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Over the years, many theories that are against language innateness have been developed to account for language acquisition. Many have championed that human beings learn language through experience with some leaning towards children being equipped with learning mechanisms while others suggesting that social situations or cognitive capacities can ...
Universal grammar (UG), in modern linguistics, is the theory of the innate biological component of the language faculty, usually credited to Noam Chomsky.The basic postulate of UG is that there are innate constraints on what the grammar of a possible human language could be.
Nativism is a modern view rooted in innatism. The advocates of nativism are mainly philosophers who also work in the field of cognitive psychology or psycholinguistics : most notably Noam Chomsky and Jerry Fodor (although the latter adopted a more critical attitude toward nativism in his later writings).
Language acquisition usually refers to first-language acquisition. It studies infants' acquisition of their native language , whether that is a spoken language or a sign language, [ 1 ] though it can also refer to bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA), referring to an infant's simultaneous acquisition of two native languages.
Research on the human capacity for language aims to provide support for a nativist view. Language is a species characteristic of humans: No human society has ever been discovered that does not employ a language, and all medically able children acquire at least one language in early childhood. [5]
The generative approach to second language (L2) acquisition (SLA) is a cognitive based theory of SLA that applies theoretical insights developed from within generative linguistics to investigate how second languages and dialects are acquired and lost by individuals learning naturalistically or with formal instruction in foreign, second language and lingua franca settings.
The theory has often been extended to a critical period for second-language acquisition (SLA). David Singleton states that in learning a second language, "younger = better in the long run", but points out that there are many exceptions, noting that five percent of adult bilinguals master a second language even though they begin learning it when they are well into adulthood—long after any ...
Krashen claimed that “acquisition” is different from “learning” (Acquisition-Learning hypothesis). For example, children “acquire” their L1 naturally from the world around them. Krashen contrasted this with the “formal learning” that usually takes place in language classrooms.