Historically, many theories of development have pitted biology, or nature, again

Question

Historically, many theories of development have pitted biology, or nature, against environment, or nurture. For example, attempts to explain the ease with which babies acquire language focused either on the ways in which parents teach language to their children or on the emergence of the infant's innate language abilities. Behaviorist B. . Skinner believed that language development could be explained entirely by principles of learning, including imitation, reinforcement, and discrimination. Arguing against the nurture position, linguist Noam Chomsky maintained that language is far too complex to be mastered so early and so easily through learning alone. Instead, Chomsky maintained that our language capacity is inborn. More recently, developmentalists have concluded that both Skinners and Chomsky's theories have some validity but that neither is completely correct; rather, it is the interaction of nature and nurture win a specific social context that accounts for the ease with which children acquire language. In this exercise, review the following examples of language use and decide whether each provides evidence of the impact of nature, nurture, or the interaction of nature and nurture in language development Explain your reasoning. Examples: 2. Even in her very first sentences, it is obvious that 21-month-old Melissa has figured out the basics of subject-predicate word order. Seeing her mother returning from work, for example, she says "Mommy home" rather than "home Mommy. "

Explanation / Answer

It's difficult to exactly pin point whether nature or nuture played a role in the example. Subject-predicate word order is a fundamental yet unwritten "rule of language" and one can hypothesise (while agreeing with Chomsky) that this kind of an understanding is innate and inborn. On the other hand, we have no knowledge about whether Melissa has been corrected by parents to reorder her phrases correctly before, or whether she has observed someone else use it. Thus, in conclusion, one can say that this is the impact of both, nature and nuture. Perhaps, having an inborn "language device" is critical in picking up language speedily and thus enhances the process of learning that is offered by the environmental influences.

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