Chomsky’s theory of language was in fact also a psychological theory of language cognition- that is, it was once a theory of linguistics as well as psychology. In fact, his work simultaneously sought to explain how a child learns a language, and how people are able to interpret language, his earliest writings attacking Skinner’s theories directly and devastatingly. In so doing, Chomsky had a far reaching impact on other areas of psychology as scholars extended his theories far beyond language.
Let us now turn to his account of how a child first learns a language.
For Chomsky in particular, child language acquisition or learning is a very specific cognitive process. Chomsky proposed the existence of a Language Acquisition Device (LAD), or Universal Grammar (UG) as it has been more recently called, as the key to language learning. According to him, nature has endowed all human beings with special mechanism in the brain, and it is which helps children know the rules of language. In other words, language learning is innate or native to human beings. Thus, his theory is often described as innatist or nativist.
Chomsky originally referred to this special ability as a language acquisition device (LAD). This device was often described as an imaginary black box’ which exists somewhere in the brain. This ‘black box’ thought to contain all and only the principles which are universal to all human languages, prevents the child from going off on lots of the language. For the LAD to work, the child needs access only to samples of a natural language. These language samples serve as a trigger to activate the device.
According to Chomsky, the LAD or UG contains the principles governing all human languages. It works to stop a child from going on a wrong track in the process of learning the rules of his first language. As the child hears samples of the language, they trigger off the LAD or UG, which then enables the child to “discover” the structure or rules of the language by matching his inborn knowledge of basic grammatical relationships to what he has heard. The process of learning, in brief, consists of innate, internal-rule making using the LAD or UG.
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