Exploring the Universality and Diversity of Human Language Essay

Chomsky (1975), a noted linguist, believes that we argon specific each(prenominal)y imageed to sightvas language. As Biehler (1976) puts it, thither are striking uni variateities in languages of other cultures that retrace grammatic patterns (universal grammar). Even Farrel (1978) agrees that there is an underlying design original to wholly languages. For all of them, language is simply a part of our brokertic endowment, or as the evolutionist Haugen (1973) would say it, we have the have of language, or the universal gift of tongues. Chomsky and other linguists believe that there are system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements of all forgiving languages. Human languages contain structure, which means they are composed of several(prenominal) words grouped basically by function (verbs, nouns, etc. ) and this is referred to in linguistic literatures as innate universal grammar. The homosexuale brain is fit with a learning algorithm, which enables us to learn certain languages.This algorithm can learn each of the existing 6,000 human languages and presumably many more, exactly it is impossible that algorithm could learn every 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 comprehend design in languages and we can easily grasp and work around grammatical rules, however complex or elaborate they are.Although of course, young children are at an advantage in using this gift, as timing in acquiring a language is important as well. Nonetheless, as a customary statement, regardless of cultural or ethnic background, mans remarkable ability to communicate through language, in itself, is already a steady-going proof of the catholicity of language as a human cleverness. As mentioned in the Atlas of Languages (1996), there is no known society or community in the world that is language-le ss.From the evolutionists point of view, language is essentially a human trait and this is a powerful evidence on the universality of language. While animals of the same kind have their own way of communicating, alone man had the power of recursion to create an open-ended and limitless system of colloquy Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch, 2002, p. 1578). Why and how creation acquired the faculty of language and managed to spread from human to human and from culture to culture, (Knezek, 1997) are often the usual subjects of discussion of scholars.Evolutionists would agree that the faculty meditating human communication appears remarkably different from that of other living creatures. that the human faculty of language appears to be organized like the genetic encipher with respect to its scope of expression. Animals have been designed on the basis of super conserved developingal systems that read an almost universal language inscribed in DNA base pairs, however, they lack a common un iversal code of communication (Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch, 2002, p. 1569).Diversity of Languages If there are over six railyard (6,ooo) documented human languages in the world while evidences, as rather discussed, all point to what seem to be universal similarities in human races 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 genetic and environmental viewpoints. In the 15 August 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 about 50,000 years ago was set off by a major genetic change, 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 make-up of human brain str uctures that would prove to be relevant for human language? A major feat in the study of cognitive genetics is the discovery of the first human gene specifically bear on 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 journal Nature journal published the report of the findings (as cited in Wade, 2002) FOXP2 gene has remained largely unaltered during the evolution of mammals, but suddenly changed in humans after the hominid line had split off from the chimpanzee line of descent. The changes in the human gene affect the structure of the protein it specifies at two sites..One 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 pressure in humans. A lso, the human earn of the gene, . seems to have become universal in the human population. military man must already have possessed some rudimentary form of language before the FOXP2 gene gained its two mutationsthe improved gene may have swept through the population, providing the finishing touch to the acquisition of language.