Chomsky and the innate nature of language

We have only touched upon a few examples of how language is acquired, but they speak directly to the debate about the nature of child development. Many laypeople and some psychologists have assumed that language is learned by observation, imitation and reinforcement (Skinner, 1957; Staats, 1968). But the examples given above pose some fundamental challenges to this account. Whom is the child imitating when she says, ‘Ow. Eye’, ‘daddy bread’, ‘I brush my toothes’ or ‘Me don’t want none’? The child is very unlikely to have heard adults produce these strings of words. In fact, even when adults produce a sentence deliberately and invite the child to imitate it, toddlers and preschoolers frequently respond with versions of the original sentence that reflect the processes of selectivity and omission discussed above (Fraser, Bellugi & Brown, 1963). An influential American linguist, Noam Chomsky (1965, 1972), argued that it is impossible to account for children’s language acquisition in terms of traditional learning theories. As we have seen, children are learning many aspects of language quickly. Chomsky points out that the rules of language children have to master are very complex, and most parents are not able to articulate them. In fact, in much of everyday adult speech we do not even reveal the rules very clearly – we make errors, false starts, inject ‘er’s and ‘um’s, leave sentences incomplete. Yet not only do children make rapid progress in their language development (mastering most of the basic rules by about age five), but they are able to create and understand novel linguistic expressions. Chomsky argues that language acquisition in the normal child constitutes ‘a remarkable type of theory construction’ (1959, p. 58). Chomsky seems here to be agreeing with Piaget, who also saw the child as constructing theories. But Chomsky took the argument in a different direction. He maintained that any theory involved in coming to grips with a human language has to be extraordinarily complex. It must be general enough to accommodate any language that a child is exposed to, and it must be shared by all normal humans (because we all learn a language, and we all do so at roughly the same pace). Where could such a theory come from if parents are not able to teach it or even model it? How does everybody get access to it? Chomsky’s controversial answer is that it must already be there: the child must have some innate knowledge of what the structure of language will be like. In fact, Chomsky insists that language is not learned at all – it grows and matures, rather like limbs and organs grow. Chomsky challenged Chomsky has many supporters, but also many critics. There is much research to confirm that language acquisition is complex and relatively rapid. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that parents do play a role in their children’s language acquisition. Consider, for example, the research we discussed above concerning the social context of early communication, and the ways in which adults modify their speech for the benefits of the learner (see Durkin, 1995). There are also objections from Piagetians, who regard language not as an innate, highly specific ability, but as one aspect of the child’s broader representational capacity, which emerges during the preoperational period (Sinclair-de-Zwart, 1969).