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Primate Language Acquisition

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Our advanced use of language is touted as an unparalleled and unique attribute of humans. We know that for our own species, language is a driving force behind many other aspects of our life such as survival, culture, and reproduction. Recognizing the importance that communication holds for us, we examine the way other animals communicate in order to learn more about their lifestyles. In addition, we look at the way non-human primates communicated in order to learn just how similar or different we are to species of animals that shared a common ancestor with us in the past. Interest in primate language began as a result of conflicting theories of human language acquisition. Scholar Noam Chomsky, argued for Nativism that humans have an innate …show more content…
The “poverty of stimulus argument” emerged, explained as,“accounting for the richness,complexity, and specificity of shared knowledge, given the limitation of the data available” (Chomsky 1986:7). Chomsky argued that with the advanced language proficiency shown by children, there must some universal innate knowledge of the basic grammar that all languages share. One of the ways to demonstrate this is by looking at the errors children make when learning language. A child may say,“Doggy no play today” rather than saying “the dog did not play today”. The important part is that assuming the person raising the child used proper english and has never said “Doggy no play today”, the child invents combinations and maintains basic structure of their sentences despite never hearing anyone say them. The errors are consistent and predictable as a child develops, rather than a child saying something like,“play today doggy no”. In addition, Chomsky distinguishes between knowledge and ability, using ability to refer to the stable and innate ability to use language and using knowledge to refer to the added information that can help a person use their innate ability more (Chomsky 1986:11). While Chomsky makes a strong argument for some “Universal grammar” in languages, it is still possible to disagree with his assessment because it is hard to actually prove that all languages have something in common. In addition, somebody who favors Empiricism could make the argument that Chomsky is only underestimating the ability for these children to pick up on information, and their seemingly innate ability is just due to their deceptively apt awareness. However, Chomsky inspired many other scientists and scholars to explore the possibility that humans are better prepared for language acquisition compared to other animals, due to an innate

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