Noam Chomsky on Language Aquisition 

Chomsky is a fool

@@franciscoo7478 bait

Is his hypothesis true?

@@franciscoo7478 why

@@oscarmoreno2585 The existence of universal grammar is hotly debated within the field today. His hypothesis cannot be said to be true or false, although a majority of linguists do subscribe to some version of it. Many believe that UG may be true for some domains of language acquisition, but not others.

funny use of the word

why did i find this funny lol

+Ezgi çelebi Why?

+Caffa Jake i love her so much from x files

+Ezgi çelebi Oh, watch Hannibal she is on another level.

Aaaaaaand american gods ;)

AHAHAHA SAME. I came for the schoolwork part of it and was like "OH MY GOD"

He’s gotta be one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Isaac newton status.

I do wonder what he actually said that was new, other than creating a way to transform between languages. Except the transformation doesn’t really work except in a broad sense.

Unless it's wrong. So far UG seems to not be supported by evidence.

She's Gillian Anderson

Chomsky is a fool.

@@franciscoo7478 “Only a fool would call someone a fool without explaining why they are a fool”

@@whc1737 that's exactly what chomsky did to BF Skinner. He called him a fool and ruined the serious rise of applied behavior analysis. ABA is still relatively unknown. Chomsky shot his mouth off and ruined something distinguished. Go ahead and look up Skinner V Chumpsky.

@@franciscoo7478 You are no longer a fool, Thanks for explaining. I will check it out later 👍

@@franciscoo7478ABA will continue to be unknown, though the reason for this is the apparent paradox that it is too well known. We don't study the interstellar ether, either, though many will want to cling to the ether expertise they already have. Rather than call Skinner a fool, Chomsky exposed the unsupported claims of ABA, and the faulty logic that was its structure.

Indeed, I also think because it implies the existence of a creator as well if you really look between the lines. 🤔

@@NarutoUzumaki-xg9et Lol no they don't

@@user-jw6yh4ev4n string theory dose

+flyamil How does this make sense? Chinese children learn languages with very different grammar. Either this representation of Chomsky's theory is very much simplified or it is just nonsensical in my opinion.

+BigBadWolf I think all natural languages share the same building blocks which make logical thinking possible. I don't think our mind at birth is a clean slate. The meaning of works like yes, no, me, you, stop, now, later, etc. are probably hard wired in several parts of our programming that makes us survive even without language or before being born. Maybe when we first learn a natural language, we use a natural ability to classify words (actions, things, physical properties, time or space related attributes, etc.) and link them to algorithms we implement without realizing. I haven't read any of chomsky's books in this subject, but I would like to. If anyone can suggest where to start, let me know. I am not good at finishing books. I get easily distracted. That's why I loved this video :)

So you want to purely base human language on behavioral instincts? Good luck.

+BigBadWolf No. We wouldn't have natural languages without human interaction. We learn a clumsy natural language with share with others just to communicate. Which is slow and inefficient compared to thinking. Sometimes we verbalize it in our minds out of habit. But we don't need it to make decisions. I feel that we have a more efficient language already built in that we developed without knowing. We probably use something sort of like feelings rather than words. It is different for each person based on human experience. Only the most basic building blocks we have before birth. I am curious, what do you think is missing the most in this picture?

+flyamil I can see where you are coming from. I believe that we are born with feelings (social behaviours in a way) which bleed into our formation of language. Those have evolved over the years and are hardwired in our brains. But I don't see any good arguments for why language and grammar per se should be part of that hardwiring. I believe it is rather obvious that it is certainly not. What do you think would happen if we abandon baby humans on an island and try to "grow" an uneducated society. I'm sure you'd agree that they will develop a very simple language in support of their rudimentary social behaviour - nothing like today's languages. Without building a "norm" through the passing of knowledge from generation to generation, it would probably remain that way. This is also the case in my opinion why language is so young compared to the human evolution. Which picture are you referring to? The easiness on our language acquisition? I guess it is not easy at all. It is just easier than most other things because it builds on problems we try to solve in a very early age and because young humans are very good in learning fresh knowledge. Once a basis of thinking is established it seems to be very hard for the brain to adapt afterwards. For me, the biggest question to answer is how we are able to create those hierarchies of associations in our brains. Those inner representations of words and the associations with different meanings seem to be the key to the proficient use of language. Young humans are just better at learning such "structures" than older ones. I, therefore, argue that language acquisition of young humans is not really important for the study of language understanding. Would you argue otherwise?

Chomsky actually said that the power switches off "by puberty or somewhat earlier," not 5. Plenty of adult language learners reach very high levels of fluency. But schoolchildren who have little motivation to study another language usually achieve far less than native mastery. And it is uncontroversial that our ability to learn slows down with age.

J Lieto The key idea is that children at a certain age can learn a language without being taught -- no instruction, no special class, no nothing. That's the whole idea. Obviously adult learners "reach very high levels of fluency." That's beside the point. They can do so only by means of instruction, and special efforts. So you can take your "uncontroversial" [imitating C's manner and phrasing, we see. So funny.] and, basically, shove it. What Moesy Pittounikos says is completely true.

