The Critical Period Hypothesis Supported By Genie's Case

Scholary Paper aus dem Jahr 2002 im Fachbereich Anglistik Linguistikeinseitig bedruckt Note 13 RuhrUniversitt Bochum 9 Eintragungen imLiteraturverzeichnis Spra... » 

Scholary Paper aus dem Jahr 2002 im Fachbereich Anglistik Linguistikeinseitig bedruckt Note 13 RuhrUniversitt Bochum 9 Eintragungen imLiteraturverzeichnis Sprache Englisch Abstract In 1967 Eric Heinz Lennebergestablished his groundbreaking work Biological Foundations of Language inwhich he tries to push the biological view on language forward. One importantpoint that is discussed is language in the context of growth and maturation.The Critical Period Hypothesis CPH is the essence of this considerations.Lenneberg tries to find evidence for his theory in the study of retardedaphasic or deaf children and in neurological studies. But at this time the moststriking proof for the CPH Genie was still imprisoned in a small room in herparents home. Three years after Lenneberg published his work on the CPH 1312 yearsold Genie was recovered by an eligibility worker and her case rapidlyaroused the interest of neurologists psychologists and linguists. SusanCurtiss a graduate student of the UCLA Linguistic Department got thepossibility to work with Genie for the years to come. Her work Genie APsycholinguistic Study of a ModernDay Wild Child compiles her experiences onworking with Genie added by a detailed case history. What Susan Curtiss foundout about Genies linguistic development seems to be the evidence for theexistence of a critical phase for first language acquisition. This paper givesa brief definition of Lennebergs Critical Period Hypothesis summarizes thecase history and the data of Genies linguistic development and according toSusan Curtiss relates Genies case directly to the CPH. Over and above thatit tries to explain why Genie developed a certain amount of language and withthis proved the strong version of Lennebergs hypothesis as wrong. «