Language Learning One of the Thesis

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The evidence for the biological basis of language is strong, however; researchers have found that newborn infants thought to be at a stage of development that precluded language abilities have been shown to recognize and express interest in spoken syllabic patterns over randomized syllables, and to retain that recognition over long periods of time (Gervain et al. 2008). The authors of this study conclude that the newborn brain is able to recognize at least the rudiments of language on their very frist encounter with it, which lends a huge amount of credibility to the belief that language is an innate skill possessed by the human brain. It must be noted, however, that infants must have an encounter with language in order to recognize it; that is, their capacity for language learning must by met by a teacher, passive though that teaching may be in the from of adults surrounding the child.

There is even an entire branch of science devoted to the study of how language developed, much of it concerned with the historical period, which suggests what seems intuitively true at first glance: that language continues to be adapted and modified, not just in the words we have and use but in the effects and uses of language itself, even as human appear to have basically reached a genetic stasis (Wortham 2008).

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The field of linguistic anthropology views language as innate part of humanity, it is true, but one that changes as conditions and people change (Wortham 2008). Such transformations would simply not be possible if language were hard-wired into the brain; the language skills we have inherited from the previous generation, and they from theirs, and so on, are simply not adequate to handle the changing landscape of today's world. Again, this is not a mere matter of vocabulary keeping up with technological advancement, but possibly a real difference in the way we think that is learned and adjusted as we as individuals and as a species live on.

Though there is certainly an innate biological basis for language, it is far from the sole cause and progenitor of language. Without the interactions that make up all learning, there would be no way for that potential to be fulfilled. The prime mover of language is our need to communicate; it is external interaction that motivates language and most learning, not internal biological drives. The latter view cuts off the individual from the community, which has been shown in science and in literature to be unhealthy, unwise, and productive for everybody concerned......

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