ARTICLE 1

Chomsky's theory
Further information: Language acquisition device, Generative grammar, X-bar theory, Government and Binding, Principles and parameters, and Minimalist Program Linguist Noam Chomsky made the argument that the human brain contains a limited set of rules for organizing language. In turn, there is an assumption that all languages have a common structural basis. This set of rules is known as universal grammar. Speakers proficient in a language know what expressions are acceptable in their language and what expressions are unacceptable. The key puzzle is how speakers should come to know the restrictions of their language, since expressions which violate those restrictions are not present in the input, indicated as such. This absence of negative evidencethat is, absence of evidence that an expression is part of a class of the ungrammatical sentences in one's languageis the core of the poverty of stimulus argument. For example, in English one cannot relate a question word like 'what' to a predicate within a relative clause (1): (1) *What did John meet a man who sold? Such expressions are not available to the language learners, because they are, by hypothesis, ungrammatical for speakers of the local language. Speakers of the local language do not utter such expressions and note that they are unacceptable to language learners. Universal grammar offers a solution to the poverty of the stimulus problem by making certain restrictions universal characteristics of human languages. Language learners are consequently never tempted to generalize in an illicit fashion.

ARTICLE 2
Pinker's Ideas

There are some problems in presenting his ideas concisely and clearly. Comments on different topics, instinct, syntax, lexicon, language acquisition are scattered across the chapters; the first rather pedestrian task is to bring the related ideas together. All page references unless otherwise indicated are to The Language Instinct (Pinker 1994); I include them where the wording is Pinker's own or a very close paraphrase of it.
3.1 Chomsky's Universal Grammar

Pinker's presentation is largely contained in Chapter 4 'How Language Works' and the following points are mainly taken from that. For Pinker, Chomsky's writings are classics. Chomsky's claim that, from a Martian's-eye-view, all humans speak a single language is based on the discovery that the same symbol- manipulating machinery, underlies the world's languages. Universal Grammar is like an archetypal body plan found across vast numbers of animals in a phylum (238-9), a common plan of syntactic, morphological, and phonological rules and principles, with a small set of varying parameters. Once set, a parameter can produce far-reaching changes in the superficial appearance of the language. One of the most intriguing discoveries is that there appears to be a common anatomy in all phrases in all the world's languages. Phrase structure is the kind of stuff language is made of; traces, cases, X-bars, and the other paraphernalia of syntax are colourless, odourless, and tasteless, but they, or something like them, must be a part of our unconscious mental life (124). The universal plan underlying languages, with auxiliaries and inversion rules, nouns and verbs, subjects and objects, phrases and clauses, cases and agreement, and so on, seem to suggest a commonality in the brains of speakers, because many other plans would have been just as useful (43).
3.2 Chomsky and the acquisition of language by children

Children must innately be equipped with a plan common to the grammars of all language, a Universal Grammar, that tells them how to distil the syntactic patterns out of the speech of their parents. The unordered super-rules (principles) are universal and innate; when children learn a particular language, they do not have to learn a long list of rules, because they are born knowing the super-rules (112). All they have to learn is whether their particular language has the parameter head-first, as in English, or head-last, as in Japanese. If the verb comes before the object, the child concludes that the language is head-first as if the child were merely flipping a switch to one of two possible positions. The way language works is that each person's brain contains a lexicon of words and the concepts they stand for (a mental dictionary) and a set of rules that combine the words to convey relationships among concepts (a mental grammar) (85).
3.3 Chomsky as the starting point 3.3.1 A general comment

There are risks in taking Chomsky's current theories as the basis for an attempt to present a plausible account of the evolution of language. The most striking aspect of the history of Chomsky's linguistic theories is how rapidly and frequently they have changed over the years since his first work Syntactic Structures appeared in 1957 and the transformational-generative approach was born. Most of the key features of that approach have now been abandoned; deep structure from being the foundation of theory has shrunk and virtually disappeared, the idea of transformation has been abandoned; whilst language is still regarded, in a broad sense, as a generative process (new sentences created from a limited set of words and syntactic processes), the technicalities of generation have also disappeared; Chomsky has moved from a system which placed exclusive emphasis on syntax to one which begins to recognize the importance also of lexicon, moving from the transformational- generative approach to government and binding to

principles and parameters. Specifically, Pinker explains that Chomsky wants to eliminate the idea that there is a special phrase structure underlying a sentence called d-structure, a single framework for the entire sentence into which the verbs are then plugged. The suggested replacement is to have each verb come with a chunk of phrase structure preinstalled; the sentence is assembled by snapping together the various chunks. Pinker comments that 'deep structure' is a prosaic technical gadget in grammatical theory, not what is universal across all human languages; many linguists - including, in his most recent writings, Chomsky himself - think one can do without deep structure per se. In a recent interview (Grewendorf 1993), Chomsky was asked whether generative grammar had gone astray at some point; he admitted that in retrospect there had been some wrong turnings and that a really significant change took place about 1980; this, unlike earlier work in generative grammar, constituted a major break and dispensed entirely with both rules and constructions which he described as 'taxonomic artifacts' of early generative grammar; there have been a lot of changes in the theory since 1980.
3.3.2 Pinker's own problem with Chomsky

