Nature vs.

Nurture
The nature vs. nurture debate is one of the most popular debates
right now in the world, and its also one of the oldest philosophical
issues within psychology. Each of this sides have really good points
you can talk and discuss about and its really hard to decide
whether a persons development is in its DNA or the biggest part of
it is influenced by his life experience and the environment.
According to Kendra Cherry, Nature refers to all of the genes and
hereditary factors that influence who we are, from our physical
appearance to our personality characteristics and Nurture refers to
all the environmental variables that impact who we are, including
our early childhood experiences, how we were raised, our social
relationships, and our surrounding culture. This will basically talk
about language and if we learn it by nature or nurture. We are able
to learn complex languages very quickly, in fact, the average child
has a vocabulary of six-thousand words by the time it turns five
years old, says Finn Orfano. This is an ability of language acquisition
that is an interesting field in the nature-nurture debate. Is language
acquisition innate or taught?
The idea that language acquisition is an innate ability is called
nativism. People that believe in this idea think that you are born
with the capacity of learning so many words in your life. According
to Noam Chomsky, there is a theory of grammar that is called
universal grammar. Basically, what it sais is that there is a basic
language that you are born with, and you can understand some
basic words and when growing you develop them even more. The
nativists consider this universal grammar to complex to be learned
through the environment. The fact that every known human culture
has some sort of language means that there is a genetic basis in
order to have the ability to produce language. Babies are born with
a big capacity because its like if their brains were on 0% of
knowledge and they have a specific area in their brains that are
capable of something, so when they are born they hear their parents
talking and they develop the sector language in their brains. For
example, a baby that starts making sounds like pa or ma or
even ba, is because is easier to say short words that are heard
and learn naturally and then they grow and understand that it is
papa and mama.
On the other hand, Nurture suggests that language is a
consequence of our large brains with the ability to learn many
things and the fact that we are extremely social beings. This is
called empiricism according to B.F. Skinner, who believes that
humans are capable of languages because we have the time, the
opportunity and the brain capacity that is required to learn it. People
who came in contact with language learned it because of its

beneficial affects and in this way, language spread across the earth.
There are people that know half of the languages in earth but it isnt
because they were born with the basics of everyone of them, it was
because they studied it for years and finally learned it with the
environments help. For example, the man named Christopher
Taylor knew more than 20 languages and had the capacity to learn
new ones really quick and also he is autistic. He could not have had
learned them naturally because his brain is damaged and has a
mental disorder.
In conclusion, I believe that we learn naturally as well as the
environment influences us. Many aspects of human behavior can be
explain either by genetic aspects or environment facts and based on
the evidence provided I think that we are influenced by genetic
most part of the time, but also we get a lot of help of the
environment teaching us things that arent in our genes.

Reference list:

Kendra Cherry (2009). What is nature versus nurture? (Article)

Retrieved
from
http://psychology.about.com/od/nindex/g/nature-nurture.htm

Finn Orfano (2015). Understanding how humans acquire

language.
(Article)
Retrieved
from
http://www.brighthub.com/science/genetics/articles/82090.asp
x

Lesley Lanir (2011). First language acquisition development

theories: Nature vs. Nurture. (Article) Retrieved from
http://www.decodedscience.com/first-language-acquisitiondevelopment-theories-nature-vs-nurture/7247

Bibliography:
http://psychology.about.com/od/nindex/g/nature-nurture.htm
http://www.decodedscience.com/first-language-acquisition-

development-theories-nature-vs-nurture/7247
http://www.decodedscience.com/first-language-acquisitiondevelopment-theories-nature-vs-nurture/7247
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oimnxkEj4ns