Assignment 7

Language is a detrimental aspect of our lives. Throughout history, philosophers have debated whether innate ideas play a role in language acquisition, and if so, to what extent. It was believed that language was a product of our general ability to reason. It was seen as the things that made us special and set us apart from other species. Descartes, a philosopher, looked at language use as a way to distinguish humans from "machines" and "beasts". He proposed that the acquisition of concepts and knowledge was the real mystery behind it all. 

In the 20th century, linguists, psychologists, and philosophers began too look into language further. When our use of syntax and semantics became more advanced, they came the realization that knowing a language was not simply a matter of associating words with concepts. Instead, it also involved putting words together in order to convey our thoughts. Modern theories suggests that language is a very complex thing. However, humans are able to use these complicated syntactic and semantic rules to communicate hundreds or thousands of times per day effectively and effortlessly. Because of this, it is believed that humans have a very special brain that enables them to learn and speak natural language.Chomsky's view on language was that the brain contains innate knowledge of  various linguistic rules, constraints and principles. This innate knowledge then primes the brain to comprehend and learn language through exposure. 

The section that I wanted to focus on specifically is the critical period for language acquisition. Lenneberg argued that children can acquire language unproblematically but only during the critical period. This period lasts until about late childhood to early puberty. To support this argument, Lennberg stated the facts that mentally challenged children's language development stops around puberty; that ‘wild children' who grow up with no or little exposure to human language, exhibit severely compromised language skills; and  that whereas very young children are able to relearn language after aphasias produced by massive left-hemisphere trauma (including hemispherectomy), aphasias in older children and adults are typically not reversible.

In addition, Lennberg studied language recovery after trauma. It was found that older children, even those who did not succeed at learning a language previously, can recover from trauma to the left hemisphere well after the "critical" and "sensitive" periods. It is equivalent to learning a language from scratch as an adolescent. As far as adults, most of them regain at least some degree of language competence. Many of them recover to substantially normal competence. This is likely due to regeneration of the damaged areas and compensation of damaged areas by other areas of the brain. However, it was shown through a series of studies that language acquisition after trauma can vary person to person, and that even very young children may not recover from certain damage to these areas.