These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. However, such a prediction is apparently at odds with certain facts which indicate that many aspects of the acquisition of language knowledge are sequentially ordered. Under this approach, we expect children’s linguistic behavior to precociously conform to the Principles of Universal Grammar (henceforth UG) or at least, we expect the transition from the initial to the steady state of language acquisition to be rapid and error free. Once the genetic device gets down to work, only certain adjustments, determined by the linguistic environment, are needed for the child to master the grammar of the language to which he is exposed. According to this model, the new born baby is equiped with a set of computational mechanisms for manipulating structural representations that are ready to be used. Chomsky 1965, 1981, 1986), language acquisition has been idealized as an instantaneous process resulting from the interaction of a small number of innately determined linguistic principles and the linguistic experience available to the child. The process of learning, in brief, consists of innate, internal-rule making using the LAD or UG.Since the emergence of the Generative Standard Theory framework (cf. As the child hears samples of the language, they trigger off the LAD or UG, which then enables the child to “discover” the structure or rules of the language by matching his inborn knowledge of basic grammatical relationships to what he has heard. It works to stop a child from going on a wrong track in the process of learning the rules of his first language. These language samples serve as a trigger to activate the device.Īccording to Chomsky, the LAD or UG contains the principles governing all human languages. For the LAD to work, the child needs access only to samples of a natural language. This ‘black box’ thought to contain all and only the principles which are universal to all human languages, prevents the child from going off on lots of the language. This device was often described as an imaginary black box’ which exists somewhere in the brain. Thus, his theory is often described as innatist or nativist.Ĭhomsky originally referred to this special ability as a language acquisition device (LAD). In other words, language learning is innate or native to human beings. According to him, nature has endowed all human beings with special mechanism in the brain, and it is which helps children know the rules of language.
Chomsky proposed the existence of a Language Acquisition Device (LAD), or Universal Grammar (UG) as it has been more recently called, as the key to language learning.
Let us now turn to his account of how a child first learns a language.įor Chomsky in particular, child language acquisition or learning is a very specific cognitive process. In so doing, Chomsky had a far reaching impact on other areas of psychology as scholars extended his theories far beyond language. In fact, his work simultaneously sought to explain how a child learns a language, and how people are able to interpret language, his earliest writings attacking Skinner’s theories directly and devastatingly. Chomsky’s theory of language was in fact also a psychological theory of language cognition- that is, it was once a theory of linguistics as well as psychology.
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