The Innateness Theory

What is Innateness Theory?

Chomsky’s Hypothesis also called
Innateness Hypothesis, postulates
that children are innately born with
a sense of language and grammar.
 Avram Noam Chomsky

• American
Linguistic
• Father of Linguistic
• Founder of
Innateness Theory

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Noam Chomsky (1959) review of Skinner’s Book convincingly
undetermined all of the assumption and claims.
 * Children only imitate what they heard,
that’s why we learned ungrammatical
forms.

* Children derive these form on

assumption of grammatical regularity.

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 Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

• It is a hypothetical tool in
the human brain that lets
children learn and
understand language quickly.

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 Children manage to
overcome what is
referred to as “
poverty of
stimulus”
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 The child discovers the theory
of his language with small
amounts of data from that
language.
Noam Chomsky “ Language and the Mind” (1968)

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 •CRITICAL AGE-
hypothesis that language is
acquired with remarkable
ease during brain maturation

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LATERALIZATION-
when you reach your fifth
year, by which age
children have acquired the
grammatical essentials of
their mother tongue.