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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.
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 ...
The proponents of these theories argue that general cognitive processes subserve language acquisition and that the result of these processes is language-specific phenomena, such as word learning and grammar acquisition. The findings of many empirical studies support the predictions of these theories, suggesting that language acquisition is a ...
The nativist theory, proposed by Noam Chomsky, argues that language is a unique human accomplishment, ... the statistical language acquisition theory. [72]
Eric Heinz Lenneberg (19 September 1921 – 31 May 1975) was a linguist and neurologist who pioneered ideas on language acquisition and cognitive psychology, particularly in terms of the concept of innateness.
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 ...
Indeed, several nativist arguments were inspired by Chomsky's assertion that children could not learn complicated grammar based on the linguistic input they typically receive, and must therefore have an innate language-learning module, or language acquisition device.
Michael Tomasello has challenged Chomsky's theory of innate syntactic knowledge as based on theory and not behavioral observation. [159] The empirical basis of poverty of the stimulus arguments has been challenged by Geoffrey Pullum and others, leading to back-and-forth debate in the language acquisition literature.