which was introduced by Chomsky that allows child to acquire linguistic abilities in short order (Guedim,2020).

In the view of the linguistic nativism, human infants have an access to some specifically linguistic information that is not learned from linguistic experience. Linguistic nativists have threefold claim. First, part of language cannot be put out from someone’s knowledge thus it cannot be acquired or learned by inductive methods. Second, language obtainment draws on an unlearned system. Third, there is a special component of the human brain which is responsible for the development of language, and no non-human species has anything of the sort (Barman,2012:113).

Universal Grammar(UG) are the set of rules of language that humans were born into. It is the basis upon which all languages are built. Chomsky makes it clear in this statement:

“The language faculty has an initial state, genetically determined; in the normal course of development it passes through a series of states in early childhood, reaching a relatively stable steady state that undergoes little subsequent change, apart from the lexicon. To a good first approximation, the initial state appears to be uniform for the species. Adapting traditional terms to a special usage, we call the theory of the state attained its grammar and the theory of the initial state Universal Grammar (UG).” (Chomsky, 1995: 14 & Barman, 2012: 113).

Children as they learn language, take it as a normal course of development because they were facilitated by Universal Grammar. When a child starts to listen to his or her parents, he or she will unconsciously recognize which kind of language he or she is using and he or she will set his or her own grammar to the correct one, this is known as the “parameter setting”. The evidence indicates that children, truly absorb a good number of sentences and phrases from them and then create their own grammar which soon will be used to create new utterances they never heard before (Barman, 2012: 114).

Chomsky believes, that with the use of instincts, children can learn language without any formal instruction. For him, children have the natural need to use language to meet their needs despite the absence of formal language and still develop a system of communication. Regardless of the language they are taught, he has observed that all children create the same type of language errors (“Human Language”, n.d). Thus it takes us to the conclusion that Chomsky’s Nativist Theory explains language as a biologically-based theory, where language is innate and once the child is exposed to language, LAD activates opening the chance for the child to learn and naturally develop language (Alexa,n.d).

Behaviorist theory was initially developed by John B. Watson, known for his collaborative research on reflexes and conditioned responses with Russian Physiologist Ivan Pavlov (Bélanger,2011: 17). It can be traced down on Watson's “habit formation hypothesis”. B.F. Skinner’s Behaviorist Theory of Language Acquisition was fully developed and propounded in his 1957 book Verbal Behavior(Ahmad,2019).

Behaviorist Theory of Language Acquisition insinuates that learning a language goes through a process known as operant conditioning. Operant means, it is a voluntary act of behavior, a result of the learner’s free will and not by the result of putting force by any outside person or thing. Conditioned behavior in a sense that it is a result of repeated training. This operant conditioning of Skinner focuses on either reinforcement or punishment in order to increase or decrease the likelihood of behavior (Ahmad,2019).

Positive reinforcements are rewards while negative reinforcements are punishments. Through the process between the behavior and the consequences of that behavior, an association is formed. The behavior that follows a response which reinforces it, thus helps to strengthen the so-called formed association (Ahmad,2019). Responses that are positively enforced are the ones that are easily repeated while those that are punished occur less often in the child's language and response development (“B F. Skinner”,2020).

Behavior theorists believes that the development of language is a learned behavior (Guedim,2020). For them, language is something you can observe and measure. When children are able to speak the language of their parents and be rewarded, they become more skillful. In this way, they grow their ability to respond in a manner that is able to respond to the environmental stimuli coming off from their parents. This fits to shape a child's language more than knowledge of rules (Wanjohi,2010).

For Skinner’s Behaviorist Theory, we can conclude that the need to use language is stimulated and is uttered in response to the stimuli (Wanjohi,2010). In operant conditioning, reinforcement plays an important role (Ahmad,2019). To the behaviorist, giving too much attention in the rules of language is not as important as the ability to speak because speaking in its full sense is what makes language real. The structure of language does not make it a language rather it is the purpose of speaking words that makes language, a language (Wanjohi,2010).

Jean Piaget’s work was mainly focused in cognitive development. While working with French psychologist Alfred Binet about the development of intelligence test, he came to realized that children of the similar ages gave some wrong answers. His lifelong dedication to study genetic epistemology was brought by this initial experience. In Piaget’s perspective, a child is born out to this world with certain traits and develops interactions with the environment to construct his/her own intelligence. This view has been what is called “Constructivism” (Ensar, 2014: 34).

For Piaget, cognitive development was a progressive reorganization of mental processes that serves as a result of biological maturation and environmental experience. He was the first psychologist to make a move to provide a systematic study of cognitive development. He believed that children construct an understanding of the world around them between what they already know and what they discover in their environmental (Mcleod,2018).

In line with this Constructivism view, as to what Ensar (2014,p. 34) had said, “constructivism is not a theory about teaching but a theory about knowledge and learning.” It shows that children cultivate their knowledge not by internalizing it directly from the outside but by constructing it from the inside, in interaction with the environment (Ensar,2014: 34). To put it simply, “Basically, a constructivist stance maintains that learning is a process of constructing meaning; it is how people make sense of their experience” (Bélanger,2011: 27).

Piaget’s theory of language development insinuates that children use both the assimilation and accommodation in able to learn language (“Human Language”,n.d). Assimilation where children use an existing schema to deal with the new object or situation introduced to them. Accommodation is when an existing schema does not work, and needs to be changed for the children to be able to deal with the new object or situation. Schema is the basic building block of intelligent behavior that enable us to form a mental representation of the world (Mcleod,2018).

We can now take into consideration this process of assimilation and accommodation of schemas in language development. As Piaget professed that it is thought that comes before language and that language is a way of representing thought (Ensar,2014: 36). He believed that children need first to undergo mental development before the language acquisition can occur. For him, children first create mental structures within the mind, this is represented by the schema, and from these schemas, language development happens (“Human Language”,n.d).

All these theories have their own reasons in explaining how and why did language develop in us, humans. For this part we just need to review some criticisms about each given theories but not in an exhaustive way.

Chomsky's Nativistic View

A language, must be intentionally taught, and is cultural other than biological (Lan,2019). Lan's (2019) notion is that we are born with legs but not to dance, just like how we are born with pre-equipped language- learning systems (Guedim,2020) but not to be easily developed once triggered.

Skinner’s Behaviorist Theory

Behaviorism tends to be superficial because it only considers what is observable and measurable when in fact there are many different unseen aspects of an individual which are important in his/her learning capabilities. Many critics also had said that Behaviorism is a 'one-dimensional approach' in understanding human behavior and that they do not account for free will and internal influences such as moods, thoughts and feelings (Flores,2013).

Piaget’s Constructivist Theory

Piaget focused more on the universal stages of cognitive development and biological maturation that he had failed to consider what effect may the social setting and culture have on cognitive development. He also failed to distinguish between competence and performance of a child. Several studies of him also have shown that he had underestimated the abilities if children because his tests were sometimes difficult or confusing to understand (Mcleod,2018).

Above-mentioned were just a small portion of criticisms on each of the theories. But if I were to choose amongst the three theories stated above that best explained the language acquisition, I will choose Jean Piaget’s Constructivist Theory. I believe myself, that children have an immense power of imagination that maybe it is really true for them to have schemas and undergone assimilation and accommodation in order to develop their language. As Ensar (2014,p.38) conclude in his work, “Constructivism is one of the best described and studied learning theories in education.” Piaget also was a pioneer of cognitive development(Mcleod,2018) which not too focused on the innate ability of a child but also take into consideration the experiences in real world (Guedim,2020).