Department of Linguistics
University of Dhaka
2nd Year 3rd Semester
Syntax - 1
Group - F
Topic: Language Faculty
Submitted by
1. ARUNAVA PAUL SHOPNO - Roll: 12 (APS-12)
2. ABDULLAH - Roll: 18 (Abdullah-18)
3. AL-ALIF NUR AROBE - Roll: 20 (AANA)
4. SHAHARIN SRABON ADRITA- Roll: 124 (SSA 124)
5. NAFISA NAWAL MAESHA - Roll: 131 (NNM 131)
Submitted to
Dr. Mashrur Imtiaz
Assistant Professor
Department of Linguistics, University of Dhaka
Date: 30 January, 2025
Introduction: (APS-12)
Language faculty is the natural capacity of a individual to secure, get it, and utilize language.
It permits people to procure dialect effort-free, empowering them to communicate with others
all through their lives. It gives a foot line in phonetics, brain research, and cognitive science.
It helps analysts in understanding human creatures and their handling of dialect. The
awesome linguist Noam Chomsky was the key figure in this field. Chomsky presents the
perspective of all inclusive linguistic use that all human language have one common basic
spine. This one of a kind human include empowers individuals to communicate and share
complicated thoughts, sentiments, and information through a formalized communication
framework. The LFs have moreover been contended by researchers like Noam Chomsky to
be naturally hardwired into people, guided through a All inclusive Linguistic use that
supports all dialects. By the same understanding, the dialect workforce includes an
clarification of its neurobiological bases. The same consider makes us get it how the brain
forms language and how it has advanced through time. More investigate on the LF has kept
on shed light on the interaction that happens between the brain, dialect, and cognition.
Key Concepts: (APS-12)
A number of key concepts underlie the all universality, uniqueness, and importance of the
language for human communication. These will grant a brief diagram of how dialect is
obtained, organized, and utilized cross-culturally and over phonetic frameworks.
1. Innateness
The dialect staff is considered a hardwired module within the human brain. That's , all people
inherently have the capacity to memorize dialects without any formal educating of dialect
securing standards. This moreover shapes the premise of the presumption that all human
creatures are born with the potential for dialect securing not with standing of their phonetic
foundation. Such is based on two firm fundamentals:
.
2. Universality
A more crucial property of LF is that all human dialects share a common basic structure,
ordinarily moreover alluded to as All inclusive Language structure (UG). It is this shared
establishment that clarifies how dialects, in spite of their surface contrasts, utilize
comparative linguistic structures for subject-verb-object requesting or the arrangement of
questions.
3. Creativity
An infinite cluster of sentences can be created by human creatures employing a limited set of
words combined with limited linguistic rules. This inventiveness empowers people to precise
unused thoughts, contemplations, and feelings, making dialect an ever-changing and
moldable instrument for communication.
4. Critical Period
Language securing is most viable inside a particular window of time in early
childhood-known as the critical period. Amid this stage, the brain is said to be exceptionally
open to phonetic input; in this way, quick and compelling dialect securing can take place.
Deferred introduction, as usually happens in segregation cases, frequently leads to incomplete
procurement.
Feature Description Example
Innateness Language learning is Children learn their native language
hardwired into the brain. without formal instruction.
Universality All human languages share Every language has nouns, verbs, and
fundamental structures. rules for forming sentences.
Creativity Humans can form infinite new "I saw a purple elephant dancing in the
sentences. sky."
Critical Period Language learning is easiest in A child learning two languages early
childhood. becomes fluent in both.
(APS-12)
The Neurobiological Basis of Language Faculty: (AANA-20)
The language faculty contains innate knowledge of various linguistic rules, constraints, and
principles. (Chomsky)
The regions of the brain can help to understand the neurobiological side of language faculty.
Here is a question: why should we study the brain?
The brain is the central functional organ of our nervous system. It is manufactured by 10
billion neurons. The neuron is the basic unit of the brain. They help in our communication.
Brain has some regions that control the whole language production and comprehension.
Cerebrum is the largest part of the brain that helps in our language processing.
Parts of Cerebrum-
1.Frontal lobe- Controls planning, prediction, speech, and movement of the body.
2.Temporal lobe- It controls auditory association and memory processing.
3.Parietal lobe- Reading ability, the sensation of pain, temperature, touch, pressure and taste
is dominated by the parietal lobe.
