![]() ![]() ![]() As evidence that a language acquisition device is a genetic endowment common to all people, Chomsky pointed to the fact that language is fundamentally similar across cultures. The existence of this language acquisition device means that humans are born with a grasp or an intuition of the rules of language what they must still learn from their social environments is simply vocabulary.The LAD is a hypothetical tool hardwired into the brain that helps children rapidly learn and understand language. According to Chomsky, our proverbial slates cannot be completely blank when we are born we must be hard-wired with structures in our brains, or what he called language acquisition devices (LADs). Instead, Chomsky argued that children learning to speak cannot possibly start as blank slates because they simply don't have enough information to perform many of the complex grammatical maneuvers he observed them making. To summarize, Chomsky was unconvinced by other thinkers, like John Locke, who argued that people are born blank slates.The second clip comes from Gene Searchinger's Human Language series. The first clip is an animated video and part of the BBC and Open University’s A History of Ideas series. Summary: In this pair of clips, one can find a useful synopsis of Noam Chomsky's theory of Universal Grammar (UG), which is the theory that the ability to learn grammar is hard-wired into the brain. Tags: discourse/language, theory, language acquisition device, noam chomsky, universal grammar, 00 to 05 mins ![]()
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