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Question: 'Linguistic theory is ... an innate property of the human mind' (Chomsky, 1975). Does the evidence favour Chomsky's view?
Answer: The way linguistics is understood today is very much reliable on the work of linguistic Noam Chomsky. According to Chomsky, the language acquisition develops as an innate process. He argues that "all children share the same internal constraints which characterize narrowly the grammar they are going to construct." (Chomsky, 1975). Chomsky's idea of language acquisition also points out a relationship between linguistics and empiricism: "These principles determine the type of grammars that are available. They are associated with an evaluation procedure which, given possible grammars, selects the best one. The evaluation procedure is also part of the biological given. The acquisition of language thus is a process of selection of the best grammar compatible with the available data. If the principles can be made sufficiently restrictive, there will also be a kind of discovery procedure”....(short extract)
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- Subject: Psychology
- Course: Language and Communication
- Level: Degree
- Year: 2nd/3rd
- Mark: 65%
- Words: 2412
- Date submitted: December 04, 2012
- Date written: April, 2012
- References: Yes
- Document type: Essay*
- Essay ID: 4366
