Amjad Soomro Sukkur
Man being the crown creature is considered unique among all the creatures. He enjoys great status in the world. It is only man who uses a very sophisticated tool when it comes to communication. Only man is capable to speak. Owing to this sublime ability of speaking he has distinguished himself among various species. We as human, immediately make guess of an individual’s age, gender, and education background when we hear someone speaking. Thus, language is the central feature of identification for all and sundry.
Significantly, acquisition of language has always been a very interesting phenomenon for linguists. It has drawn the attention of many linguists across the globe. Hundred of theories have been proposed by linguists, behaviorists and psychologists to discuss the notion, how a child acquires language but none has turned into cent percent authenticity. Well known figures like Noam Chomsky, Skinner, Pidget etc have greatly enlightened the feature of language acquisition. Through this article, I have tried to explore the very idea of language acquisition in the wake of chomskian and behaviorist approaches.
Research in this practical field of linguistics does not go back in very old times as that of Biology or Maths. This is nascent field under the linguistics domain.
Before shedding the light on the basis of scientific approach, it would be quite better to discuss it under religious domain.
Many religions including Islam and Christianity believe, God taught names to Adam and this is how language has flown. But historian deny this concept as they have very strong argument that the existence of man goes beyond Adam and Eve. However, some linguists believe that man has acquired language by simply imitating his surrounding of wild nature. Bow- Vow and Pho-Pho theory justify it.
Moreover, when it comes to present age, how actually the child begins to speak is a hot matter of discussion. Through the lens of behaviourist approach, it holds the view that children imitate the behavior of their parents or carers. Their positive attempts are eulogiesd while negative ones are go in vain. This is somehow true but this theory has been subjected to certain limitation.
The very first and foremost objection against this approach is that language is a set of structure or rules which could not be worked out simply by imitating individual utterances. A child often overgeneralizes grammatical rules. For example, they often prefer irregular verb over regular i.e goed instead of went. A part from it, children are unable to speak what an adult says. Thus, these limitations have turned this approach into fiasco.
Noam Chomsky, a renowned American linguist has proposed the theory of innateness. Chomsky believe that every child is born with a linguistics installed faculty in his/her mind which is called language acquisition device ( LAD) by Noam Chomsky. According to him, every individual’s LAD posses a set of universal grammar which works under the principle of generativism. A child begins to generate sentences when he is exposed to social interaction. To the concept of Chomsky seems valid as it has paved very authenticity of language acquisition.Furthermore, the experiment conducted on Genie who was deprived of social interaction was unable to speak. Hence, social interactions is very essential component for language acquisition. Generally speaking, this debate is unending, the authenticity about how language is acquired is unknown to linguists and psychologist. But to some extent, Chomskian approach justifies it. To conclude, it makes clear that the acquisition and origin of language shows ambiguity. To reach its true essence, it is better to have social exposure.
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