Chomsky’s Theory: Innate Language Acquisition

Posted on Mar 19, 2025 in Other civil servant exams

Tenets of Chomsky’s Theory

Chomsky’s theory on language acquisition proposes that:

  • Children possess an innate Universal Grammar (UG).
  • The UG contains fundamental properties of language, initially with parameters allowing variation within innate predispositions.
  • Language acquisition happens when the UG interacts with linguistic experience, evolving into a specific grammar (e.g., Spanish).
  • Language acquisition isn’t a learning process dependent on intellectual problem-solving capacity.

Innate Capacities: Biologically Programmed Behaviors

Evidence supporting innate, biologically programmed capacities:

  1. Language emerges in all children between 18 and 28 months, regardless of cultural factors (cultural aspects have low importance).
  2. It exhibits characteristics of biologically programmed behavior:
  • The behavior arises before it is necessary.
  • It emerges without a conscious decision.
  • External events don’t determine its emergence (though a rich environment is beneficial).
  • Explicit instruction and practice are irrelevant. Children aren’t taught to speak and don’t follow training. Correction attempts are ineffective (e.g., correcting verbal irregularities).
  • Development follows a regular sequence, correlated with other aspects of organism development.
  • A critical period may limit normal development.

There’s a period during which language can emerge and develop normally (birth until puberty). Evidence includes:

  • Learning a second language is a very demanding process for adults compared to children learning their native language.

Universal Grammar

Children’s language is characterized by fundamental properties of language:

  1. Use of abstract structures.
  2. Governed by rules.
  3. Creative, not imitative.

From Universal Grammar to Particular Grammar

The UG is fitted with parameters, a linguistic mechanism for adjusting universal possibilities to a correct grammatical system. Through language experience, the UG shapes the child’s mind to the grammar of a particular language.

For example, the possibility to omit the subject: (John) said that (Luis) went to the movies.

Parameter: On the compulsory or optional expression of the subject. In contact with Spanish, the child’s mind defines the parameter as optional.

This theory has not yet been empirically demonstrated. The process of acquiring a particular language is more than a parametric setting; it involves other important factors.

Language and Intellectual Capacity

Language acquisition doesn’t depend on a child’s intellectual capacity. Evidence:

  • Severe intelligence development problems may not affect language acquisition. Children with hydrocephalus, spina bifida, Down syndrome, or severe cognitive impairment often develop good morphological and syntactic skills.
  • Children show specific language development disorders without any delay or neurological impairment.
  • If intelligence were decisive, a being’s language ability would correspond to its evolutionary position. Chimpanzees would be more likely to speak than mice (serious research has been conducted, with little success). This indicates no link to intelligence.

All these cases of dissociation between cognitive and language skills indicate that language acquisition is independent of intelligence.