Language is inherited.

[Anonymous No.6094909]

The following qualities of language are ubiquitous to all extant human cultures.
Abstraction in speech, antonyms and synonyms, logical notions of "and," "not," "opposite," "equivalent," "part/whole," "general/particular", binary cognitive distinctions, Names for colors, classification of: age, behavioral propensities, body parts, colors, fauna, flora, inner states, kin, sex, space, tools, weather conditions, continua (ordering as cognitive pattern), discrepancies between speech, thought, and action, figurative speech, metaphors, symbolism, symbolic speech, synesthetic metaphors, tabooed utterances.
All societies give individuals higher prestige from the proficient use of language.
Some of these are rather advanced and specific; logical notions of "and," "not," "opposite," "equivalent," "part/whole," "general/particular", binary cognitive distinctions, behavioral propensities, continua (ordering as cognitive pattern), discrepancies between speech, thought, and action,
Others, while common to all human culture are not accessible to all individual humans. We all have a minority of autistics unable to create or understand metaphor.

[Anonymous No.6094912]

All people use spoken language. Some also have written or gestural versions but the spoken is primary.
Babies babble. At six months all human infants begin to produce a small list of syllables that widens between then and 9 months. The short and long lists are the same regardless of the language spoken around it. Regardless even if the baby and her parents are all deaf and the baby is exposed to no spoken language.
A human infant’s acquisition of language is as pre-programmed as their growing pubes. An infant does not have to learn how to speak, they just has to learn a language; English or Chinese or whatever.
So what else is “pre-programmed” into us? What else are we all born to do?
I say carry shit around; a sharp stick, a sword or a cell phone. I bet we have an innate propensity to bring tools with us.

What else?

[Anonymous No.6094976]

Humans do not have instincts.

[Anonymous No.6094982]

>>6094976
LOL, that's a crock of shit. Let me drop a rat snake in your lap and see how you react.

[Anonymous No.6094988]

That's nice.

Now provide a source.

[Anonymous No.6094989]

>>6094912
Babies don't grow pubes.

[Anonymous No.6094993]

>>6094989
[citation needed]

[Anonymous No.6095000]

This doesn't seem to necessarily imply that these linguistic concepts are "pre-programmed" into us in any sense.

An alternative explanation: these aspects of language are bound to arise independently because of the way any burgeoning language must interact with our shared ways of acting / forms of life.

[Anonymous No.6095009]

>>6095000
add to this feral children often CAN'T talk because of the whole lack of nurturing

[Anonymous No.6095013]

Ok, well, I've tried to type this post about five times, now, but the site thinks it's spam. In response to you, OP, language being relativistic doesn't necessarily negate your theory of language being innate, but it puts a serious dent in that thought.

Also, consider the language known as "Piraha". Go to Damn Interesting Dot Com and in their search bar, type "Piraha" or "Another World". They don't have concepts of "opposite" or "equivalent" and a couple of the other things you said are ubiquitous to all human language.

...sayin'.

[Anonymous No.6095011]

>>6095009
Feral children??

[Anonymous No.6095012]

It's well known that linguistic ability is part of the human brain. It's actually localized in specific areas that, when damaged by something like a stroke, make otherwise intelligent people into aphasics who can't string together a sentence or remember a word.

And conversely, it's possible for retards to be language savants, speaking extremely eloquent, grammatical sentences that are just random retard bullshit in meaning.

[Anonymous No.6095016]

>>6094993
>1. My girlfriend doesn't have any.

[Anonymous No.6095028]

>>6094988
I came to 4chan because it is NOT a peer reviewed journal.
But if you are seriously curious here are some search terms:
Joseph Greenberg, Emile Durkheim, George Murdock, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Donald Brown
Are the names of people published in the field.

“Linguistic universal” or “language universal” are terms used to describe properties common to every known language living or dead.

[Anonymous No.6095029]

>>6094982

>reflexes are instincts

what a retard

[Anonymous No.6095040]

>>6095029

Obviously those aren't the same, but humans do, in fact, have instincts. We wouldn't have made it this far as a species without them.

[Anonymous No.6095079]

>>6095029
yeah, they are. If I drop a small pillow in your lap you're not going to have the same delirious reaction as if I drop a snake or large spider.

That's when the reptile part of your brain kicks in.

Humans have many instincts.

[Anonymous No.6095090]

>>6095013
>Piraha
Well,they are making lingusts rethink the whole idea of linguistic universals but look at this.
"As far as researchers know, there are no fictional stories nor mythologies in the Pirahã culture. All stories are descriptions of experiences, and these stories only go back one or two generations at most. There is no collective memory of the Pirahã people; no history of their people is recorded by them. There is practically no art in their culture; whatever drawings they make are only used to describe the spirit world that they have experienced and are not drawn for aesthetic purposes.

