Youness Boussaid

Portsmouth University, School of Languages and Applied Linguistics

DOI : https://doi.org/10.58806/ijsshmr.2023.v2i12n01

Google Scholar Download Pdf
ABSTRACT

Language is a tool of expression and communication. This comes naturally to us that we take language for granted. We rarely question ourselves if we can ever survive without a language. How do we learn a language? Why do we learn languages, especially our first language, so fast? These questions have been the center of a contentious and still continuous debate. A debate that brought about several theories that endeavor to explain how the human language became intricate and advanced, yet so easily learnable. Chomsky (1959) claimed that language is an innate ability that is hardwired in our brains. Others, such as Everett (2012), argued that language is a cultural tool that humans invested to satisfy their communicative needs.

REFERENCES

1) Chomsky, N. (1959). A review of B. F. Skinner’s Verbal Behaviour. Language, 35(1), 26–58. doi:10.2307/411334

2) Everett, D. (2012). Language: The cultural tool. Vintage.

3) Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Macmillan.

4) Vargha-khadem, F., & Liégeois, F. (2007). From speech to gene: the KE family and the FOXP2. Advances in consciousness research, 68, 137-48. https://doi.org/10.1075/aicr.68.12var

5) Mitchell, R., Myles, F., & Marsden, E. (2013). Second language learning theories. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

6) Pinker, S. (2007). The language instinct. HarperCollins.

7) White, L. (2003). Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar. Cambridge University Press.

8) Tomasello, M. (2008). The Origins of Human Communication. MIT Press.

9) Shannon, C.E. (1948) A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 27, 379-423. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x

10) Culicover, P. W. (1999). Syntactic Nuts: Hard Cases, Syntactic Theory, and Language Acquisition. Oxford University Press.

11) Chomsky, N. (2015). Syntactic Structures. Martino Publishing.

12) Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. M.I.T. Press.

13) Chomsky, N. (1993). Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110884166

VOlUME 02 ISSUE 12 DECEMBER 2023