If you’re reading this in a country whose dominant language is English, let me ask a questions: when you were learning English, did you like your English classes? I didn’t. They weren’t effective. They all presumed that there is one way in which a human brain learns language. This comes largely from Chomsky’s language acquisition device and his suggestion at a “universal grammar.” The problem is, if you look at the underlying research that has gone into this line of inquiry, there’s one glaring omission. They don’t include non-verbal populations in their studies. So, can we really say that there is a “universal grammar” if we’re not including entire populations or sub-populations of people?
Teaching language to non-verbal populations
Teaching language to non-verbal populations
Teaching language to non-verbal populations
If you’re reading this in a country whose dominant language is English, let me ask a questions: when you were learning English, did you like your English classes? I didn’t. They weren’t effective. They all presumed that there is one way in which a human brain learns language. This comes largely from Chomsky’s language acquisition device and his suggestion at a “universal grammar.” The problem is, if you look at the underlying research that has gone into this line of inquiry, there’s one glaring omission. They don’t include non-verbal populations in their studies. So, can we really say that there is a “universal grammar” if we’re not including entire populations or sub-populations of people?