Noam Chomskyxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.docx

Noam Chomsky. Avram Noam Chomsky had born on December 7, 1928. He is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator and activist who is commonly consider “Father of modern linguistics.” The term "Generative linguistics" is often applied to the version of Chomsky's transformational grammar, in which Chomsky distinguishes two grammatical sentence structures: a surface, linked to the phonetic aspect of these sentences; and a deep structure that rules refers to deep linguistic competence of an individual in a particular language. Those rules transform a sentence with a given grammatical structure into a sentence with a different grammatical structure but the same essential meaning. For example: John saw Mary  Mary was seen by John. Generative linguistics has two important brunches: Acquisition and Learning, where the first is referred to a subconscious process which is implicit in a natural environment (native speakers) and in the other hand, Learning is referred to a conscious process which is explicit and given in a non natural environment (foreign language

Innate theory. The claim is that one does not need to know what knowledge is before gaining knowledge, but rather one has a wealth of knowledge before ever gaining any experience. Plato believed that we posses innate ideas that precede any knowledge that we gain through experience 3.2 Universal Grammar (UG) It says that the ability to learn grammar is manifested by itself without being taught. UG proposes that if human beings are brought up under normal conditions (this is not conditions of extreme sensory deprivation), they will always develop language with a certain property. Universal grammar theory • Chomsky believes that children will never require the knowledge to process an infinite number of sentences if the language acquisition mechanism was dependent on language input alone. • The theory of universal grammar was proposed suggesting that all children are born with ability to acquire ,develop and understand grammar regardless of where they are raised noun/verb category • Universal grammar holds the grammatical information needed in order to combine categories of language such as verb and nouns in to phrases. • Children have the natural ability to combine nouns and verbs in to a correct and meaningful order. Critical period of language.

Chomsky says that a person individual grammar is developed from the interaction between the innate UG and the input from the environment (primary linguistic data): UG + input = Grammar. Language Acquisition Device (LAD). Chomsky asserts that in the brain exists an innate device to acquire languages. This is what he called “Language Acquisition Device”, which allows people learning and using the language. Language is acquired because humans are biologically programmed to do so.