"Language is not just any cultural invention but the
product of a special human instinct."
Language does not have to
do with social progress.
There are Stone Age societies,
but there is no such thing as a
Stone Age language.
A language is a dialect with an
army and a navy
Speaking:
Grammatical
Well-formed according to
consistent rules in the dialect
of the speakers.
Ungrammatical
Sentences include randomly
broken-off sentence fragments
Language is invaluable for all the
activities of daily living
Necessity being the mother of
invention, language could have been
invented by resourceful people a
number of times long ago.
Universal grammar can simply reflect the
basic exigencies of human experience
All languages have words for "water"
and "foot" because all people need to
refer to water and feet.
No language has a word a million syllables
long because no person would have time
to say it.
Complex language is
universal because
children actually
reinvent it,
generation after
generation because
they just can't help it.
Pidgin
A makeshift jargon developed when
speakers of different languages have to
communicate to carry out practical tasks
but do not have the opportunity to learn
one another's languages
Becomes a more
complex language:
A group of children exposed to
the pidgin at the age when they
acquire their mother tongue:
It becomes their
native tounge
Creole
The language
that results
when children
make a pidgin
their native
tongue
Provides a
particularly
clear window
on the innate
grammatical
machinery of
the brain
Sign languages
They are not pantomimes
and gestures: each one is
a distinct, full language,
using the same kinds of
grammatical machinery
found worldwide in
spoken languages
Our mental algorithms for
grammar do not pick out words
by their linear positions,
Rather, group words into phrases, and
phrases into even bigger phrases, and
give each one a mental label
If language is an instinct >
it is an identifiable seat in
the brain,
(Grammar could fail, but not
grammar-dependent
understanding).
There are instances where
language is independent
from intelligence
All the cases
constitute a field
guide to language
users. They show
that complex
grammar is displayed
across the full range
of human habitats
"You don’t need extremely specific conditions to develop language. Indeed, you can possess all sort of advantages
and still not be a competent language user, if you lack just the right genes or just the right bits of brain."
Poverty of the input
-The basic design of language is innate
"Mastery is part of children's
grammar explosion, a period of
several months in the third year of life
during which children suddenly begin
to speak in fluent sentences".
language acquisition cannot be
explained as a kind of imitation