1. Historical Development of Language

• Noam Chomsky proposed that all people have an inborn mechanism, the language acquisition device (LAD), which makes language learning possible.
• It is often remarked that children seem to “pick up” language just from hearing it spoken around them.
• Chomsky, following the lead of the early rationalist philosophers, proposed that human beings are born with an innate blueprint for language, what we referred to earlier as Universal Grammar.
• Innate blueprint for language, referred to earlier as Universal Grammar.
• Language was viewed as a kind of verbal behavior, and it was proposed that children learn language through imitation, reinforcement, analogy, and similar processes.
• B.F. Skinner, one of the founders of behaviorist psychology, proposed a model of language acquisition in his book Verbal Behavior (1957).
• Judeo-Christian: One deity gave Adam the power to name all things.
• Egyptians: The creator of speech was the god Thoth.
• Babylonians: The language giver was the god Nabu.
• Hindus: Attributed our unique language to the female god, Sarasvati, wife of Brahma, the creator of the universe.
• Plato: A “legislator” gave the correct, natural name to everything.
• Belief in the divine origin of language is intertwined with the supernatural properties that have been associated with the spoken word.
• The first linguist known to us is “Panini”, who wrote a descriptive grammar of Sanskrit in the 4th century B.C.E that revealed the earlier pronunciation, which could then be used in religious worship.
• Psammeticus (664-610 B.C.), an Egyptian pharaoh isolated two infants in a mountain hut to be cared for by a mute servant, in the belief that their first words would be in the original language.
• All languages originated from a single source - the monogenetic theory of language origin.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed that the earliest manifestations of language were “cries of nature.”