1.2.4

Nativism

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Nativism

Nativism is a theory developed by Noam Chomsky, and takes up the ‘nature’ side of the ‘nature vs nurture’ debate.

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Poverty of stimulus

  • Chomsky's theory states that children cannot learn through the imitation of their caregivers because they provide a ‘poverty of stimulus’, which essentially states that the caregivers of children do not provide a good enough standard of language (and often break the rules).
  • So he states that children must have something inbuilt within their brains to help them learn language – he calls this the ‘Language Acquisition Device’ or the LAD.
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Language Acquisition Device

  • Within the LAD is a knowledge of language structures (universal grammar) and the knowledge becomes activated through experience.
  • Chomsky also claims that around the age of seven, the LAD switches off and then it becomes difficult to learn languages.
  • He states that children will often resist corrections to their mistakes – in this sense, the LAD is instructing them that their way of using language is correct and that the caregivers is wrong.
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Virtuous errors

  • Within his theory, Chomsky states that children make virtuous errors (errors which are made with good intentions e.g. ‘I hurted his feelings’.)
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Universal grammar

  • In addition, he states that children have a universal grammar which states a set of rules on how to structure language.
  • His theory is supported by the fact that many languages follow the SVO (subject-verb-object) syntax – Brown’s research states that 75% of languages use this syntax.

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