Overview

How does the brain turn air vibrations into thoughts? And thoughts into air vibrations? It’s the engineering of the mind.

Core Idea

Language Acquisition: How do babies learn language?

  • Behaviorism (Skinner): Imitation and reward.
  • Nativism (Chomsky): We are born with a “Language Acquisition Device” (LAD). The “Poverty of the Stimulus” argument says kids learn too fast to just be copying.

Formal Definition (if applicable)

Critical Period Hypothesis: If you don’t learn a language before puberty, you will never be fully native-like (especially in grammar/accent). (Case of Genie).

Intuition

  • Garden Path Sentences: “The old man the boat.” You read “The old man” as a noun phrase, then realize “man” is the verb. Your brain has to backtrack. This shows we parse incrementally.

Examples

  • Broca’s Aphasia: Damage to the left frontal lobe. Speech is halting and ungrammatical (“Book… table… give”). Comprehension is okay.
  • Wernicke’s Aphasia: Damage to the temporal lobe. Speech is fluent but meaningless (“Word salad”). Comprehension is poor.
  • Tip of the Tongue: You know the word, but can’t retrieve the sound. Shows that meaning and sound are stored separately.

Common Misconceptions

  • “Bilingualism confuses kids.” (No, it actually improves executive function/cognitive control).
  • “Thinking is just silent speech.” (We can think without words—images, concepts).
  • Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis: Does language determine thought? (Strong version: Yes. Weak version: It influences attention).
  • Dyslexia: Trouble mapping sounds to letters.

Applications

  • Education: Reading instruction (Phonics vs. Whole Language).
  • AI: Modeling human processing.

Criticism / Limitations

Brain imaging (fMRI) is still coarse. We know where language happens, but not exactly how.

Further Reading

  • Pinker, The Language Instinct
  • Aitchison, The Articulate Mammal