@@brandgardner211 Yes, which is why adults learning a foreign language need to make a conscious effort to learn grammar, the structure of the language, while young children seem to unconsciously absorb the language they're exposed to, without consciously thinking about grammatical rules. This is because they have an innate ability to understand the structure of the language they hear, just as Chomsky pointed out with his concept of ''universal grammar''

Not true. In the 1950s, Chomsky was right that the behaviourists in the early 20th century could not explain how infants learned language, but you need not go from one extreme (empiricism) to the other extreme (nativism). Chomsky never studied infant development. If he did, he would agree with developmental psychologists in the late 20th century and 21st century that the data suggest something very different from either behaviourism or nativism. In short: it's complex. A lot happens from when the fetus is in the womb to when the child can first string together sentences. And they learn single words before grammar.

Yes, she was born in the UK, but her family moved to the US when she was a teenager I believe.

She spent her formative years living in England and lives there today. She says that when she's in America she speaks with an American accent because it makes things easier for her (idk what that means), but everywhere else she uses an English accent.

@@retop56 I had no idea; interesting.

THATS WHAT I WAS THINKING!!!! I was like wow this sounds a LOT like Scully but this voice is English that doesn't make sense, then I read this comment and WOW this is so cool

@@retop56 people understand you better if you speak with an accent they are expecting to hear. So it's easier if you can code switch (i.e. switch accents to fit in) when you travel. Not everyone can do it. Some people do it kind of automatically, just pick up the speech patterns of those around them.

thinks*

to hell with prescriptivism

Li V Provided it occurs before puberty, a second language may be acquired as easily as a first.

It's a different thing. According to him after the critical period (after 8 or 9) LAD no longer becomes very sensitive to other languages which makes it a bit harder to acquire compared to first language. You can read Stephen Krashen's works though .he is a specialist in 2nd language acquisition and he has a great theory..

I think that's not true. Chomsky's ideas have been challenged, yes, and that's something very good for linguistics, but the basic nativistic foundation of generative grammar has not yet been proved or disproved. For some linguists, as myself, it's still the best explanation for a great lot of pheanomena and a good foundation for theoretical linguistics' research programs.

Your points 1) and 2) are generic and wrong. For instance, you claim : ".. there is almost no practical scientific data to prove linguistic theory." Um, why should I take your word for it? On the contrary, there are shitloads of scientific data that shines buttloads of light on the processes by which humans acquire language. You make the assumption that children must be kept in isolation to learn something about human language acquisition. This is a completely unwarranted assumption. Etc. etc etc

Yuki Twirly Butts.

I was thinking more along the lines of "when do humans acquire language?". Well, from when we are born and come in contact with language. I see a practical problem in doing studies with 0-3 year-olds.

Observing 0-3 yr olds is not inherently immoral. Parents do it all the time. Much is already understood about language acquisition. I only object to your blanket denial of all that has been learned so far. For instance, the idea that the mind is a tabula rasa has been completely discredited due to the work of scientists.

HaploidCell You really need to think things through before you post and try to disprove your own claims and ideas which, in this case, wouldn't have taken more than a 10 minute Google search. You also need to learn to distinguish between fact and opinion. Your whole argument amounts to nothing else than an argument from ignorance. Why bother posting that?

Not true, extreme cases of neglected children clearly show that the quality of stimulus is also a factor

Goedelite Kurt: The hard-wired nature of grammar and syntax is the only explanation we have so far for the ability of children to express whole sentences years before they will be able to name the parts of speech. There is no Japanese L.A.D. and there is no Italian L.A.D., but the likelihood of the general one is very high, as we have observed adopted children from one culture effortlessly acquiring the idiomatic speech of their new families. Also, after all these years of Professor Chomsky's theory we still hear talk of "the invention of human language", as if we all got together one day and verbalized our DNA. "Once the adults were brought up to speed, they passed the new invention on to their children" is nonsense. To some, we seem to "rise" into our ability to speak and that is as good a metaphor as any for now. Chomsky slammed into our most brainless assumptions about language back in the 1960s and still, otherwise intelligent people talk as if language is knowable in the way that arithmetic is knowable.

Their languages would have more complexity to them. Additionally their front cortexes aren't developed enough for complex thought either.

would you provide any reference to the evidence? If yes, thank you in advance

@@cupwithhandles it’s only something I heard so I could just be spouting nonsense. There is an article in scientific American that tries to rebut it but I can’t read all of it without a subscription, and another article in the same journal rebuts that article.

@@cupwithhandlesJust check the book “Don’t sleep, there are snakes” by Daniel Everett. He found a language that absolutely challenges universal grammar. Of course the academic elite has tried to ridicule him anyway.

Thuy L Then what's your hypothesis, genius?

Humans are good at learning language because we are good at learning everything, genius