Language learning begins in the womb
Washington: From their very first days, newborns' cries already bear the mark of the language their parents speak, reveals a new study.
The findings suggest that infants begin picking up elements of what will be their first language in the womb, and certainly long before their first babble or coo.
"The dramatic finding of this study is that not only are human neonates capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to produce those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language they have heard during their foetal life, within the last trimester of gestation," said Kathleen Wermke from the University of Worzburg in Germany.
"Contrary to orthodox interpretations, these data support the importance of human infants' crying for seeding language development."
Human foetuses are able to memorize sounds from the external world by the last trimester of pregnancy, with a particular sensitivity to melody contour in both music and language, earlier studies showed.
Newborns prefer their mother's voice over other voices and perceive the emotional content of messages conveyed via intonation contours in maternal speech. Their perceptual preference for the surrounding language and their ability to distinguish between different languages and pitch changes are based primarily on melody, the website Science Daily reported.
Although prenatal exposure to native language was known to influence newborns' perception, scientists had thought that the surrounding language affected sound production much later, the researchers said. It now appears that isn't so.
Wermke's team recorded and analyzed the cries of 60 healthy newborns, 30 born into French-speaking families and 30 born into German-speaking families, when they were three to five days old. That analysis revealed clear differences in the shape of the newborns' cry melodies, based on their mother tongue.
Specifically, French newborns tend to cry with a rising melody contour, whereas German newborns seem to prefer a falling melody contour in their crying. Those patterns are consistent with characteristic differences between the two languages, Wermke said.
The new data show an extremely early impact of native language, the researchers say.
"Newborns are probably highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding. Because melody contour may be the only aspect of their mother's speech that newborns are able to imitate, this might explain why we found melody contour imitation at that early age."
The findings were published online in the November issue of Current Biology.
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This research finding reminds me of “poverty of stimulus” theory proposed by Noam Chomsky. A baby spends its first two years in silently listening to its parents, next door neighbors and the people living in the vicinity. Though the child gets some inputs, the inputs it gets are highly inadequate to acquire its mother tongue. Most of the parents hardly bother to correct their children when they utter a wrong sentence. Many parents and neighbors try to imitate the child’s baby talk while interacting with it instead of giving appropriate and correct input. So the inadequacy of correct input is termed as Poverty of Stimulus. But in spite of the inadequacy children acquire their mother tongue more or less correctly. So what is it that bridges the gap between the acquired input and the given input? Obviously it is the innate and genetically inborn ability of the humans in acquiring new languages.
The neuroscientists found that there are two areas where language is processed. They are Broca’s area and Wernicke ’s area. These are the points in the human brain that are related to language. There is a gene by name FOXP2 which is one of the first genes discovered in genome mapping project. This FOXP2, though not directly related to language function it controls the areas that are directly connected to the processing of language. If the gene undergoes any mutation it results in speech impairment.
Though the physiologists know everything about almost all the organs of our body, the brain still remains an enigma. The neuroscientists conducted various experiments like stimulating certain parts of the brains of epileptic patients with the help of low intensity electrodes while performing brain surgery. They got lot of inputs from these experiments but those are not enough to come to concrete conclusions about how and where exactly the language is processed and what are the exact reasons for speech impairments. It appears that there is lot of scope for research in this particular area. For this, researchers have to adopt interdisciplinary approach by bringing together subjects like psychology, cognitive sciences, neuroscience, Linguistics and physiology. The reason behind the brain still remaining as an enigma is mainly because of the complex interaction between the mind and the matter. Matter has certain quantity and shape but mind is something abstract and it is spread all over the universe. How exactly the infinite mind emerges out of finite matter is deeply enigmatic. But the innate human quest for knowledge will one day unveil the truth behind this extremely complex process and interaction between the matter (brain) and the mind.
Research findings confirm the theory of Universal Grammar proposed by the great American linguist Noam Chomsky. Noam Chomsky wrote a critique to Harvard psychologist BF Skinner's work which treated the language faculty purely as a learned behaviour, and found that language is something innate and we acquire it by birth. So we are all born with genetically inherited ability of learning our mother tongue at a lightening pace. Most of the children speak their mother tongue effortlessly by the age of three years. But the new finding unveils the incredible thing that a child learns its mother tongue in its mother’s womb.
Contrary to the children's ability to learn language at an amazing pace the grownups struggle for years and years to learn a second language. What could be the reason behind this phenomenon? The most important reason might be that the children treat language purely as a skill and acquire the skill even before they start going to school, whereas the grownups treat language as knowledge that should be learnt and start reading grammar books. The innumerable grammar rules that feature in these books not only baffle them but also make them lose interest in pursuing the language.
Now the big question is why the second language learners are laboring after grammar? It’s simple. Whenever they visit a bookshop they find numerous grammar books written by different authors. When they see them they get an impression that in order to get a new language they should first learn its grammar. Then why so many grammar books appear in the market in spite of the many findings revealing that language is a skill that should be acquired by silent listening and speaking by imitation. One of the reasons is, the teachers who teach English in India are ill equipped and they teach grammar rules to the students in their mother tongue and encourage them to learn all the grammar. As a result they concentrate mostly on grammar and fail to use the grammar knowledge in their day to day communication. Seeing the demand for grammar books most of the well known publishers are releasing new versions of grammar books as they are selling like hot cakes.
So we should all realise that language is an innate ability that manifests outwardly the moment it finds a suitable environment. So the role of the teacher should also change accordingly. Instead of using chalk and talk method he should transform himself into a facilitator and a guide and make an effort to increase student talk time in the classroom. The Lab sessions that are introduced in educational institutions should be utilised to create conducive environment for the students to practice speaking. Practice makes man perfect is an old adage. The new principle is practice makes the thing permanent. When language becomes permanent it becomes a part of our lives and results in its acquisition.
Brilliant! Just the right approach to learning languages.
Fact is that this discovery is not something new. It was explained way back in the Hindu mythology.
This finding is also similar to Quranic teaching. As a child starts learning in the mother's womb, pregnant women are encouraged to read more of the Quran and children of such mothers will not face difficulty in learning the Quran later in life as their Quranic education would have started in the mother's womb itself.
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