Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and Universal Grammar

  

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

 

The Language Acquisition Device (LAD) is the innate biological ability of humans to acquire and develop language. The LAD was developed by linguist Noam Chomsky who contributed to the field of cognitive psychology through his language research. He challenged the prevailing behavior theory that the language like any other behavior was acquired through exposure to it in our environment. He theorized that all humans share a common mechanism which allows to comprehend, develop, and use language like no other animal. Animals raised around humans don’t develop the ability to speak but humans do. He called this biological language mechanism the Language Acquisition Device.

Our capacity for language is the same all over the world in wildly different cultures and environments. Children quickly learn language and learn in developmental stages that occur at the same age no matter what differing environments they grow up in. Cognitive psychologist use the LAD theory as evidence to support the concept that language is both a learned and innate capability.

Universal Grammar

In the 1960’s linguist became interested in a new theory about grammar, or the laws of language. This theory was popularized by an American linguist named Noam Chomsky who often focused on the effortless language learning of young children.

Chomsky didn't believe that exposure to a language was enough for a young child to become efficient at understanding and producing a language. He believed that humans are born with an innate ability to learn languages. According to Chomsky’s theory, the basic structures of language are already encoded in the human brain at birth.

This “universal grammar theory” suggests that every language has some of the same laws. For example, every language has way to identify gender or show that something happened in the past or present.

           If the basic grammar laws are the same for all language, a child needs only to follow the particular set of rules that his peers follow in order to understand and produce their native language. In other words, his environment determines which language he will use, but he is born with the tools to learn any language effectively.