Week 8 : Classical Argument-The Confirmation

1. What is my thesis?

   -Parents should make their babies listen many languages since they are young

2. What type of sources am I using to defend my thesis?

   -I am using experts' opinions-many linguists and Noam Chomsky.

3. Are my arguments mostly based on evidence, logic or emotion?

   -I think I have many good evidences. However, I think the problem is how use those evidences. I have to use those logically. There are no emotional appeals, but I don't think they are very important in my essay.

My Confirmation

Perhaps one of the most important things to human is language. Think about the world without language. You won’t be able to do many things. You can’t read, write, speak, and so on. And because it is very important part in human life, many people have researched about it for many years. Among these researches, the most interesting and important and mysterious thing is how human have language. There has been many argues about it. ‘Language Learning’ and ‘Language Acquisition’ are very famous hypothesizes about it.

‘Language Learning’ is that human can have language by learning. In contrast, ‘Language Acquisition’ is that human acquire language by their innate abilities. Nowadays, the second one is thought to be more reasonable. It says that human has language acquisition ability which is genetically handed down and acquires languages by the ability. Noam Chomsky started this hypothesis with language acquisition device. It is the system of human brain which is the base of language acquisition.

 There are many supports to this hypothesis. First support is animal research. If human got language by learning, animals could get language by learning. However, almost researches show that animals can’t learn languages, except very few animals. Second support is critical period. It is a specific time which is prepared to develop certain abilities or skills and it is determined by biology. There is a critical period in human language development. If children missed critical period when they are sensitive to language, they could not acquire language very well. One of the examples about it is Genie (Curtiss, 1971). She was not exposed to language, living closed life by her parents. After she was discovered (when she was 13), she was educated by language learning system, but she could only recite some words, like ‘I like hear music ice cream truck (Curtiss, 1981, p. 21).’

 Another example is a research which shows that the relationship between USA migration age and English skill becomes different, having special age as a base point (Johnson & Newport, 1). People who migrated 16 years old have deep relationship between USA migration age and English skill. The older when they migrated, the lower their English skill is. In contrast, people who migrated before 16 years old have no relationship between them. 

 Third support is our brain. In brain, there is a special area which is related to language. This is approved by various brain shooting skills, such as MRI, PET, and so on. Several areas of the cerebral cortex are involved in understanding of language and calculation. First, especially Broca's area and Wernicke's area in the left hemisphere, which is closely related languages, ​​are important areas that are responsible for calculating and understanding of languages. Broca's area is in the frontal left hemisphere and a function for calculating the end adjacent the parietal responsible for exercise capacity. Therefore, when Broca's area is damaged, There is no problem to understand the meaning of a word or a sentence, so losing the ability to structure the words stutter stutter by word and does not fluently (Goodglass & Geschwind, 1976). 

  Our text book ‘Harvard Sampler’ also supports this hypothesis. It says ‘humans have an innate ability to acquire spoken language in childhood without needing formal lessons, since complex language has been documented in every human society, including all hunter-gatherer societies.’