There are really only three numeric words in Pirahã - "one," "two," and "many." To add to the confusion, "one" doesn't always mean exactly one - it could mean one fish, a small fish, or only a few fish.

They take short naps from fifteen minutes to a few hours, usually sleeping no more than two hours a day. They only occasionally sleep through the night. "

Is it possible that this small group is in some way neurologically atypical? The tribe might be entirely or at least predominantly “impaired” or different in some way?

[Anonymous No.6095106]

>>6095011
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_child
?
I know I saw a documentary on this
not sure if it's this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h-GhHCBo7I

[Anonymous No.6095191]

>>6095011
Wolflings; abandon kids often adopted by other animals. They are very, very rare and a "pure" one, raised without human company from birth has yet to be verified.

[Anonymous No.6095203]

>>6095106
>>6095191
>>6095011

Some /x/fag came in here once and posted this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvWp90Nd_4U

I'd heard about her before too (she has a wiki), but I'd never seen video. Seems this is a legit counterexample to OP's argument.

[Anonymous No.6095205]

>>6095009
If you raised a human child in a place with a short enough ceiling he would not walk upright; that does not change the intended function of the human spine.

[Anonymous No.6095224]

>>6095090
I believe there are actually a number of random language groups around the world (not many, but some) that use similarly impoverished numerical systems. It's rare but not unattested outside Piraha.

A lot of very sort of interesting claims have been made about Piraha but a lot of them are not exactly a closed question, and some accuse the guy who pioneered Piraha documentation of being rather overenthusiastic on some points, but who knows.

[Anonymous No.6095228]

>>6095205
That kind of goes both ways though since you're playing on the assumption that spoken language is one of the purposes of the human body.

>If you raise a child surrounded by language speakers then it will learn to talk; that does not change the intended function of the human brain.

[Anonymous No.6095229]

>>6095203
At 3:09 the video shows her talking. sitting on a couch and answering an interviewer's question. she even gestures in a typically human way.
The fact that it elsewhere showsherimmitating a dog means nothing. Anyone could immitate a dog if they wanted to of course.

[Anonymous No.6095246]

>>6095229

In the interview she's much older, like in her 20s. There was a big effort made to re-enable her and even then it's still pretty much impossible for her to re-enter normal human society.

[Anonymous No.6095366]

This has detailed information on late language aquision in a severely neglected child.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)

I'ts also a great story overflowing with feels.
Would make a great movie for a brilliant director who can find the GOAT 12 year old actress.

[Anonymous No.6096760]

>>6094909

All people who speak an intelligible language learned it from other people.

[Anonymous No.6096776]

>>6095366
But professor, wasn't this child originally a boy?

[Anonymous No.6096785]

>>6096776
yes, and your point is?

[Anonymous No.6096966]

>>6094912
Language is acquired through pretty simple statistical modeling. There are a bunch of connectionist models that show this.

[Anonymous No.6097064]

>>6095012
This is not really accurate. Some idea of neural noun storage is known, and possibly basic, basic syntax. The rest is still largely mysterious, and for just about every journal you can find saying one thing, you can find another saying the opposite, especially concerning syntactic and semantic storage.

>>6095013
>>6095090
The status of Piraha is still undergoing analysis using modern linguistics techniques. Even if they don't have even 1-level embedding, that does not necessarily mean they don't have a typical human language syntax, albeit a limited one.

>>6095028
I would say that in non-social science linguistics, really Greenberg is the only one which is still studied in depth in the 'hard' parts of linguistics. "Universals" are also gaining a different sense than Greenberg used it, though many of his findings are being 'translated' into the new technology. His 'universals' also weren't 'universal'; many were trends.

>>6096966
This is far from the truth. Barely are there full models of phoneme acquisition. Statistical syntax is highly debated, and there are dependencies in many grammars which statistical syntax inherently can't model even now without reference to other non-statistical components of grammar. Statistical semantics has been a bit more successful, but not when that semantics is heavily dependent on syntax. Connectionist models are still young, not totally mainstream, and only a portion of the picture.

Also, this can kind of be a Linguistics AMA if anyone's interested, but I am only a first year in a PhD program, and I only really know any level of advanced material in syntax, though I have a working knowledge of other branches of linguistics.

[Anonymous No.6097069]

>>6095028
That is not to say I don't like Durkheim or Lévi-Strauss, it's just not part of language science in the same way.

[Anonymous No.6097151]

There is definitely a critical period for learning language (as the feral children posted have pointed out), and it is definitely unique to humans (see: all of the debunked work that was being done with chimps and sign language).

Don't dolphins have language? I'd say the size and developmental capacity of the neocortex is the key to language.