Language Acquisition, Functions, and Philosophical Views

Posted on Feb 1, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

Language Features

  • Is acquired
  • Is articulated
  • Is conventional
  • Is symbolic

Functions of Language Use

  • Syntactic: Correct use of signs
  • Semantic: Using language to talk about something
  • Pragmatic: Use of language in a given context

Purposes of Language

  • Referential function: Transmitting information
  • Dialogic function: Communicating with others
  • Social-cultural function: Transmitting social views and beliefs

Theories of Language Acquisition

  1. Behaviorist Theory: Babies babble, and linguistic behavior is reinforced when a sound is successful. Vocabulary acquisition and rule monitoring occur.
  2. Nativist Theory: Syntax and basic grammar rules are innate, not learned.

Stages of Learning to Talk

  1. In early months, infants make sounds and cries that increasingly identify with the vowel and consonant phonemes of the language they hear.
  2. Around twelve months, children produce repeated vocalizations and pronounce words by imitation.
  3. From one to two years, children construct short sentences correctly.
  4. After two years, children form longer, grammatically correct phrases and expand their vocabulary.

Conceiving the Human Being

  • Biological element: Development and characteristics as an individual of a species.
  • Social-cultural component: Development and characteristics of a group as an individual.
  • Personal element: Development and characteristics of the self, the possibility of being and thinking.

Philosophical Views on the Soul and Mind

Plato

Defended the divinity and immortality of the soul, which influenced Christianity. The body is seen as the source of evil.

Aristotle

Defined the living being as a substance composed of matter and form. The soul is not accidental to the body. He distinguished the nutritive soul (plants), the sensitive soul (animals), and the rational soul (humans).

Thomas Aquinas

Adapted Aristotle’s concepts to Christian beliefs. The spiritual soul is immortal but is fully realized in union with the human body.

Descartes

Father of modern philosophy. Man is a substance that manifests as physical and mechanical material. Mind and body interact in the pineal gland.

Leibnitz

Proposed a perfect synchrony between the soul and body, though they are isolated from each other, orchestrated by God.

David Hume

Denied the reality of the spiritual substance. He saw a succession of perceptions, given insistence by memory. The mind is a collection of ideas bound by association.

John Searle

Computers handle formal symbols, not semantic content. The brain is an active, complex set of interconnected networks. Neurons learn from experience, and if one area deteriorates, other subsystems take over.