4.Occipital lobe- It helps in visual representation.
The main areas of the brain are-
•Broca’s area: It is situated in the frontal lobe. It helps in our language production and
grammar processing. Also, it helps the motor movements for speaking.
•Wernicke’s area: It is in the temporal lobe. It helps in our language comprehension. It
receives information from the auditory cortex.
•Arcuate fasciculus: A bundle of nerve fibers links the Broca's and the Wernicke’s areas.
•Primary auditory cortex: It helps to understand language.
•Angular gyrus: It is needed in our reading, writing, and describing meaning.
The main language controller of the brain is the left hemisphere. Mainly it controls the
right-handed individual's mind. Because the left hemisphere controls the right side of the
body and the right hemisphere controls the left side. This is called the contralateral approach.
The right hemisphere helps to understand the pragmatic aspects of language. The plasticity of
the brain recovers the damage or injury of a child's brain. Also, plasticity helps in 2nd
language learning.
The Dual Stream Model was proposed by Leslie Ungerleider and Mortimer Mishkin in the
early 1980s.
•Dorsal stream: It helps in speech production and phonological processing.
•Ventral stream: It helps in speech comprehension.
Aphasia and Language Faculty: (AANA-20)
Aphasia is an impairment of language that affecting the production and comprehension of
speech and the ability to read and write. Paul Broca is the founder of aphasia. Aphasia is also
known as dysphasia. It is a neurological disorder. It can occur due to many reasons. Stroke,
injuries, trauma, brain tumors, and some other reasons cause aphasia.
There are mainly 5 types of aphasia.
•Broca’s Aphasia: It is a non-fluent and motor aphasia. It occurs due to damage to the parietal
lobe on the left side of the brain. It can happen for stroke or injuries. In this case, the patient
can understand the speech but can’t talk. But their thinking ability is perfect. The speech they
produced is called telegraphic speech. Also, they don’t use morphemes and affixes.
•Wernicke’s Aphasia: It is called fluent aphasia. It happens due to the damage in the lower
portion of the brain. In this case, the patient can talk but can’t understand the speech. Also,
they are not aware of grammatical problems. They may use incorrect words.
•Global Aphasia: It creates problems in both language production and comprehension. It
occurs due to immense damage to the left hemisphere.
•Anomic Aphasia: When a patient feels difficulty in finding words that is called anomic
aphasia. Especially they can't understand the nouns and verbs.
•Conduction Aphasia: It occurs because of damage to the arcuate fasciculus. The patient
faces the problem of repeating words.
Treatment (AANA)
Aphasia can be diagnosed by the Boston Naming Test. Many times aphasia may be cured on
its own. But most often it needs therapy. Like –
•Speech and Language Therapy(SLT)
• Melodic Intonation Theory(MIT)
Family and Social Support is like therapy. It helps to require a patient more than any other
therapy.
Language faculty in accordance with Noam Chomsky’s universal
grammar: (Abdullah-18)
In Noam Chomsky’s universal grammar,we can notice that Professor Noam Chomsky takes a
cognitive approach to the study of grammar. He showed a distinction between competence
and performance . According to Noam Chomsky “competence is the speaker-hearer’s
knowledge of his language ,while performance is the actual use of language in concrete
situation.” (Chomsky1965,p.4).Here, Competence is the native speaker’s tacit or
subconscious knowledge of his or her language and performance is actually what people say
and how people interpret language in practical life. So performance is basically an imperfect
reflection of competence. And according to Chomsky, grammar is concerned with
competence rather than performance. When we study the grammatical competence of a native
speaker, we actually study a cognitive system internalized within the brain of the native
speaker. Chomsky termed this internalized linguistic system as I-language. Chomsky’s goal
was to devise a theory of Universal Grammar which generalizes from the grammar of
particular I-languages to the grammars of all possible natural I-languages. So Universal
Grammar is a theory about the nature of possible grammars of human I-languages or in easy
words Universal Grammar is the syntactic categories, mechanism and constraints shared by
all human languages. Here syntactic properties are universal does not mean that languages
must be alike in all respect but Universal Grammar leaves room for variation.It allows
individual languages to differ with respect to certain parameters. Here, parameter is a set of
options that Universal Grammar allows a language to choose. There are a number of levels of
adequacy which a theory of Universal Grammar must satisfy, such as observational adequacy,
descriptive adequacy, explanatory adequacy and learnability. Here learnability means the
ability of children to acquire the grammars of their native languages . Children generally
produce their first recognizable word by around the age of twelve months. At around the age
of eighteen months, the first visible sign of the acquisition of grammar is seen. From this
point ,there is seen a rapid expansion in their grammatical development. Chomsky suggested
that this uniformity and rapidity of the first language acquisition indicate that the course of
