General concepts of language acquisition

After reading chapter 3 by Cook (General concepts of language acquisition), I found out that it is a very interesting chapter which involves relevant information to learn about language acquisition.  I have focused on what are, from my point of view, some of the most interesting sections on this chapter.

One section in the chapter that I believe is important is the one that describes the States of the language faculty, because it explains language acquisition in the different states of the mind; from the new-born baby with no language (Initial state) to the adult native speaker who has already developed static competence (Steady state).

Apart from that, the information about the Language Acquisition Device that this chapter provides the reader with is very well explained and it is also relevant when learning about Language Acquisition. I fully agree with Chomsky’s black box metaphor, since it is expressed in a very simple way. If input is what goes in and knowledge is what goes out, we can deduce what is going on inside that black box by carefully examining both parts.

What is more, I also agree with the poverty-of-the-stimulus argument, which I believe is a very interesting section. If we take the fact that the input that goes in is very poor and the output that goes out is very rich this leads us to think that the black box not only process input but contributes things to get the final product. I fully agree with the importance of analyzing the internal knowledge.