Language is an Innate Human Ability

Describe some of the evidence supporting the view that language is an innate human ability.

Human language is described as a form of communication (Wesley, 1998). According to Wesley (1998), human language is unique in terms of how it uses the complex syntactic structure and how it is learned by observational learning. The reason of why humans have language could be due to the ability to learn any system of communication.

There are four thousand languages available in used throughout the world. Human being has no specific language, which is applicable universal as the speakers of different language are unable to understand each other’s language. However, common similarities among human languages are more remarkable than the differences among them (Gleitman, 2006).

The capacity to acquire a human language is innate since learners can naturally absorb the formal and substantive properties and readily pick up languages during the human development (Gleitman, 2006). The learner is equipped with a “bioprogram” that leads the learning process and makes the competence of learning a language possible (Luria et al., 2006). Gleitman (2006) argued that language learning proceeds evenly within and across linguistic communities even though a great variability of the language offered to each person regardless of races and culture. For example, in several countries like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, schoolchildren have to learn Chinese and English, in Malaysia, they have to learn three languages. It is expected that one may not master all languages concurrently, but it is possible to learn various languages in different environment as well. Secondly, children do not have particular experience of language, but have the capability to learn many linguistic generalisations. A person, who migrated to another country, is able to learn the new language and communicate with local residents after acculturation but not necessarily attending formal education.

References:

Gleitman, L. R. (2006). A Human Universal: The Capacity to Learn a Language. In H. Luria, D. M., Seymour, & S. Trudy (Eds.), Language and linguistics in context: Readings and applications for teachers (pp. 13-27). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.

Wesley, O. M. (1998). Formal approach to innate and learned communication: Laying the foundation for language (Doctoral dissertation, University of California, San Diego, 1998). Dissertation Abstracts International, 59 , 1B.