Nativism

CPD for Primary: Children's Language Development (by Tom Hollins), topic 1.2.4

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Test yourself on Nativism

What does LAD stand for in Chomsky's theory of language acquisition?
At what age does Chomsky claims that the LAD switches off, making it become difficult to learn languages?