acquisition is determined by a biologically endowed innate Faculty of Language within the
brain which provides children with a genetically transmitted algorithm for developing a
grammar on the basis of their linguistic experience. The way Chomsky visualises the
acquisition process can be represented as below-
Here, the experience of language is the limited number of expressions of the language which
a child hears. It is also known as Primary Linguistic Data (PLD), it serves as input to a child’s
faculty of language which enables him to use the linguistic experience to devise a grammar of
that language. Thus, the output of the language faculty is a grammar of that language being
acquired. Children do not just imitate what they hear but develop a system that is far richer
than that fragmentary and limited linguistic data that they encounter in their linguistic
experience.For example- they hear a finite number of utterance but the internal linguistic
system they develop can generate an infinite range of expression. All human language
systems have recursive or looping devices that permit structures of indefinite range but no
child ever heard an expression of indefinite length. This is also known as Poverty of Stimulus
concept. There is also a critical period for the acquisition of grammar or syntax of the
language, generally from the birth to around the puberty. After this period, acquisition of
grammar becomes harder. Children who learn a given language before puberty generally
achieve native competence, whereas those who acquire a language after the puberty or after
the age of the age of nine or ten years hardly manage to achieve native like syntactic
competence.This claim that the course of language acquisition is determined by an innate
language faculty is also known as the innateness hypothesis.
Theory of Connectionism in Language Faculty: (SSA-124)
Connectionism is an important approach in the field of theoretical work that studies about
human behavioral processes and cognitive processes. Mostly known as Connectionist
Models, are also called Artificial Neural Network Models or Parallel Distributed
Processing(PDP). The main concern of this models are to study how neutral science helps us
to process behaviors, interactions of people or processing of languages. Connectionism has a
wide range of interests in linguistics fields that highlights it in the part of language faculty.
Because one of it's main focuses is to provide research on speech production, adaptation or
early acquisition of languages of children. The theory of Connectionism gives us some
models for linguistics purposes showing neural network processing of essential properties
and adapting or activating those units for acquisition process. For a bigger look to it, the
phoneme /p/ or /t/ has different neural input units to activate while using these phonemes.
This approach helps us to study the dissimilarites of the phonemes and distributes them
according to their phonological features. For example, the neural unit will differ the
phonemes /p/ and
/t/ by encoding their features as 'bilabial' and 'alveolar' which indicates place of articulation.
A common way to visualize Connectionism is to use a similar model like 3-layar feed
forward network.
Here is the diagram that gives us a look to connectionist approaches:
This diagram suggests that through connectionism theory, we analyze the given input such as
the phonemes and our neural unites of brain produces the output as words.
Connectionism also approaches syntactic processing. This concerns about the sentence
elements and create a proper grammatical ordering. Such as
"The girl asked for the directions to market"
Here, verb "asked" has 3 arguments "the girl", "the directions" and "the market" . The order
of distributing the elements in the sentence is a matter of concern of Connectionism.
Hence, Connectionism is a much needed theoretical work in the field of languages faculty for
language acquisition.
-(SSA-124)
Research on language faculty in future :- (NNM-131)
In linguistics, ‘the language faculty’ refers to the innate cognitive system within humans that
enables them to acquire and use language. Research on the language faculty is a dynamic
field with exciting prospects for the future.
Some potential areas of focus :-
★. First of all the researchers, who will do research on language faculty, must have to keep
more knowledge about human ability to learn and use language. They can explore it from
many angles. The first angle is the relationship between the brain and language. Because the
brain is the main producer of language. Language is a process and the brain is the processor.
We know that human brain has four lobes:frontal, parietal,occipital and temporal lobe.Frontal
lobe is related to language because a very important area which is called Broca's area, or the
Broca area, is a region in the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere, usually the left of the
brain with functions linked to speech production. Another important area is the Wernicke area
which is located in Brodmann area 22, the posterior segment of the superior temporal gyrus
in the dominant hemisphere. The Wernicke area is responsible for the comprehension of
written and spoken language. So researchers should research and investigate more and more
about these two areas of the brain which are directly related to language production and
language comprehension.
