Exploring the Universality and Diversity of Human Language Essay

Chomsky (1975), a noted linguist, turn overs that we atomic number 18 specific bothy designed to learn actors delimitate. As Biehler (1976) puts it, in that location atomic number 18 striking uniformities in languages of opposite cultures that follow well-formed patterns (universal grammar). Even Farrel (1978) agrees that in that location is an underlying design original to every(prenominal) languages. For all of them, language is simply a part of our contractable endowment, or as the evolutionist Haugen (1973) would say it, we admit the gift of language, or the universal gift of tongues. Chomsky and new(prenominal)(a) linguists believe that there are system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements of all gracious languages. Human languages chasten structure, which means they are composed of some(prenominal) words grouped basically by function (verbs, nouns, etc. ) and this is referred to in linguistic literatures as innate universal grammar. The adult male brain is equipped with a larn algorithmic rule, which enables us to learn certain languages.This algorithm can learn each of the breathing 6,000 mankind languages and presumably many more, and it is impossible that algorithm could learn both computable language (Nowak, Komarova and Niyogi, p. 615). What are the implications of all these? Regardless of cultural background, whatever language we know or use now, we are all innately predisposed to enshroud design in languages and we can substantially grasp and work around grammatical rules, however complex or boom they are.Although of course, young children are at an improvement in using this gift, as quantify in acquiring a language is important as well. Nonetheless, as a divisorral statement, regardless of cultural or ethnic background, mans rummy ability to communicate through language, in itself, is already a good deduction of the universality of language as a human cogency. As mentioned in the atlas verte bra of Languages (1996), there is no kn take in social club or community in the mankind that is language-less.From the evolutionists point of view, language is essentially a human trait and this is a all- male monarchful evidence on the universality of language. plot animals of the same kind mystify their own way of communicating, only macrocosm had the power of recursion to create an open-ended and limitless system of communication Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch, 2002, p. 1578). Why and how humans acquired the faculty of language and managed to spread from human to human and from culture to culture, (Knezek, 1997) are often the unwashed subjects of discussion of scholars.Evolutionists would agree that the faculty meditating human communication appears remarkably disagreeent from that of other living creatures. that the human faculty of language appears to be organized like the transmittedal code with respect to its scope of expression. Animals have been designed on the basis of highly conserved developmental systems that read an or so universal language coded in desoxyribonucleic acid base pairs, however, they lack a special K universal code of communication (Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch, 2002, p. 1569). vicissitude of Languages If there are over half dozen thousand (6,ooo) documented human languages in the world while evidences, as forward discussed, all point to what seem to be universal similarities in mankinds gift of language, what caused the present diversity of languages? Languages differ in so many ways, and it should be interesting to explore these differences primarily from the factortic and environmental viewpoints. In the 15 rarefied 2002 New York Times language article, wade mentioned the remarkable theory of Dr.Richard Klein, an archaeologist at Stanford University that the emergence of behaviorally modern humans most 50,000 years ago was set glowering by a major ingredienttic veer, most probably the acquisition of language. Could it be then, that there is a special gene linked to the innate ability of humans to acquire language? Which genetic change (s) led to changes in the biological oppose of human brain structures that would prove to be relevant for human language? A major feat in the moot of cognitive genetics is the discovery of the origin human gene specifically elusive in language through the efforts of Dr.Svante Paabo and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The gene named FOXP2 is known to switch on other genes during the development of the brain (Wade, 2002) The daybook Nature journal published the account statement of the findings (as cited in Wade, 2002) FOXP2 gene has remained largely unrevised during the evolution of mammals, but suddenly changed in humans after the hominid chore had split off from the chimpanzee line of descent. The changes in the human gene travel the structure of the protein it specifies at two sites.. unriv alled of them slightly alters the proteins shape the other gives it a new role in the signaling circuitry of human cells. The changes indicate that the gene has been under strong evolutionary twitch in humans. Also, the human form of the gene, . seems to have become universal in the human population. Humans must already have possessed some inherent form of language before the FOXP2 gene gained its two mutationsthe improved gene whitethorn have swept through the population, providing the polish touch to the acquisition of language.