PSY 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Universal Grammar, Noam Chomsky, Central Processing Unit
9 Dec 2015
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Document Summary
Unique to humans: it is a central part of all human cultures, language allows us to have discussions about the past, and we can teach people using our language. Two contrasting views of language: innate linguistic ability view, general cognitive ability view. Nature innate, or something we are born with (the innate view) Nurture something that we develop (cognitive view) Innate linguistic ability view: we"ve evolved specialized centers for acquiring and processing language (chomsky"s language acquisition device [lad], exposure to language is not required, it is something we are born with and already know what to do. We have a complete section of the brain completely dedicated to language: hardware there"s already hardware built into us. General cognitive ability view: nothing special about language, it is a tool that we have developed because of our evolved brains and through exposure.
