Language: the Nature/Nurture Debate (Nativism vs. Empiricism) -- Linguistics 101

Is language a cultural artifact created by humans or is it hardwired in the brain? Is language an external tool or an internal instinct? Do we check if a sentence belongs to a language by asking native speakers for their intuitions or by running a query against a database of words that have been used in that language?

This short video explores the surface of an ongoing controversy in linguistics over the operational definition of language. It also explains how this debate impacts the way videos about linguistics & language are presented on this channel.

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• #linguistics
• #language
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• #language_instinct
• #innate
• #nativist
• #nativism
• #empiricist
• #empiricism
• #linguistic_universal
• #linguistic_universals
• #naturenurture
• #nature_nurture_debate
• #nature_vs_nurture