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  • Essay / Overview of Chomsky and Bloom's linguistic theories

    Language is a skill common to all human beings. However, when there are 6,500 different languages, it divides humanity culturally and mentally. Experts who focus on language have reflected on the extent of this divide and proposed that if there are different languages, this is bound to shape everyone's thoughts. They also concluded that people who speak different languages ​​could never understand each other's worldview. Two anthropologists proposed the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the language one speaks unconsciously actually shapes the way one perceives the world. This was later theorized as linguistic relativity which states the determination of the world. Two great examples of this are based on the Piraha and Mandarin cultures. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay The first study was based on the Piraha language and culture. The Piraha are a small tribe living in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. This tribe showed the world several unique characteristics such as: no numbers, no color terms, no kinship beyond a single parent or first sibling, no religion, no collective memory and no art. The Piraha show no evidence of recursion in their language. Which means they don't have the ability to combine an infinite number of ideas into a single sentence. In 2002, Noam Chomsky proposed that recursion is the basis of all human language. A key part of his theory was universal grammar, which was the most influential idea in linguistics at the time. Universal grammar holds that the structure of language (grammar) is innately found in the human genome, which is something a human is born with rather than learned. According to Chomsky, he had proposed that all human languages, whatever their superficial differences, shared a common deep structure known as universal grammar. This powerful idea had dominated linguistics for over 50 years. However, Daniel Everett, a missionary who had a very close relationship with the Piraha and who had learned their language, had questioned Chomsky's proposal. Everett argued that Chomsky's proposition was not true. Everett proposed that the Piraha language was not based on recursion, meaning that if Pitaha lacked recursion, recursion could not be the basis of all human language. At the time, Everett knew that if his proposition were to prove true, many would believe that the universal arguments for grammar would be seriously undermined. So that Everett could turn his proposal into a scientific method, he brought recordings of the Piraha language to MIT. The process by which the recording would be carried out would involve testing them through a language applications computer system which would help determine recursion and would then provide quantifiable proof. After three months of evaluating the language, MIT had analyzed that there was no clear evidence of recursion structures. They also argued that the Piraha language did not have any linguistic structures such as conjunctions (there are no "and" or "or"). This study helped show the world how a small tribe with absolutely no interest in the outside world provided insight into the influence of human cognition on other cultures. This study also showed how culture can affect not only the words of a language but the language itself. The second study is based on another area in.