Reflect
Express
your opinion of the theory developed in Chapter III ¨General
Concepts of Language Acquisition¨ we have discussed in class.
Consider the following questions: Do you agree? Do you disagree? What
points are the most interesting? What questions are not answered?
Does it convince you? Discuss its weaknesses. Write a couple of
paragraphs.
It is not known if
Chomsky’s Nativist Position has provided the final answer of the
question about what is going on inside our minds when we produce
language. However, I consider Chomsky’s theory very interesting for
several reasons. I strongly agree with the poverty-of-the-stimulus
argument which explains that if what we say does not come from the
outside, it must be inside the mind. This concept made me reflect
about the meaning of the verb produce, in consequence and after I
looked it up in the dictionary I have chosen to highlight the
following definition: -to produce: to bring into existence by the
mind or by creative ability. Chomskyan notion of creativity states
that people regularly understand and produce sentences that they have
never heard before. Children hear the ¨primary linguistic data ¨,
they process this data within their black box, called the Language
Acquisition Device (later Universal Grammar), and they acquire
linguistic competence in the language, a ¨generative grammar¨.
Nevertheless, I must say that I also agree with Cook when he points
out that even though linguists can formulate quite reasonable and
strong empirical hypothesis regarding this internal structure, it is
not possible to open the child’s mind to confirm their deductions.
Chomsky’s metaphor
of ¨The Black Box¨ to represent our mind is extraordinarily simple,
but also complex at the same time, because it implies that we are
born with the Universal Grammar in our mind. Acquiring language means
processing from not having any language, zero state, to having full
competence, steady state. I definitively believe that his theory of
Universal Grammar went beyond expectations because it is a collection
of principles and parameters that account for similarities and
differences for any languages, which shows their outstanding
adaptability. Regarding the goals of linguistics in terms of levels
of adequacy, the Universal Grammar theory integrates acquisition with
the description of grammar by making explanatory adequacy central;
the description of the grammar goes hand in hand with the explanation
of how it is learnt. Chomsky wanted to know what happens inside the
mind, he was concerned with the internal language, the language of
the mind. He was interested in the linguistic competence (the
knowledge of language), not in pragmatic concepts (how we behave
socially). I agree with his point of view because I also believe that
what is important to analyse is the knowledge we have at the end of
the process inside our minds, the internal language not the external.
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