Definition of Language

Language, a system of conventional spoken, manual (signed), or written symbols by means of which
human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture, express themselves. The
functions of language include communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression,
and emotional release. Language interacts with every aspect of human life in society, and it can be
understood only if it is considered in relation to society. Because each language is both a working system
of communication in the period and in the community wherein it is used and also the product of its
history and the source of its future development, any account of language must consider it from both
these points of view.

Nativist Linguistic Theories

Noam Chomsky published a criticism of the behaviorist theory in 1957. In addition to some of the
arguments listed above, he focused particularly on the impoverished language input children receive.
Adults do not typically speak in grammatically complete sentences. In addition, what the child hears is
only a small sample of language. The manner in which a child acquires language is a matter long debated
by linguists and child psychologists alike. The father of most nativist theories of language acquisition is
Noam Chomsky, who brought greater attention to the innate capacity of children for learning language,
which had widely been considered a purely cultural phenomenon based on imitation.

Chomsky concluded that children must have an inborn faculty for language acquisition. According to this
theory, the process is biologically determined - the human species has evolved a brain whose neural
circuits contain linguistic information at birth. The child's natural predisposition to learn language is
triggered by hearing speech and the child's brain is able to interpret what s/he hears according to the
underlying principles or structures it already contains. This natural faculty has become known as the
Language Acquisition Device (LAD). Chomsky did not suggest that an English child is born knowing
anything specific about English, of course. He stated that all human languages share common principles.
(For example, they all have words for things and actions - nouns and verbs.) It is the child's task to
establish how the specific language s/he hears expresses these underlying principles.

Social Interactionist theory

This theory is an approach to language acquisition that stresses the environment and the context in
which the language is being learned. It focuses on the pragmatics of language rather than grammar,
which should come later. In this approach, the beginning speaker and the experienced speaker--be they
child and adult or second-language learner and fluent speaker--exist in a negotiated arrangement where
feedback is always possible. The basic appeal of this approach is the importance it places on the home
and the cultural environment in early-childhood language acquisition. Language, according to this
theory, is not an innate ability. Rather, it develops in negotiating your environment. Hence, vocabulary is
bound by context or, alternatively, by the culture within which speech is necessary and understandable.

This approach to language acquisition is based on culture and environment. Thus, it is not universal in
scope. In fact, the theory holds that language is never universal, but always context- and time-bound. On
one hand, this means that language seems to be provincial, but also utilitarian, because it develops in
the environment where it is most needed and most likely to be understood. On the other hand, it keeps
the level of basic comprehension solely on the level of the initial environment. Transitions to other
environments, at least on the surface, seem to be a problem. (Lewis, 2010).

The primary reason to support interactionism is based largely on the idea that utterances make sense if
the teacher is aware of the context. This is the primary feature of the interactionist view. In this case,
thought does not make objects; it reflects them and the context in which they are found.
Comprehensibility, rather than grammar, is the primary concern of early-childhood language acquisition.
On the other hand, the mere absorption of words, in Chomsky's view, leads to nonsense phrases that
must be corrected through the teaching of structure and grammar. One view stresses the relation
between learner and culture; the other, between learner and arbitrary utterances of experienced
speakers.