Question 2

Pinker attempts to support his argument that language is instinct by providing the example of a child (Simon) with ASL who possesses considerably better sign language than both of parents who suffer from the same condition. Pinker suggests that the reason Simon’s parents both have bad sign language is because they did not acquire it until their until the late ages of fifth teen and sixteen, resulting in them acquiring it badly. He goes on to say that even though Simon had the disadvantage of growing up in this environment, he grasped sign language very well, as he was able to understand their sentences, move topic phrases without difficulty and when he was asked to describe complex videotaped events, he used the ASL versions almost perfectly. Pinker’s conclusion is that the child must have somehow instinctly shut out his parents ‘ungrammatical noise’ and latched on to the inflections that his parents used inconsistently, reinterpreting them as mandatory. These ideas promotes the idea of language being a trait of all humans as it suggests that we all have grammatical rules in our brains and are able to make concise language of what we hear.

I agree with Dalrymple in disagreeing with Pinker’s ideas as I believe that it would be ignorant to say that the child has been able to master sign language instinctly. Dalrymple says that, “Everyone ought to have the opportunity to transcend the limitations of his linguistic environment if it is a restricted one, which means that he ought to have a few school arms in his childhood..... It is fatuous to expect that the most complex of human faculties requires no special training to develop to its highest power”. This makes me think that it would be impossible for a young child to master such a complex language without specific training from their parents and teachers. Dalrymple reinforces this idea by saying, “An intelligent man who can make no constructive use of his intelligence is likely to make a destructive and self destructive use of it”. This means that without the nurturing of language from one’s external environment; for example parents, teachers, etc, we would never be able to construct language which is easy to understand and follow. This is why I believe Pinker simply can not be correct in his ideas and views as he is very one minded and is reluctant to believe our language is affected and improved by learning from others.