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In linguistics, the innateness hypothesis, also known as the nativist hypothesis, holds that humans are born with at least some knowledge of linguistic structure. On this hypothesis, language acquisition involves filling in the details of an innate blueprint rather than being an entirely inductive process.
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.
The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a claim from language acquisition research proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s. [1] The LAD concept is a purported instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language. It is a component of the nativist theory of language. This theory asserts that humans are born with the ...
On first-language acquisition (FLA), Cook presents Chomsky's nativist perspective—that humans are born with innate knowledge of natural language. Cook dismisses after consideration theories that FLA can be explained without nativism through the phenomena of social interaction , learning through praise or punishment ( behaviourism ), imitation ...
Chomsky's theory of generative grammar has also influenced work in music theory and analysis, such as Fred Lerdahl's and Ray Jackendoff's generative theory of tonal music. [293] [294] [295] Chomsky is among the most cited authors living or dead.
Chomsky suggests that humans are not exposed to all structures of their language, yet they fully achieve knowledge of these structures. Linguistic nativism is the theory that humans are born with some knowledge of language. One acquires a language not entirely through experience.
Chomsky wished to shed light on these underlying structures of the human language, and subsequently whether one can infer the nature of an organism from its language. Chomsky's book received mostly unfavorable reviews. Critics argued that "Cartesian linguistics" fails both as a methodological conception [1] and as a historical phenomenon. [2]
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).