Exploring the Universality and Diversity of Human Language Essay

Chomsky (1975), a noted linguist, believes that we are â€Å"specifically designed† to learn language. As Biehler (1976) puts it, there are â€Å"striking uniformities† in languages of other cultures that follow grammatical patterns (universal grammar). Even Farrel (1978) agrees that there is â€Å"an underlying design original to all languages. † For all of them, language is simply a part of our genetic endowment, or as the evolutionist Haugen (1973) would say it, we have the â€Å"gift of language,† or the â€Å"universal gift of tongues. † Chomsky and other linguists believe that there are system of principles, conditions, and rules that are elements of all human languages. Human languages contain structure, which means they are composed of several words grouped basically by function (verbs, nouns, etc. ) and this is referred to in linguistic literatures as innate universal grammar. â€Å"The human brain is equipped with a learning algorithm, which enables us to learn certain languages. This algorithm can learn each of the existing 6,000 human languages and presumably many more, but it is impossible that algorithm could learn every computable language† (Nowak, Komarova and Niyogi, p. 615). What are the implications of all these? Regardless of cultural background, whatever language we know or use now, we are all innately predisposed to comprehend design in languages and we can easily grasp and work around grammatical rules, however complex or elaborate they are. Although of course, young children are at an advantage in using this gift, as timing in acquiring a language is important as well. Nonetheless, as a general statement, regardless of cultural or ethnic background, man’s remarkable ability to communicate through language, in itself, is already a good proof of the universality of language as a human faculty. As mentioned in the Atlas of Languages (1996), there is no known society or community in the world that is language-less. From the evolutionists’ point of view, language is essentially a human trait and this is a powerful evidence on the universality of language. While animals of the same kind have their own way of communicating, only humans had â€Å"the power of recursion to create an open-ended and limitless system of communication† Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch, 2002, p. 1578). Why and how humans acquired the faculty of language and managed to â€Å"spread from human to human and from culture to culture,† (Knezek, 1997) are often the usual subjects of discussion of scholars. Evolutionists would agree that â€Å"the faculty meditating human communication appears remarkably different from that of other living creatures†¦. that the human faculty of language appears to be organized like the genetic code with respect to its scope of expression. † Animals have been â€Å"designed on the basis of highly conserved developmental systems that read an almost universal language coded in DNA base pairs,† however, â€Å"they lack a common universal code of communication† (Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch, 2002, p. 1569). Diversity of Languages If there are over six thousand (6,ooo) documented human languages in the world while evidences, as earlier discussed, all point to what seem to be universal similarities in mankind’s gift of language, what caused the present diversity of languages? Languages differ in so many ways, and it should be interesting to explore these differences primarily from the genetic and environmental viewpoints. In the 15 August 2002 New York Times language article, Wade mentioned the remarkable theory of Dr. Richard Klein, an archaeologist at Stanford University – â€Å"that the emergence of behaviorally modern humans about 50,000 years ago was set off by a major genetic change, most probably the acquisition of language. † Could it be then, that there is a special gene linked to the innate ability of humans to acquire language? Which genetic change (s) led to changes in the biological make-up of human brain structures that would prove to be relevant for human language? A major feat in the study of cognitive genetics is the â€Å"discovery of the first human gene specifically involved in language† through the efforts of Dr. Svante Paabo and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The gene named FOXP2 â€Å"is known to switch on other genes during the development of the brain† (Wade, 2002) The journal Nature journal published the report of the findings (as cited in Wade, 2002): â€Å"FOXP2 gene has remained largely unaltered during the evolution of mammals, but suddenly changed in humans after the hominid line had split off from the chimpanzee line of descent. The changes in the human gene affect the structure of the protein it specifies at two sites†¦.. One of them slightly alters the protein’s shape; the other gives it a new role in the signaling circuitry of human cells. The changes indicate that the gene has been under strong evolutionary pressure in humans. Also, the human form of the gene, †¦. seems to have become universal in the human population†¦. Humans must already have possessed some rudimentary form of language before the FOXP2 gene gained its two mutations†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦the improved gene may have swept through the population, providing the finishing touch to the acquisition of language. †