Human Growth and Development / Unit 18 HGD 2570 review, 2 to 3 minutes
Nature and Nurture in Language
The idea
Language is the course's clearest case of nature and nurture working together, the theme entry 0011 introduced. The evidence for nature is strong. Early milestones follow a similar order across cultures, entry 0367, suggesting a biological base, and Chomsky's nativist account, entry 0369, points to an innate language acquisition device, with left-hemisphere areas for production and comprehension. Sensitive periods, entry 0641, fit a biological clock: childhood is the optimal time for language. But nurture is equally visible. Children with no language input in the first two years risk never achieving fluency, entry 0643, so the clock needs input to run. All-day recordings of family talk found wide variation within and across income groups, entry 0642. Toddlers learn words better face to face than from video, entry 0369. And the learning account, with reinforcement and imitation, captures part of the story, though it cannot explain language on its own.
In practice
Two infants with the same biological readiness, one hearing a full language every day and one without access to any, and the gap that opens by age two.
Where people slip
The misconception is that language is either innate or learned. The interactionist view, entry 0369, is usually the answer to exam questions about how nature and nurture combine: biological readiness interacts with a social environment, because language exists for communication. The debates within this arc, over the bilingual advantage, entry 0973, and over family talk, entry 0642, which varies within as well as across income groups, show that the environment's role is real but often oversimplified. For the exam, know the three theories of language, the milestones in order, and the sensitive-period evidence. Both halves of the debate are real.
Your place on the trail
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