How do children (and adults) acquire language?

I feel that language acquisition is a combination of both natural, innate ability and enivronmental interaction. I usually take this combination approach when the nature vs. nurture debate arises. What is strange to me is that I never really thought about how we acquire language or that there are arguments as to whether language naturally unfolds or is taught. I was initially thinking that language is taught because we have all of these theories about the best way to teach children to read, write, and speak. But then I considered that maybe the teaching theories are really just to aid in the natural unfolding of language in a child. For me, neither nature nor nurture explains everything. I do not agree with Locke's "Tabula Rasa - Blank Tablet - Theory". While Locke made great contriubutions to the theory of Associationism, which later led to behaviorism and other amazing theories, I simply do not believe that we are born with nothing in our minds, and learn everything. I think that everyone has instinctual drives that have been passed down for years, such as the fight or flight insticnt. I also believe that we have a natural drive to comunicate with others, and are equiped with some natural ability to do so. Look at the deaf children from Nicaragua, they had no formal learning of sign language and made up their own way to communicate with each other. This example also led me to realize that language does not mean only verbal communication. I know that not everyone in the world speaks verbally, but for some reason when I had previously heard the word "language" I would think of English, Spainish, French, etc. So now I try to think about language as more of the form of communication that people use.

Basically I believe that everyone has the ability to acquire language but how far one progresses in their use of language deals with environmental impact. I think that there is a "critical period" as well. I had no idea that it ended at around age 12, I thought that it might be younger. This does not mean that after 12 a person cannot become better at speaking, reading, etc., but that the foundation has to be laid by then. Again, I am going to go back to the idea that language is a natural thing and will unfold on its own, but a child's environment will have an impact on it. In class we were talking about speaking well at a job interview. This made me realize that proficency in a language depends on the society's use of the language. I had to interview a co-worker for another class but she brought up a great point about the use of language. She said that she has a nephew who is very bright and goes away to a private school. He is only eleven but he has an amazingly large vocabulary and speaks extremely eloquently. When he comes back to his neighborhood people make fun of him for speaking in such a manner. A use of language that is encouraged in one area is discouraged in another, that is why I feel that environmental impact is huge. In addition, the majority decides what is exceptible use of the language and what is not. Going back to class, each generation has a plethora of slang terms for things. Whether or not they make it into Webster seems to depend on if the terms are mainstreamed or not.

*Patricia, I might add more later but you can just use this for the summary. I do not want you to worry that I posted again after you already did the summary.