Genie's Universal Grammar Theory: The Development Of Language

Her father had ordered the family never to speak to her, leading to the gross underdevelopment of her Broca’s and Werinicke’s area—the language centers of the pre-frontal cortex. The lack of stimulation in these speech centers caused irreparable damage. By the age of thirteen, Genie had no real capacity to learn language. This phenomena of severely decreased ability to learn something as someone ages is called a “critical period.” Something is expected to develop within this time and if it does not, it is significantly harder or even impossible to learn certain information or develop certain skills (Genie). Famous development psychologist, Noam Chomsky argues children are not taught grammar but acquire it through socialization—we are preprogrammed to develop language skills, especially during early childhood. Children learn through a hypothesized mental structure called the Language Acquisition Device, which includes basic grammar. Even though she had scientists teaching her English and seemed to be making progress for some time, she was capable of very little learning and ultimately resulted in a substantial deficiency in anything more complicated than basic grammar. Genie constantly used over-regularizations, such as “There are two sheeps” and …show more content…
It is more difficult to learn a language the older you become. According to the Universal Grammar Theory, language is so important, noun and verb categories are innate. It has been suggested that children are sensitive to patterns in language which enables acquisitions process (Lemetyinen). It has been proven that actual sound receptors are pruned during middle childhood. If a certain sound is not apparent in the language you learn at a young age, your brain prunes that specific neural pathway to speed up other functions. Once lost, that person will not be able to differentiate subtle nuances in language sounds