Full Answer
What did Chomsky say about language acquisition?
Languages are acquired naturally by children. Everyone is born with the tools to learn languages. This is known as the language acquisition device.
How does the Language Acquisition Device work?
The language acquisition device helps humans to acquire language. Through a series of underlying processes in the brain, people can naturally recog...
What is a characteristic of Chomsky's language acquisition device?
The language acquisition device is innate. This means that it is not an actual part of the brain. Instead, it is a series of underlying processes f...
What evidence is there for the Language Acquisition Device?
Children can recognize incorrect grammar. They can also correctly structure sentences, putting words in the correct order, and they can pluralize n...
What is Chomsky's theory of language?
Chomsky’s claim that knowledge of language is innate was supported by Eric Lenneberg’s critical period hypothesis. In 1967, Lenneberg published the book Biological Foundations of Language, in which he argued that humans are biologically capable of learning language only until puberty. After puberty, humans are biologically unable to master the intricacies of natural language. For many years, researchers in zoology had recognized the existence of critical periods of development for a range of nonhuman animal species, such as songbirds, ducklings, horses, dogs, and sheep. Evidence for the Lenneberg’s critical period hypothesis for human language was drawn from a variety of sources. Case studies of children raised without sufficient exposure to human language appeared to support the critical period hypothesis. Such individuals, such as Victor, the wild child, and Genie, had not been able to master the grammatical intricacies of sentence construction. Individuals born with severe hearing loss who were not exposed to a signed language until after puberty typically had not been able to achieve nativelike proficiency. Furthermore, there was ample anecdotal evidence that individuals who attempt to learn a second language after puberty rarely achieve a level of proficiency comparable to that of one who learns the language during childhood.
Where is the LAD located in the brain?
Although there have been locations in the brain identified as language processing areas, such as Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, a location corresponding to the LAD has not been found.
What did Chomsky argue about the universal grammar?
Chomsky argued that all humans are born with the knowledge of what makes a human language. Included in this innate knowledge must be details of important characteristics of all the world’s languages. The term universal grammar has been used to describe the knowledge contained in the LAD.
What is the primary challenge for this alternative approach to language learning?
According to Chomsky, the primary challenge for this alternative approach to language learning is adequately explaining how children produce word forms and sentences that they do not experience in the environment and, thus, have no opportunity to learn.
Do nonhumans learn languages?
According to Chomsky, humans are born with the LAD, but other species are not. Nonhuman primates and other species do not spontaneously learn human languages. Furthermore, attempts to teach nonhuman species language have yielded mixed results.
What is Chomsky's theory of language development?
Chomsky’s Theory of Language Development (Universal Grammar) Universal grammar is a theory in linguistics that suggests that there are properties that all possible natural human languages have . Usually credited to Noam Chomsky, the theory suggests that some rules of grammar are hard-wired into the brain, and manifest without being taught.
Who said that all languages are built upon a common grammar?
The idea can be traced to Roger Bacon ’s observation that all languages are built upon a common grammar, substantially the same in all languages, even though it may undergo in them accidental variations, and the 13th century speculative grammarians who, following Bacon, postulated universal rules underlying all grammars.
What does UG mean in a language?
To distinguish properties of languages that can be traced to other facts about cognition from properties of languages that cannot, the abbreviation UG* can be used. UG is the term often used by Chomsky for those aspects of the human brain which cause language to be the way it is (i.e. are Universal Grammar in the sense used here) ...
What are the factors that determine the development of a language?
As Chomsky puts it, “Evidently, development of language in the individual must involve three factors: (1) genetic endowment, which sets limits on the attainable languages, thereby making language acquisition possible; (2) external data, converted to the experience that selects one or another language within a narrow range; (3) principles not specific to FL.” [FL is the faculty of language, whatever properties of the brain cause it to learn language.] So (1) is Universal Grammar in the first theoretical sense, (2) is the linguistic data which the child is exposed to.
Why are some expressions not available to language learners?
Such expressions are not available to the language learners, because they are, by hypothesis, ungrammatical for speakers of the local language. Speakers of the local language do not utter such expressions and note that they are unacceptable to language learners.
Who made the argument that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language?
Linguist Noam Chomsky made the argument that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language. In turn, there is an assumption that all languages have a common structural basis. This set of rules is known as universal grammar.
Who influenced the linguistic theory?
Later linguists who have influenced this theory include Noam Chomsky and Richard Montague, developing their version of the theory as they considered issues of the Argument from poverty of the stimulus to arise from the constructivist approach to linguistic theory.
What did Chomsky believe about grammar?
Chomsky believed that the similarities of grammar that appear in languages across cultures; this led him to propose a universal grammar - an innate, shared set of linguistic principles - that underlie forms found in all cultures
What happened when the next generation of children who were deaf arrived?
Something remarkable occurred when the next generation of children who were deaf arrived: they effortlessly transformed the primitive sign language of the playground into a real language.
Can grammar be learned?
There are many aspects of grammar that are so intuitive and self-ev ident that they need never be discussed or learned in order for them to be understood.
