Question

Patricia Kuhl: The linguistic genius of babies. Please watch this Ted Talk and then answer the following questions.

http://www.ted.com/talks/patricia_kuhl_the_linguistic_genius_of_babies/transcript?language=en#t-34951.

1. Describe Kuhl’s presentation from the perspective of nature and nurture as it relates to language development. What about the perspective of universal and context specific?

Answer 1

1. Describe Kuhl’s presentation from the perspective of nature and nurture as it relates to language development.

Patricia Kuhl talks about the language acquisition abilities of infants as she quotes the poets ‘Celestial Openness of a child’s mind’. According to her infants are open to any language learning and this trend continues till they are 7 and starts to decline after puberty. The children can lean as many languages as they grow and familiarize themselves with different languages. Although, the brain has a specific area for language learning, it depends on the nurture of the caregivers because the child will build statistic on as many language as the care givers speak. Unlike the adults who have closed their minds for other languages, the infants are open to learning.

1. What about the perspective of universal and context specific?

Almost all the language has got some universal patterns, especially the sounds which the children are able to differentiate by the age of 8 months. So, they stay universal until 8 months not able to differentiate sounds but all of a sudden, they are able to differentiate sounds that are different. All humans have a specific area in their brain which is universal in nature but as they grow they learn to be context specific learning a language to which they are exposed to. This language specific area helps one learn a new language at any point of time but the speed varies between a child and an adult.