Languages for most people are a set of sounds and symbols, each language having its own set of vocabulary or lexicon. English speakers know milk as milk, but in Spanish milk is leche. Language however is far more than a choice of diction: it empowers us to learn about different cultures, develop communities, and communicate across the globe. We may be taught grammatical rules in middle school but during our infantile stages we learn a remarkable amount of tools in order to speak without any formal training. Babies learn an incredible amount of this information just from the interaction with their parents and their environment. Most children develop their speech this same exact way around the world, they are learning the hierarchy of their language the same way as other cultures. Learning a language is to learning a culture or history of a people. It is no nation that we inhabit, but a language. In this paper, I will discuss what languages are, how we process them, and how they are developed.
Languages follow a hierarchal structure of sentences comprised of sounds that make up words, that make up phrases, that form sentences. Words consist of morphemes, the smallest components to contain meaning, including suffixes and prefixes. Take the word decoder, code being the morpheme, de being the prefix, and er being the suffix. Both the prefix and suffix add a different meaning to the word. Each morpheme can consist of multiple phonemes, the actual sounds we make when pronouncing words, like syllables. For example, water is one morpheme, but consists of two phonemes. Languages follow a set of rules of how words are combined into phrases and sentences, syntax. The meaning these words, phrases and sentences evoke is studied through semantics. Using both of these we can tell the difference between “Let’s eat, Grandma” and “Let’s eat Grandma” or how the sentence could not work if worded as “Grandma, eat let’s.” Each of these sentences can be broken down into morphemes and then multiple phonemes. Our languages are made up by a limited set of these phonemes, which
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originate in our voice box: the larynx. When we speak we push air through the vocal cords within the larynx, which then reaches our lips, jaw, and tongue. Changing the shape of our mouths manipulates the airflow which can form into an array of sounds, some of which being phonemes. While languages used in Botswana and Namibia can contain over 110 phonemes, English only contains 40, but both of these underuse the vast amount of variety in sound capable by the larynx. Several regions of our brains work not only to produce these sounds but to interpret the sounds we hear; when these regions break it can lead to serious issues in both language comprehension and production.
When the brain experiences trauma in certain areas, one possible side affect is aphasia. It can lead to significant issues in the cognition of language, where some problems can be temporary while others are permanent. In the 1800’s, anatomist Paul Broca researched a patient that could only utter “tan,” and this is now commonly associated with expressive aphasia where patients can comprehend what is being said to them, but have no ability to create sentences. Another physician in the 1870’s, Carl Wernicke, studied two patients who had experienced strokes. In both cases the men could form sentences, but what they said was illogical. What Broca and Wernicke both found when dissecting their patient’s corpses was damage to the left hemisphere of the brain. Since their work, researchers have been able to identify the left hemisphere of the brain as the side that carries out 90% of the jobs that make language possible. While the left side carries out most of the work associated with speech, the right hemisphere is integral for understanding metaphors, jokes and more. Broca and Wernicke’s work would identify the relationship between language and the cognition in our brain.
One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. Linguist Benjamin Whorf hypothesized that culture influences language, and that language in turn influences how we
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think, form concepts, and archive memory. This theory, linguistic relativity theory, states that people think through their language. Whenever I am thinking, I think in English: I solve problems in English, talk in English and write in English. It is hard to imagine being capable of deep thought without a language. However, animals and pre-linguistic infants have been shown to be capable of deep complex thought. Patients with aphasia may have trouble accessing thoughts through language but the thoughts and ideas themselves are not disrupted. Later, a lesser version of the linguistic theory stated that language influences thoughts rather than actually determining them. When infants grow and develop, their language skills expand as well.
Language matures at a similar rate across cultures and is a huge development for children in their early social interactions. Research has shown that the connection between parent and child is essential for the child to learn how to interact with and understand other people. Hearing differences in sound immediately after birth and the joint connection to their caregiver all help the infant to learn how to speak. Without much effort, we build up a huge vocabulary over our lives: we go from crying to our first words in only 12 months, and a year later we are able to form sentences. Even before birth, Janet Werker found that the languages spoken by mothers during their pregnancy influenced the listening preferences of the child. Children of parents who spoke English generally showed a preference for sentences spoken in English rather than those spoken in the primary language of the Philippines. However, later studies found that babies could distinguish between all phonemes at a very young age. According to B.F Skinner, he believed that children learned language in the same way that rats learned to pull levers to acquire food: operant reinforcement. Skinner believed that parents reinforced their children for speaking correctly but any speech that is not reinforced is simply
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forgotten. While parents do reward children for saying “ah” when feeding them as they open their mouths for food, I can think of few other ways that parents reinforce the speech of their children. While some parents could also punish their children for swearing, operant conditioning, the majority of language acquisition does not work this way. Parents often do not correct their children’s grammatical errors, and children are learning speech too fast for Skinner’s theory to make sense. The reason why we speak in the language that we do is entirely based on our environment. The environment greatly influences how children acquire a language, and the interaction among different cultures or environments can shape language further.
In the over 4,000 languages available, humans are able to read, write and communicate around the world. Language enables us to live in diverse communities and function as a society. As we have grown and developed so has our speaking ability. From the earliest moments after birth to adulthood, children learn an impressive amount of vocabulary without even trying. Far more than a choice of diction, languages allow us to learn about different cultures. Learning a language is to learning the history of a people. Make no mistake; our native tongue is our true homeland