RAFFY S.

VIRTUCIO
Graduate School Program: Master of English in Applied Linguistics (MEAL)
AL 110: Foundations of Linguistics
Professor: Mr. Sajed S. Ingilan

This critical paper focuses on the Innateness Theory of Noam Chomsky

Innateness Theory
Noam Chomsky believes that children are born with an inherited ability to learn
any human language. He claims that certain linguistic structures which children use so
accurately must be already imprinted on the child’s mind. Chomsky believes that every
child has a ‘language acquisition device’ or LAD which encodes the major principles of a
language and its grammatical structures into the child’s brain. Children have then only to
learn new vocabulary and apply the syntactic structures from the LAD to form
sentences. Chomsky points out that a child could not possibly learn a language through
imitation alone because the language spoken around them is highly irregular – adult’s
speech is often broken up and even sometimes ungrammatical. Chomsky’s theory applies
to all languages as they all contain nouns, verbs, consonants and vowels and children
appear to be ‘hard-wired’ to acquire the grammar. Every language is extremely complex,
often with subtle distinctions which even native speakers are unaware of. However, all
children, regardless of their intellectual ability, become fluent in their native language
within five or six years.
Perceived loopholes of Innateness Theory with regard to Social Interactionist and
Empirical Theories
Chomsky's work on language was theoretical. In the innateness theory, he said
that children face poverty of stimulus. But there is no evidence to say that children actually
face this problem. Unlike the minds of the adults, the minds of the children are not
cluttered. An uncluttered mind can take more input and absorb it. This might be the reason
behind the ability of the infants in internalizing their mother tongue at a rapid pace.
Moreover language is not something which remains static. It keeps changing. It evolves
constantly and continuously. So the question is how does this dynamic information get
coded into the human genes? Many cognitive scientists who support innateness
hypothesis claim that infants have LAD (Language Acquisition Device) in their brains. As
a result of this they acquire the ability to speak the language by the time they are three
years old, but they fail to read and write. He was interested in grammar and much of his
work consists of complex explanations of grammatical rules. Hence, he did not study real
children. The theory relies on children being exposed to language but takes no account
of the interaction between children and their careers. Nor does it recognize the reasons
why a child might want to speak, the functions of language.
This theory of Chomsky does not exclusively proved that children must have a
LAD. Language learning could also be through general learning and understanding
abilities and interactions with other people. Hence, language learning could also be
attributed as a social phenomenon in which real children develop language to fulfil their
needs and interact with their environment, including other people. Social interactionist like
Lev Vygotsky in developmental psychology establishes the explicit and profound
connection between speech and the development of mental concepts and cognitive
awareness and that the development of higher cognitive functions in children that saw
reasoning as emerging through practical activity in a social environment.
In summary, although Noam Chomsky’s Innateness Theory may have
contributions in the unraveling of infants language learning, yet the theory should also
maintain a connection with inputs concerning social environment as one of the key factors
of learning language and empirical data to prove its validity on real life context.