What is the ‘language instinct’?
My daughter spent her first thirteen months in a Chinese orphanage, where the only language she heard around her was Cantonese. After her adoption this was replaced by English.
Now Cantonese is as foreign to her as it is to me. Had she stayed in Guangdong we would only be able to communicate by clumsily thumbing through phrasebooks or pointing at pictures. There would have been no teasing me about my great age, or (not) listening to my lectures about overusing her phone.
Abandoning your native language for another that is fundamentally different in grammar, syntax and vocabulary is daunting for an adult. Imagine being suddenly relocated to a village in Khazakstan, where nobody speaks English and your Khazak is south of rusty.
Somehow, however, my daughter adjusted rapidly enough to start nursery (as effectively a native speaker) within a couple years.
How did this transformation occur? Indeed, how does any child manage to master the fundamentals of a language before they even step into a classroom?
Chomsky and ‘universal grammar’
In the early 1960s the linguist and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky developed a theory which became known as universal grammar. The posited that we are born with the innate capacity to master a language. In all but the rarest cases (involving sensory deprivation) this enables us communicate fluently in a specific language, regardless of the particular characteristics of that language.
Chomsky taught that language is much like walking. Although humans learn by example, he proposed that we are all born with a fundamental understanding of the underlying mechanisms of language.
Chomsky’s …universal grammar, is the reason why humans can recognize grammatically correct yet nonsensical phrases, such as “colorless green ideas sleep furiously.” Source
The specifics of this ‘universal grammar’ have been endlessly debated, disputed and challenged — with Chomsky himself recently opposing aspects of his own theory. What still remains clear, however, is the central idea that language acquisition what Steven Pinker calls a ‘language instinct’.
In other words children are born with the capacity to internalize grammatical structures and syntax of whichever language(s) they grow up speaking.
If there is universal grammar, why do we make grammatical mistakes?
It is often noted that some non-native speakers of English — known to linguists as L2s — use a more grammatically ‘correct’ form of the language than native speakers (L1s). L2s may also have more theoretical knowledge of the structure of English as most native speakers do not study this after primary school. Only a small minority would be able to identify a phrasal verb or a relative clause.
Pinker takes what linguists call a a ‘descriptivist’ position on grammar. This argues that many grammatical ‘rules’ emerged from Victorian attempts to impose the rules of Latin on English. One example is the notorious bugbear of pedantic grammarians, the ‘split infinitive’:
The very terms “split infinitive” and “split verb” are based on a thick-witted analogy to Latin, in which it is impossible to split a verb because it consists of a single word, such as amare, “to love”. But in English, the so-called infinitive “to write” consists of two words, not one: the subordinator “to” and the plain form of the verb “write”, which can also appear without “to” in constructions such as “She helped him pack” and “You must be brave.”
There is not the slightest reason to interdict an adverb from the position before the main verb, and great writers in English have placed it there for centuries. Source
Irregular verbs
The most common grammatical mistakes made by native speaker involve irregular verbs — verbs that do not follow the standard pattern: paint/painted/ have painted etc. It takes children years to learn to use ‘spoke’ and not ‘speaked. Some never acknowledge that their English teacher is convinced that nobody ever ‘writ’ anything.
Yet these errors occur precisely because the speaker is attempting to impose the internal logic of the language. A child saying speaked is attempting to impose the rule that governs regular verbs (-ed ending) on an irregular one. There are, after all, many thousands of regular verbs and only 180 irregular ones in English.
The problems is that irregulars punch above their weight, making up 70% of the verbs used in common conversation. In fact the ten most used verbs in English — be, have, do, say, make, go, take, come, see, get — are all irregular:
Irregular verbs errors we was/they do may upset English teachers but the meaning remains clear. What native speakers automatically avoid are constructions that break fundamental rules like the adjective proceeding the noun. No English-speaking child will write The late train yellow arrived.
Vocabulary
Native speakers have another crucial advantage over L1s: access to a wider range of vocabulary. Pinker estimates that the average native speaker already knows 60,000 words by their teens— far more than a L2 can typically acquire. As a result, communication between L2s typically has a narrower, more formal vocabulary. This has lead some, like Jean Paul Nerriere, to claim that L2 communication should be based on a sub-set of English he calls Globish.
L1s also have shared cultural points of reference, like television shows, consumer products, school experience etc. Some of these may be country or even region specific — American are often understandably confused to learn that a British public school is one that is privately owned and fee paying.
American cultural reference generally have greater universality. High school is is term which does not need to be explained to British teenagers but few outside the UK would understand what a comprehensive school is.
Language Level: Advanced CERf C1
Which countries do not have an official language? * What is Globish?
Download: English: Global Language (free)
