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Child Language Acquisition Notes on Innateness
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Some of my notes regarding Chomsky's theory of Innateness/Nativism. I obtained an A* in my exam in 2023.
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Innateness – N. ChomskyInnate faculty – brain’s ability to pick up rules – born with a set of language rules
Universal Grammar – shared by all human languages and considered innate
Language Acquisition Device (LAD) – idea that the brain is hard-wired to pick up structures, patterns
and language rules.
Poverty of Stimulus – idea a child cannot come into contact with every rule about language, good
job of interpreting/constructing rules of languages.
Virtuous errors – process of interpreting rules and grammar of language – make minor mistakes.
Innate Faculty of Brain
Human brains contain specialised ‘language organ’, an innate mental ‘module’ or faculty,
dedicated to task of mastering language.
Children discover system of language from unsystematic and small amount of data
Language acquisition = little imitation
Reinforcement = correction/reward – very small role in acquisition
Language acquisition = active process
Language faculty contains innate knowledge of various linguistic rules – innate knowledge =
‘initial stage’ of language faculty
Interaction = ‘primary linguistic data’ = new body of linguistic knowledge
‘attained’/final state of language faculty = ‘linguistic competence’
Chomsky = Brain is biologically determined to pick up language.
Just from hearing language, children’s brains are triggered to interpret and pick up the structures
of language.
Universal Grammar
Babies born with innate knowledge of structure of language which speeds up learning of
native language when they hear it.
Children fit examples of language into their mental model of how language works = LAD
Chomsky: ‘Universal grammar’ = set of properties, conditions or what constitutes ‘initial
state’ of language learner.
In Favour
1. Language Universals: all human languages share certain properties
2. Convergence: Children are exposed to different input yet, converge on the same grammar.
3. Poverty of Stimulus: Children acquire knowledge for which there is no evidence in the input.
4. No negative Evidence: Children know which structures are ungrammatical and do not
acquire over general grammars in spite of the fact they are not exposed to negative
evidence.
5. Species Specificity: We are the only species that has language.
6. Ease and speed of CLA: Children learn language quickly and effortlessly, on minimal
exposure.
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