Chomsky 

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Neurological basis of language. Noam Chomsky postulated a 'language acquisition device', an innate mechanism in the brain which allows children to acquire language relatively easily. Research on brain damaged patients has shown that certain areas of the brain play a crucial role in language. Similar research has on brain damaged patients has indicated the essential roles in perception, thinking, or language of other brain areas. 

The 1960s spawned innumerable new social, political and religious movements. After the austerity of the post-Second World War period there was an economic boom in the West. The decade opened as South Africa left the Commonwealth with the then Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, giving his famous 'Winds of Change' speech in which he argued for a 'partnership of races' in that continent, and for inclusion of all in political and economic power. However , the struggle against apartheid and brutal white supremacist regimes was not to be complete until almost three decades later. In 1962 the USA became very nervous about the fact that the Soviet Union was building medium range missile sites in Cuba with strike capability on the USA. After supporting an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro, the US blockaded Cuba. Despite the exhortation of his chiefs-of-staff to use nuclear weapons to end the confrontation, President John F. Kennedy insisted on negotiation and averted what could have been the first (and probably last) nuclear war. In 1964 in Great Britain the Conservatives lost the general election and Harold Wilson became the first Labour prime minister since 1951. The United States became involved in a war in Vietnam, supporting a series of Saigon-based governments against rebels who appeared to have backing from Communist China and/or the Soviet Union. The US poured in resources, including up to 500.000 troops in the country at any one time. This war was one of the first in which a civilian population was attacked as much as the forces against whom was undertaken. The use of chemical weapons such as napalm (a jelly-like chemical flammable substance dropped from the air) and Agent Orange (a herbicide) did vast and terrible damage to the country, its people and the food systems that supported them. A huge popular protest movement in both the US and across Europe developed against the war. The ethic of rebellion and questioning of the traditional status quo fuelled the development of protest and alternative cultural, arts and religious movements too. These movements included the Pop Art movement, modernism and minimalism in art and architecture, the rock, soul and motown movements in music, and transcendental meditation, many cults of various kinds and the alternative lifestyle called 'hippy'. The idea that individuals should explore their own inner psyches and develop spiritually was also connected to particular drug cultures, where drugs like LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) were purported to produce the same self-knowledge and awareness as meditation and religious experience did. The chief proponent was an American psychologist Timothy Leary, who famously exhorted his followers to 'Turn on, tune in, drop out'. This decade spawned relaxation of dress codes and liberalisation of sexual behaviour, enabled by the development of a contraceptive pill, which enabled women for the first time in history to control their fertility. Despite the apparent tremendous optimism and energy with the decade opened, it closed more sombrely with the promise of wars and destruction becoming ubiquitous. The Vietnam war continued with thousands dead and opposed by violent demonstrations across the US and Europe; the six-day Arab-Israeli war occurred in 1967; in 1968 Martin Luther King, a US black rights activist was assassinated and Enoch Powell in the UK gave his notorious 'Rivers of Blood' speech opposing immigration; in 1968 also the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia after its liberal leader Alexander Dubcek had introduced the 'Prague Spring' of liberal reforms; in response to sectarian conflict over civil rights in 1969 British troops began to patrol the streets of Northern Ireland. The continuing sectarian conflict and its consequence became know as the 'Troubles', and has continued into the new century; in 1969 the there was a very severe famine amongst the Biafran people of Nigeria. For the first time television began to bring the acute suffering of people of the developing world into the living rooms of every industrialised nation. 

Linguistics can be basically understood as the study of language, looking at factors such as the social interactions it is based upon, the origins of language, and the structure of language. The capacity to develop the use of highly complex language could be seen as one of the most significant factors which have made humanity the dominant species on the planet today (others are the closely related capacity for abstract thought, and our remarkable ability to make use of tools that require the fine manipulation we achieve because we can oppose our thumb and fingers). Given the complexity of this subject, it is perhaps not surprising that significant contributions to the study of language are also provided by philosophy, psychology, anthropology and sociology. In particular, since the pioneering work of Noam Chomsky in the 1960's, parts of cognitive psychology and linguistics have become closely entwined, sometimes referred to as psycholinguistics. Another field, sociolinguistics, focuses on the socio-cultural functions played by language, and the ways in which language is socially constructed. Chomsky's theories criticized the behaviourist model which saw language as simply another behaviour, acquired like other behaviours through learning via reinforcement. Chomsky argued that this model was unable to explain many of the complexities of language; for example, how virtually all humans seem to acquire quite impressive language skills, despite an enormous range in the quality of the linguistic environment they are exposed to. Chomsky saw a general capacity for language, an 'innate linguistic competence', as 'hard-wired' into the brain, though of course the particular language spoken would vary according to the linguistic environment a child was exposed to. 

Own family. Although a direct link between a figure's achievements and their own family and/or upbringing can only be identified for a relatively small number of our people on EPoCH, of course, our upbringing and family influence us all in some manner or other. Presumably, the socio-economic circumstances of a person's upbringing affect not only the opportunities afforded them, but also the experiences they bring to the study of psychology. As well as this, two quite different themes can be identified from the information provided for EPoCH: Having intellectual relatives. Intellectual relatives often open doors for contacts with the current 'leading lights'. For instance, William James' brother, the novelist Henry, settled in Britain, which not only enabled the younger William to continue to travel, but also to come into contact with contemporary European thinking. Indeed, James' family were all intellectual and his father took the children travelling and gave them an unusual and intellectual education. Similarly, Pierre Janet, the psychiatrist, was in contact throughout his career with many leading intellectuals living in metropolitan France, having many relatives, like the philosopher, Paul Janet, who were intellectuals and professional people. Indeed, the 'gentleman scientist' model that was widespread during the 19th Century may have attenuated the importance family had on an individual's own research. 'Gentlemen scientists' tended to come from relatively privileged families that had not only access to the material resources that are important to research, but also access to an intellectual environment that encouraged such activities. So it is hardly surprising that many of the early figures in EPoCH are either related (like Galton and Darwin), or had intellectual relatives in other fields (like James and Janet). Parental values and interests. For instance, Wundt is described as being a “serious and solitary child who spent most of his time studying”. His later capacity to work, and the approach he took, seems to have come from being born into a poor family of clergy and having a serious childhood.\nGail Goodman, who studies child witness testimony says: “My father, who revered science, was educated as an attorney. My mother, who grew up in an orphanage, knew all too well the meaning of child trauma. After graduating from UCLA, she became a teacher and child advocate. Given this familial history, perhaps my research and teaching interests come as no surprise”. Written by: Course Team