GOOD MORNING!

- What is the difference between nature and nurture?

Noam Chomsky, a well-known linguist, talked about the innateness
of language. In the sense that language is something we are born with.
We, humans, are born with the ability to speak and to know language.
It is an unconscious and implicit trait. This is the nature part of
language. It is the ACQUISITION of language. It is done indirectly,
and without learning. However, the nurture part of language is that we
have to explicitly and consciously LEARN the language.
Nature Acquisition
Nurture Learning
So, there have been an argument between linguists about language.
Is language nature or nurture? Is language something that we are born
with or something that we learn?
When we talk about acquisition, we mean the ability to absorb and
understand sounds and producing them. So, we are talking about
understanding the language and being able to copy it then produce it.
For example, since Arabic is your mother tongue, you would be
able to tell if a sentence sounds Arabic or not even if you hear it for the

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first time. That’s because you have absorbed the language and its
patterns, which will make you know if something sounds right or not. In
these cases, you can’t actually explain why this doesn’t sound Arabic to
you, but you know it just doesn’t sound right even if you don’t know the
exact rule to it because you know the language.
***
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND LINGUISTICS
We said last lecture that language is a way of communication
between human beings. We still have some other points to discuss for
this lecture concerning language vs. linguistics.
In linguistics, we have macro and micro linguistics. Micro
linguistics: includes the branches of linguistics that deal with minute
details. It is concerned with what the elements of the language are. For
example, syntax, morphology, phonology, etc. Macro linguistics is the
study of language in general apart from its components. It deals with
language that is related to society, entities, etc. outside the actual
elements of the language. For example, psycholinguistics,
sociolinguistics, forensic linguistics, language learning, applied
linguistics, etc.
We said that human babies are born with an innate ability to learn
as many languages as they are exposed to. Exposure to the language has
to be rich and has to happen over a long period of time. If you had
been exposed to a language every now and then but that exposure
wasn’t persistent, then you would pick up a few words, but you wouldn’t
acquire the language.
The process of acquisition is highly personal. It is an individual
matter. Some kids might learn language faster than others. Bear in
mind that when we’re talking about language acquisition, we are talking
about infants, and that we are not talking about adults. After the critical
age of acquisition, language is learned but some of its features would be

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missing. The language you learn would not sound as native as the one
you acquire.
Let’s say there was a couple: a Japanese dad, and a Polish mom,
who live in England, and they had a baby. How many languages would
that baby acquire? Theoretically speaking baby would probably acquire
three languages: English, Japanese, and Polish. However, it depends on
exposure. If the parents were linguists, then they would know that equal
constant exposure is important for acquiring a language, and that the
exposure should be consistent and long-term. The baby would be
exposed to Japanese when talking to his/her dad, to Polish when talking
to his/her mom, and to English in school and around his/her
colleagues. If the baby wasn’t exposed to Japanese or Polish, then the
baby would only acquire English and wouldn’t be able to speak those
languages even though his/her parents speak them. All human beings
are born with the ability to acquire any language provided that they are
exposed to it regularly.
A human infant goes through several stages considering language
acquisition:
1. At first, the baby would only cry.
That’s the only communication method the baby knows. Then it
becomes more of some simple sounds.
2. Babbling: at this stage, we start to hear some syllables. Often one
to two syllables.
3. Words: separate words like: cookies, daddy, mommy, etc.
4. Words combinations: mommy eat, daddy go, etc.
5. Full sentences: I went to school today.
At this stage the child would have been exposed to the language.
The child would start to adopt the patterns of the language even though
s/he has never heard a word before, s/he would try to derive it applying