Whilst accepting Chomsky's current principles and parameters approach Pinker makes some effort to distance himself from Chomsky, no doubt partly because he does not wish to be committed to deriving Chomsky's concepts in detail from evolutionary natural selection (he makes no attempt to do this) but also because there is the major difficulty that Chomsky himself has consistently rejected the idea that language could have evolved by natural selection. Pinker says that Chomsky's arguments about the nature of the language faculty are based on technical analyses of word and sentence structure, often couched in abstruse formulations; his discussions of flesh-and-blood speakers are perfunctory and highly idealized; "Chomsky's theory need not be treated ... as a set of cabalistic incantations that only the initiated can mutter" (104). Pinker admits to being deeply influenced by Chomsky. "But it is not his story exactly... Chomsky has puzzled many readers with his skepticism about whether Darwinian natural selection ... can explain the origins of the language organ he argues for" (24). Chomsky and some of his fiercest opponents agree on one thing, that a uniquely human language instinct seems to be incompatible with the modern Darwinian theory of evolution, in which complex biological systems arise by the gradual accumulation over generations of random genetic mutations that enhance reproductive success." (333) Chomsky thinks that "to attribute this development to 'natural selection' .. amounts to nothing more than a belief that there is some naturalistic explanation for these phenomena... it is not easy even to imagine a course of selection that might have given rise to them" (354).

ARTICLE 3

Chomsky's Theory on Language Development in Children

Are children born with a universal language syntax encoded, as it were, in their DNA ---so that learning to speak and write is just a matter of fitting the particulars of their language into this template? Or is language acquisition a more complex and subtle process of learning and thinking? These have been the polarities of a fierce linguistic controversy set off a half century ago by the publication of Noam Chomsky's "Syntactic Structures." That debate that still rages today.

Biological Inheritance of Syntax

Linguist Noam Chomsky challenged old ideas about language acquisition in his first book, "Syntactic Structures," published in 1957. He rejects the notion that all language must be learned afresh by each child. Instead. Chomsky says, normal children everywhere are born with a kind of hard-wired syntax that enables them to grasp the basic workings of language. The child then chooses the particular grammar and language of the environment from the available options in the brain. Thus the capacity for language is a biological inheritance and specific languages are then activated largely through the child's interaction with the native environment. It's as if the child's brain is a CD player already set to "play" language; when the CD for a certain language is inserted, that is the language that the child learns.
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"Government-Binding" Theory
Chomsky advanced his "government-binding" theory in a 1981 book in which he says a child's native knowledge of syntax consists of a group of linguistic principles that define the form of any language. These principles are connected with parameters, or "switches," triggered by the child's

language environment. Chomsky stresses the importance of the child's genetic inheritance of the syntax imprint. For Chomsky, the "growth" of language is analogous to the growth of internal organs and arms and legs--determined by internal mechanisms but nourished by the environment, whether verbal or nutritional. Chomsky sees language development in the child as a separate aspect of knowledge, apart from the rest of cognition, or mental functioning.

Linguistics as Psychology
Chomsky says knowing a language is synonymous with the capacity to produce an infinite number of sentences never previously spoken, and to understand sentences never before heard. This ability is what Chomsky calls the "creative aspect" of language. Understanding the mechanics of language elucidates patterns of human thought, and places linguistics within the realm of psychology. Evidence that children are born with an understanding of syntax is the ease and facility with which they learn language, according to Chomsky.

Chomsky's Theory Challenged

Chomsky's concept clashes directly with that of behaviorist B. F. Skinner, who espoused the idea that language is a direct result of conditioning, and with psychologist Jean Piaget, viewed language acquisition as a part of overall cognitive development in children. His theory that children use an innate "language acquisition device" to select a grammar from a limited range of options has come under fire. Chomsky's idea of a "generative grammar" presupposes the brain operates in a binary fashion, like a computer. Critics say this conflicts with evolutionary anthropology that views language acquisition as a gradual adaptation of the brain and vocal chords--not a spectrum of binary choices.

Cognition vs. Heredity

In the half-century since Chomsky's theory was first proposed, debate about the origins of language has shifted away from an emphasis on innate capabilities and toward a greater awareness of the role of learning. Language acquisition is now perceived as a process more complex than binary choices that requires more cognition, or thinking.

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/224250-chomskys-theory-on-language-development-inchildren/#ixzz1ux1ylBYG