Question

Chomsky and other nativists have argued that much of language is innate. By this, they mean:

1) Children are born with a language acquisition device that functions as a general-purpose learning system for any skill, including language, motor skills, mathematics, etc.
2) Children are born with a language acquisition device that causes them to pay attention to social stimuli such as language, allowing general-purpose mechanisms to learn language on the basis of its statistical properties
3) Children are born with a language acquisition device that contains all possible languages, and with experience they learn which of these languages is the language to which they are being exposed
4) Children are born with a language acquisition device that contains information about what is possible in language, and with experience they learn which of the many possible linguistic elements are actually present in the language to which they are being exposed

Answer 1

Chomsky and other nativists argue that language acquisition is innate and that children are born with a language acquisition device. They believe that children have the ability to learn language without formal instruction and that language acquisition is partially inborn and partially learned through interactions with the linguistic environment.

Step-by-step explanation:

Chomsky and other nativists argue that much of language is innate and that children are born with a language acquisition device that contains information about what is possible in language, and with experience they learn which of the many possible linguistic elements are actually present in the language to which they are being exposed. This means that children have the ability to learn language without formal instruction and that language acquisition is biologically determined. Researchers believe that language acquisition is partially inborn and partially learned through interactions with the linguistic environment.