Deutscher Nature Vs Nurture

The debate of nature vs. nurture is excruciating. As this debate may pertain to anything that living organisms are capable or not capable of doing and or what they may be predisposed to and how that affects them. There are many factors that play into the debate and to know exactly what is innate or learned at times may be difficult to differentiate. Deutscher brings forth the debate of human language being hardwired into our brains, that language to a certain degree is innate. Unfortunately, the technology at our present time is not capable of providing us with indisputable facts. Therefore, as a result linguist must theorize what is hardwired into our brains by creating hypothesis and developing arguments based on evolutionary evidence that are already known. Deutscher through out his book uses the analogy “Me Tarzan” as the basic foundation of what is human language. This analogy breaks down fundamentals of communicating stating that regardless of what language a person may speak they are still capable of communicating on such a basic level. Tarzan analogy is made up of three ‘raw materials’, which were words for physical objects, simple actions and pointing words. Deutscher suggests that knowing only three simple words allowed for communication, as …show more content…
First human brains must possess some a hardwired trait before we could use the basics. This brings us to the innateness debate. Deutscher discusses the stereotype of all linguists agreeing on how babies are capable of understanding grammatical concepts before even learning their ‘mother tongue’. This is not true, in fact many of them disagree having different theories involving grammar being embed in our genetic make up or how environmental stimulus plays a large role. What is known for absolute truth though is that human brains possess the ability to learn a language from a young age and to master it, a feat that only humans have