Please I really need help with the 6 questions. book : The Language Instinct by
ID: 3468277 • Letter: P
Question
Please I really need help with the 6 questions.
book : The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker, Reprint edition (ISBN: 9780061336461)
Dig deep into your understanding of the world to answer. page # at the end
Subjects
Research design
Variables investigated and compared
Results & implications
9.Compare and contrast Genie, Isabelle, and Chelsea. What are the distinguishing variables among them? What conclusions can you draw about the age effect on language acquisition? (298-301)
10. Pinker proposes a provocative way to look at the linguistic critical period. First, define the “critical period” and explain why this window closes earlier in life rather than staying open throughout one’s life. You will have to understand the cost-benefit analysis of evolution to be able to answer this question in a meaningful way.
Explanation / Answer
1. Steven Pinker’s given comment needs to be understood within the larger context of his theory of language acquisition. As a proponent of Cognitive Science, he emphasised the presence of innate linguistic structures in infants which then gradually develop into complex language system based on rules of grammar that are learned through socialisation. In this way, symbols are permuted into an unlimited set of combinations, each with a determinatbbe meaning. Pinker uses Chomsky’s hypothesis about the negative feedback to show that even when infants appear to acquire or learn language from the direct verbal leads and stimulation introduced by the words, they may produce some very unique phonetic combinations to represent objects, processes in their environment. Thus, the infant’s babbles or pre-speech such as ‘bow bow’ which they may use to communicate about a nearby dog, indicates that their speech is governed by certain innate mechanisms which may operate overt and above socialisation or leaning. Thus, Pinker uses Chomsky’s theory of linguistic mechanism to contest against Skinner’s theory of language as a learning behaviour. Chomsky’s Poverty of Stimulus argument makes a claim that children may incur deficits in the keanringof grammatically correct mother tongue in a deprived verbal environment. This lack in child’s Language ability is attributed to the absence of negative feedback which is essentially provided by caregivers under normal circumstances of child rearing. Negative feedback corresponds to a non-target specific signal about the correctness or ungrammaticality of the child’s utterance (e.g., clarification question). Pinker showed that negative input is not essential for successful language acquisition, as children may not overgeneralise the rules of correct grammar learned from parents to sub-verb forms. Thus, his study on the language acquisition of rules about Russian verb usage in 3-4 years old children made a strong case against the Behaviourist hypothesis about language as a learned process based on socialisation within the family and school.
Pinker locate himself Between Skinner and Chomsky and he asserts that language acquisition might be our best hope of finding out how heredity and environment interact. For Skinner, Language was learned, and thinking was assumed to be a form of verbal behavior, since verbal behavior is the prime manifestation of "thought" that can be observed externally. On the other hand, Chomsky argued that language acquisition falsified these beliefs as children learn languages which are governed by highly abstract principles, and they do so without explicit instruction.