NATURE VS NURTURE

Based on both focused subjects, it is fair to say that their brilliant minds are closely
related with Chomsky’s nativist theory. Basically, Chomsky has introduced the theory of
“Universal Grammar” which, stated that children are born with the innate ability to acquire
language. In accordance with our subjects, both Na eun and Bella have been heavily involved
with their respective families that consist of different ethnicities with different languages. With
so many different languages happening with different individuals, both of them are constantly
and conventionally exposed towards very little correctly formed language, which prompt them
to only utter some words with absolute perfection. Factually, 75% of the world's languages
use either this (English, French, Vietnamese) or SOV (Japanese, Tibetan, Korean) - others
prefer VSO (10 - 15% - Welsh) or VOS (Malagasy). Some languages, such as Latin, appear
to have free word order, but even here, SOV is very common. OSV is very rare. So, it sounded
impossible for both subjects to master such complicated languages. However, since they
spend most of their time with their respective family members, they are able to deduce and
build a rule that governed the different languages they are exposed to. Hence, they are able
to produce new sentences. This is totally against a behaviorist point of view because
behaviorists believed that children acquire languages by hearing a repertoire of phrases and
sayings.

There is a small difference between Na-Eun and Bella where Na-Eun learns different
languages through a more nativist way as she has to converse in different languages with her
monolingual parents. Therefore, she has deduced different language rules by herself after a
certain amount of time. On the contrary, Bella’s parents have specific ways to teach different
languages to her. As an example, Bella’s mother applied the use of noun cards to allow Bella
to learn specific Mandarin phrases that allow her to learn some specific terms in each different
language. There’s a twist to this situation as Bella might have deduced her unique rule of
language after learning the specific phrases and sentences with different languages.

Every human being is born with language acquisition device (LAD). Because of this, each and
every one of us are able to learn and acquire language. In our case study of Na Eun, a child
who speaks four languages namely English, German, Spanish and Korean, she acquires
those languages through the exposure from both parents. Na Eun’s father speaks only Korean
while her mother speaks English and German. From behaviourist point of view, Na Eun learns
through imitation and constant exposure from her family. This enables her to code switch
quickly without problem.
Bella Devyatkina is her full name. Born from parents of linguist mother, Yulia Devyatkina, and
father who works at Moscow’s Research and Development Institute. Her mother spoke to her
in Russian and English from birth, alternating every day, made sure not to mix each language
in daily use. At 10-months olds, she were taught French. She mastered reading even before
began to talk with guidance of “special cards”. At the age of 3, she was taught Mandarin.
German, Spanish and Arabic were added two months later. She walks, plays hide-and-seek,
reads children books in different languages. The parents organized excursions for her to
speak with natives and joint class with children who were brought up in multilingual
environment. Her parents made the environment possible for her to learn obtained languages.

Prepared by :

Tay Ho Gim

Amin Kamil

Raimi Syazwan

Siti Nur Alia