★.A very important thing in the human body is genes. All factors of the human body and
development are directed by genes. So, genes are a very essential part or angle of language
production, comprehension and acquisition. Researchers should give more focus in this area.
They should study genes like FOXP2. Because FOXP2 gene mutation is so far the only
known cause of developmental speech and language disorders in humans. Researchers should
identify the Molecular network of this gene and its encoded protein will provide a unique
window into neural processes involved in speech and language.
★.Researchers should focus on the part of language acquisition. Language acquisition is a
process of acquiring language which occurs from the Child birth to 1.5/2 years. There are five
stages of language development. The first stage is crying, then second stage is queuing (the
vowel sounds like aaaaaaaaa),the babbling stage (1 vowel+1 consonant like sound
baaaaaaa),then telegraphic speech (in this stage a child use only the important words in his
speech), then over generalizations stage (in this stage a child start learning rules of language
and he apply it any speech).In future people know about the stages in more specifically and
will be very conscious about the language acquisition of Their child. So researchers should
give more focus on it and I hope they will be able to discover more information about
language acquisition and its disorders.
★.Researchers should take the help of bilingual Process on the research on language faculty.
Bilingualism is defined as the individual's ability to comprehend and produce two natural
languages, involving neural processing, language acquisition, memory,metalinguistic
awareness and code switching. The competence in both languages can be native -like if
learned together early in life. I hope that researchers will be able to explore some common
rules, which will be more effective for the process of bilingualism.
★.Most significant part or angle of researching language faculty is the linguistic theories.
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. In language faculty, the most significant theory
is Noam Chomsky's “Universal Grammar” theory. By this theory Chomsky said that all
languages share a common underlying structure. If we can apply these rules, we can get
descriptive grammar, which is common for all languages. But in prescriptive grammar that is
not possible. So,we should learn about syntax,semantics,morphology and phonology, which
are the core branches of linguistics. If we have gathered knowledge about the core Branches,
we would be able to use and create common rules of language.
★.Language is not created at this time. It's changeable and the language has a history.
Protolanguage is one of the key terms in the field of language evolution. Researchers should
focus on this area so that they can be able to find the common changes in languages.
★The two important areas in the brain are broca's area and wernicke's area. The broca's area
is related to language production and the wernicke's area is related to language
comprehension. When there is some problem or damage the areas stop working and then it's
called aphasia.So its a part of concern. So researchers should give emphasis in research on
this angle. In this angle the researchers can take the help of neurosurgeons. I hope that they
will be able to discover some therapy and treatment for the aphasia patients.
★. Language has a great impact on society. It can vary from society to society, culture to
culture. Researchers can research how social factors like gender, class, ethnicity etc affect the
use of language.
★. Machine language has a great impact on our daily life. NLP(natural language
processing) is a significant angle for future invention. Researchers should give more focus
on it, Because it will bring an evolutionary change in machine language.
Conclusion :- (NNM-131)
The language faculty is a term used in linguistics to describe the innate ability of humans to
acquire and use language. It is also creative, meaning that it allows humans to generate an
infinite number of new sentences and expressions.Linguist Noam Chomsky has given a
theory of language acquisition, which proposes that humans have an innate capacity for
language.This innate capacity, or “universal grammar”, allows children to quickly and
effortlessly learn the complex rules of their native language despite limited exposure and
imperfect input.He argues that language is unique to humans and is not Simply a result of
general intelligence or learning. Children are born with the ability to learn language, which is
independent of Their general intelligence.To know about LF we have to study the brain and
its regions that are involved in producing language. Broca’s Area helps to produce language
and Wernicke’s Area is important for language comprehension. If the both areas harm by
chance, it causes broca and Wernicke’s aphasia. Also there are some other types of aphasia.
For the treatment of aphasia there are few therapies. Aphasia can't be cured, but by the
therapies we can decrease the patients pain. We need more research on the neurobiological
side of LF. So that we can find better treatment of it.So,the language faculty is a complex and
fascinating topic that is still being studied by linguists and cognitivbringkentists.Our
conclusion is that humans have a language faculty—a cognitive system that supports the
acquisition and use of certain languages—with several core properties. This faculty is
apparently governed by principles that are logically contingent, specific to human language,
and innately determined.
