Neural commitment theory postulates that infants absorb languages - TopicsExpress



          

Neural commitment theory postulates that infants absorb languages so rapidly and without formal instruction because of the genetic composition of their brains. As infants are exposed to even marginal amounts of speech, their brains extrapolate larger linguistic patterns. As they listen, infant brains lock onto these patterns, gaining a rudimentary knowledge of underlying grammatical systems and vocabulary. Linguistic absorption during the locking phase is not restricted to one language, which is why infants can easily become multilingual. As infants comprehend the linguistic patterns they are aurally exposed to, they can predict structures that they have not heard yet. This degree of aural pattern recognition is so sophisticated as to be akin to approximating the totality of a jigsaw puzzle through being given a random sample of the original pieces.
Posted on: Wed, 18 Sep 2013 22:02:16 +0000

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