Miracle of Language

The information on propostitional networks from out text, Learning Theory and Instruction page 74, set me thinking.

This material covered Anderson’s ACT Theory ( Anderson, 1990,1993,1996; Anderson, Reder, & Lebier,1996).  Quoting from the text: ACT-R is a model of cognitive architecture that attempts to explain how all components of the mind work together to produce coherent cognition, (Anderson et all., 2004). A proposition is formed by combining two nodes with a subject-predicate link, or associations; one node constitutes the subject and another node the predicate.  Examples are (implied information in parenthesis): “Fred (is) rich” and ”Shopping (takes) time.”  A second type of association is the relation-argument link, where the relation is verb (in meaning) and the argument is the recipient of the relation or what is affected by the relationship.  Examples are “eat cake” and “solve puzzles”.  Relation arguments can serve as subjects or predicates to form complex propositions.  Examples are” Fred eat(s) cake, and “solv(ing) puzzles takes time.

This passage made me return to page 42 in the text where it posited the question, “To what extent is the brain “prewired to know or learn things?”  The discussion began by looking at language acquisition. It states that ”speaking and understanding language is a miraculous accomplishment indeed; children must master not only the subtle motor movements involved in producing various consonants and vowels, but also tens of thousands of word meanings plus syntactical structures so numerous and multifaceted that even linguist have been hard-pressed to catalog them all.“  The passage continues and is quite marvelous.  The conclusion of many researchers is that children are born with a predisposition to acquire language. (e.g., Cairns, 1996; Gopnik, 1997; Hirsh-Pasek & Golnikoff, 1996; Lennenberg, 1967; Lightfoot, 1999)

You may consider my next observation right out of the chapter of pretheory (p. 3), a myth maybe, but I next recalled that John 1:14 reads ,”And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth (ESV).  If you are a creationist, like I am, it makes beautiful sense that language be prewired in a child, because the Bible tells us that we are made in the image of God who is the Word who became flesh.