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The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is a claim from language acquisition research proposed by Noam Chomsky in the 1960s. [1] The LAD concept is a purported instinctive mental capacity which enables an infant to acquire and produce language. It is a component of the nativist theory of language. This theory asserts that humans are born with the ...
According to Chomsky, a human child's mind is equipped with a "language acquisition device" formed by inborn mental properties called "linguistic universals" which eventually constructs a mental theory of the child's mother tongue. [19] The linguist's main object of inquiry, as Chomsky sees it, is this underlying psychological reality of language.
The language faculty consists of a computational system (C HL) whose initial state (S 0) contains invariant principles and parameters. Language acquisition consists of acquiring a lexicon and fixing the parameter values of the target language. Language generates an infinite set of expressions given as a sound-meaning pair (π, λ).
The acquisition of language is a universal feat and it is believed we are all born with an innate structure initially proposed by Chomsky in the 1960s. The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) was presented as an innate structure in humans which enabled language learning. Individuals are thought to be "wired" with universal grammar rules enabling ...
According to Chomsky, humans are born with a set of language-learning tools referred to as the LAD (language acquisition device). The LAD is an abstract part of the human mind which houses the ability for humans to acquire and produce language. [29]
Chomsky referred to this difference in capacity as the language acquisition device, and suggested that linguists needed to determine both what that device is and what constraints it imposes on the range of possible human languages. The universal features that result from these constraints would constitute "universal grammar".
Harris was Chomsky's initial mentor. Harris used the term "transformation" to describe equivalence relations between sentences of a language. By contrast, Chomsky's used the term to describe a formal rule applied to underlying structures of sentences. [71] Chomsky also borrowed the term "generative" from a previous work of mathematician Emil Post.
The learning mechanism in their model is based on linguistic theories of Chomsky (1980, 1993)– the language acquisition device (LAD) and the notion of universal grammar. The results of their model show that the critical period for language acquisition is an "evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS)" (Komarova & Nowak, 2001, p. 1190). They suggest ...