Getting the Outside-In: An Interactional, Cultural and Biological Perspective on the Nature of Primary Language Acquisition

In 2009, Lee et al. (2009) proposed a perspective on language acquisition based on evolutionary biology and neurobiology. They argued that language is: (1) a cultural artifact that emerges as a complex adaptive system, and (2) the ubiquity of language acquisition among children is the product of an Interactional Instinct that is subserved by the neurobiology of affiliation and supported by pattern finding abilities discussed by Tomasello. This instinct along with pattern finding abilities ensures that the language formed and shaped through interaction is passed down to succeeding generations. This dissertation is an extension of that perspective. It attempts to consider, in greater depth, the social and cultural contexts in which language must be learned. Where context (the social and cultural) from the generative perspective may not be considered and even be onerous to analyze, I view the contexts that we are exposed to as facilitative and crucial to language acquisition.;In short, this dissertation explores how language is acquired via enculturation; it asks how one is socialized into becoming a culturally competent member of the society to which he/she belongs and what might be the biology that subserves the socialization. This project will be rooted in the fundamental tenets of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (Luria, 1976; Vygotsky, 1978), which proposed two general lines of development that are intertwined in the ontogenesis of the individual---the natural line of biological maturation and the cultural line. From the interaction between the two trajectories---the human develops. Thus, for Vygotsky, culture can shape our biology and biology can affect our culture as one participates in culturally organized practices, builds social relationships, and learns to use cultural artifacts.;Though, we are as Rogoff (2003) states "biologically cultural" (p. 63), such that our biology exists and perhaps constrains our ability for culture learning, many researchers have "tended to lose sight of the fact that their ultimate goal is to contribute to some integrated, holistic picture of human nature" (Wertsch, 1985 p. 1), and many have focused on either the cultural line or the biological line. Thus, one purpose of this dissertation is to address two fundamental questions: (1) How is one socialized into becoming a competent member into the society to which he/she belongs and (2) what might be the biology that facilitates, subserves and constrains such learning. In particular, this project explores how language might be acquired via our enculturation, and how that enculturation both fits and forms the brain.;The picture that emerges indicates that biology is nature and culture is nurture, but there is no nurture without nature, and it is nurture that provides for the phylogenetic development of our biological nature. The ontogenesis of language behavior, i.e. its acquisition, cannot occur without its evolved biology or without its evolved cultural practices for socialization.