The question of the innate nature of human language ability

Linguistic ability in psychology and linguistics is considered a person's ability to generate and perceive speech works. Where does this ability of a child come from? Is it inherited or is it the result of his mental development? In modern science, there is still no unity in deciding the question of the nature of a person’s genetic predisposition to language. Observing a child, we are confronted with a miracle: in some three or four years, he, without any help, masters such a complex communicative system as our language is. It is hard to believe that a newborn baby has no genetic prerequisites for language ability. Similar considerations have led many scientists to the hypothesis of innate knowledge, which provide language learning. Thus, the famous American linguist Noam Chomsky suggested the existence of deep syntactic structures in the mind of a newborn that facilitate mastering the language system. Tradition in foreign science, originating from the largest psychologist of this century, J. Piaget, connects mastering the language with the development of intelligence. Most Russian scientists are inclined to believe that the roots of language ability lie not in the language itself, but in the relationship of objective reality and human activity.

In order to at least a little clarify this is not a simple question, consider some facts.

The problem of genetic heritability of language ability arose before people in antiquity. She pushed the eastern

rulers, endowed with unlimited power, to cruel and sometimes inhuman experiments. One of these experiments is described in the General History of the Mongol Empire. A certain Khan Akbar wanted to find out which language is the most ancient. According to him, such a language should be the one in which the children speak, even if they are not taught any language. To test his, as we would say now, “hypothesis”, he ordered to collect twelve babies of various nationalities and lock them up. The children were given to the twelve dumb nursing mothers. The silent gatekeeper guarded the gates of the castle, where, on pain of death, no one was supposed to enter. When the children reached twelve years old, the khan ordered to bring them to his palace. Experts and experts in ancient languages ​​were invited here: Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean, Sanskrit, etc. However, the results of the “experiment” surprised and disappointed those present: the children did not speak at all in what language They learned from their nurses to do without language and expressed their desires and feelings with gestures that replaced words with them. The children were wild and shy and were a very pitiful sight ...

Another similar experiment, if I may say so, has repeatedly led life itself. In science, it is known as the “Mowgli phenomenon.” The most famous experience of this type was the case of two girls, described in many textbooks, found by Indian hunters in the jungle in 1920. The girls lived together with wolves in a wolf's den. Seven-eight, the youngest - about one and a half years. Indian psychologist Reed Singh took care of raising children, calling the eldest Kamala, and the youngest - Amal. According to their behavior de the glasses looked like wolves: they ran on all fours, sniffed at food, snapped and even howled like wolves at night. They could not walk upright and could not speak. With great difficulty, the children absorbed human habits. Younger, Amala, died a year later. The eldest, Kamala, lived for another ten years, and only three years later she began to pronounce the sounds of human speech, she managed to pronounce the first sentence only after five (!!) years of living with people. Kamala never learned how to speak, and by the age of seventeen

age correctly used only 40 words. Fully make her man failed ...

Similar to the above-described reasons cause the most severe developmental disorder of the psyche, which hospital science called the syndrome of hospitalism , that is, a violation of intellectual and speech development caused by a lack of communicative and emotional impact of adults on a child in early childhood. Most often, a similar phenomenon is observed in orphanages, etc., that is, in places where orphans are kept. It even becomes the cause of increased child mortality in such institutions. In the same cases, when the children still survived and grew up, they subsequently showed a lag in their mental and speech development.

So, the first conclusion that we can draw on the basis of the above facts: a specific national language is not inherited.

If the above wording is fair, then facts of a different order should be noted. First of all, we can state the speed of mastering any healthy kid with the language of his parents. This happens on its own without special efforts from adults. Meanwhile, the numerous experiences of teaching animals (even higher primates) to the language of people have not been successful.

An important fact indicating the predisposition of a person to sound communication is the presence in the brain of special zones that are responsible for generating and shaping speech. These zones, as we remember, were first opened in the second half of the 19th century. The center that directs the motor realization of speech (Broca's zone) is located in the frontal part of the left hemisphere of the brain; the center responsible for the perception and understanding of speech (the Wernicke zone) is located in the temporal part of the same hemisphere.

Another argument indicating the existence of hereditary mechanisms for mastering speech by a child can be considered some features of voice development, which will be discussed in more detail later. First of all - the presence of the stage of walking, which is a vocalization, necessary for warming up, training the speech apparatus, preparing it for further mastery of sound speech. No (even the most developed) animals have this stage. They have no stage of babbling, which in the early stages of its manifestation

includes sounds of various languages ​​(nasal, laryngeal, clicking, etc.). In the earliest period of voice development (from about one month), the child begins to work at an unconscious level, an imitative complex that causes the child to imitate mimic and, a little later, the voice manifestations of the behavior of the people around him. Perhaps it is this complex that allows human children to adapt among animals (the “Mowgli complex”). In any case, it is clear that in addition to unconditioned reflexes associated with vital functions (swallowing, sucking, grabbing, etc.), the child also has a certain language acquisition program, the “language instinct”.

Now we can already conclude about the possibility of genetically transmitted ability to language: despite the fact that a specific national language is not inherited, the ability to master any national language is inherent .