The Development Of Language

I can’t be the only one who has wondered, as I’m teaching something like the intricacies of separable phrasal verbs (pick up the pen, pick the pen up, and pick it up, but not pick up it) or present perfect, just how this English language developed. So many things have so apparently little basis in logic.

Similarly, using articles (the/a/an) comes so naturally to native English speakers (and native speakers of any language which has articles – with regard to their own language of course) that it is hard to grasp that articles are probably one of the most difficult features of English for learners whose own languages don’t have them. This begs the questions: does English really need articles? Plenty of languages, if not the majority, manage just fine without them. Where do these unusual features of language come from?

Sadly, the TEFL Logue does not have the answer to these intriguing questions. Obviously studying the development of language from now looking back is less than totally straightforward. This blog article, though, describes a fascinating situation where children in Nicaragua who are both deaf and illiterate developed their own sign language. Many essentially believe that this confirms the belief that when there is a gap in some language system, its users come up with solutions on their own – and that human beings have the innate capacity to develop language. While it would be clearly unethical to somehow isolate a group of children before they were exposed to language and “see what happens”, this situation provides a remarkably similar situation.