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the patterns of language s/he has acquired. For example, the child might
get the pattern of the simple past, i.e. adding an “-ed”, and s/he would
try to apply it to every verb. You might hear the child saying, “I goed to
school yesterday.” The child would be excited thinking s/he has used
the right pattern. This is where correction comes in. Correction comes
in the form of a feedback. For example, “Oh, you mean you went to
school yesterday. Well done!”
***
COMMUNICATION
Communication happens through language and communication
acts. Examples of communications acts are:
- A girl blushes and smiles when she sees her lover coming.
- A student looking at his watch when he is attending a lecture.
- A girl meets her ex on the street and gets an upset expression on
her face.
These are all forms of communication. Communications can
happen through language, body language, facial expressions, even
silence.
LANGUAGE OR COMMUNICATION ACT?
1. A child in a school playground is asked by a teacher whether he
kicked a ball against a window. He answers ‘No’, but simultaneously
rubs his chin. His friends smile whilst the teacher looks on,
suspiciously.
There are several messages communicated here:
- The word “No”. (communication using language)
- The chin-rub. (communication using body language)
This is probably an indication that the child is not comfortable.

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 - The smile of his friends (facial expressions)
- The looks of suspicion of the teacher (facial expressions)
2. A child of Asian background in a UK school being reprimanded
by a teacher. The child is looking at the floor and the teacher becomes
increasingly annoyed, finally demanding, ‘Look at me when I’m talking
to you!’.
This is an important example of cultural difference. In Asia, usually
looking at the floor is an act of respect. In the UK you have to make an
eye-contact in order to show respect to the person who is talking to you.
In that case, the British teacher thought that kid’s act is disrespectful,
whereas the child meant to show respect.
***
We have three models of communication:
1- LINEAR MODEL
Usually politicians talk at you, not to you. This is also the case in
schools, where teachers are the speakers (senders) and the students are
just receivers. In that case, the speaker has a concept in their head. S/he
encode it, and then s/he translate that code into words, then they say
these words as a message to the receiver. The receiver then would
decode the message s/he received into a concept in their head, then
s/he would process that concept to understand what is going on. It is a
one-way interaction.
We have a speaker and a receiver. The speaker encodes his/her
message and the receiver decode that message. In this case, it is a one-
way communication, and there is no feedback to the message received.
In this model, we do not take into consideration any other element
whatsoever. We have a “channel”, i.e. the way the message is
communicated.

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 The channel is speaking. The communication path is linear. There
is no noise.

Message
Sender Receiver

2- INTERACTIVE MODEL
After that, communicative approach was introduced. For a
communication to be a real communication, it has to be a two-way
communication. So, there are communicated messages of both the
speaker and the receiver. This is the type of communication you’d see
at collage, where both the teachers and the students are speakers and
receivers at some points. In this case, we still have a sender, a receiver,
and a message communicated, and we also have a feedback.
In this model, there is something called “noise”. “Noise” is
anything that could disturb or interrupt the act of communication or
affect it in anyway. For example, the receiver might have a headache;
hence, s/he would not concentrate and would not understand the
message clearly or fully. The speaker might be preoccupied with a
pressing issue in their head that makes them not concentrate on what
they are about to say or saying. In that case, the sender’s message would
not be well-communicated or expressed fully as intended. This is a
form of psychological noise.
However, the noise can be physical. For example, actual noise in
the setting where the communication is happening that is interrupting
the message in one way or another. The noise could be a semantic
noise. This happens when the speaker attempts to use words that are
not known to the receiver. Since this is a face-to-face communication,
the channels are speaking, body language, facial expressions, context,
environment, etc.

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 There are channels. The communication path is circular. There is
noise.
(Noise)

Message
Sender Receiver
Feedback

3- TRANSACTIONAL MODEL
In this model, we no longer have a sender and a receiver. Both of
the communication parties are senders and receivers at the very exact
same point. It happens when the speaker and the receiver
communicate at the same time. There is no longer a message and a
feedback because in this case, the feedback is a message on its own.
The communication path is random and all over the place. So, the
communication is happening simultaneously. While you are a sender of
a message, you’re also a receiver of the feedback (also a message), and
while your receiver is/are receiving your message, they are also senders
of a message.

Message/feedback
Sender Receiver
Message/feedback

That’s all for today!

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