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Chomsky's bio-linguistics approach and the language universals

Article · January 2011

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Chomsky's bio-linguistics approach and the language universals

Anatomists know very well about all the organs of our body except one. That is
brain. Though brain is a walnut shaped gray lump with some quantity, the
mind that emerges from the brain pervades the whole universe. The
convergence of the mind and matter is still an enigma that has to be explored.
Brain helps us feel the pain in any part of the body but it itself doesn't have the
ability to feel pain. This is another amazing thing. As I'm a student of
Linguistics, I studied a bit about brain especially the so called language areas in
Brain. Neuro surgeons Broca and Wernicke found some points in the left
hemisphere of the brain and located in the sylvan fissure or lateral sulcus where
most of the language processing is said to take place. But after the advent of
sophisticated biomedical instruments like fMRI and PET scans neurologists are
able to see the thoughts of their patients. Though the language processing is said
to take place in two points located in and around lateral sulcus, and language is
predominantly a left hemisphere specialization, when they used fMRI scan they
observed that even many of the areas in the right hemisphere also got activated.

The renowned professor in Linguistics who introduced bio-linguistics approach

said proposed innateness hypothesis and said that the language internalizing
abilities are acquired by children by birth. So a newborn child enters this world
with built in language capabilities that are hardwired into brain in the form of
language templates. Chomsky said that there are language universals which are
common to all the languages on this earth. For example, all the languages
spoken by different communities, nationalities and tribes have many similar
qualities like they all have sounds, words, sentences and nouns etc. In spite of
all the differences among the languages there are many features that are in
common and Chomsky termed them as language universals. Language
universals are embedded in the form of templates and help the children to
internalize their mother tongue at an amazing pace. Once a child gets exposed
to a language it gets used to that particular language and other language
templates slowly get discarded. These language universals constitute universal
grammar and Universal Grammar enables children to acquire their mother
tongue in spite of the fact that they face the problem of poverty of stimulus.

The Harvard psychologist B.F Skinner who introduced Behaviorism stated that
humans do not get anything by birth but they learn or acquire everything by a
 process called stimulus-response and reinforcement. But Chomsky stated that
children do not actually get adequate stimulus from their parents or the people
in the vicinity. Even if they get some stimulus it is found to be imperfect. Most
of the parents are not positively inclined to correct the language related
mistakes of their children and even the children do not like to be corrected for
their mistakes. So Chomsky says that there is in fact poverty of stimulus and the
universal language or the LAD (Language Acquisition Device) which is said to
be hard wired into the brain helps the children to overcome this problem of
poverty of stimulus.

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