LINGUIS 5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Inflection, Language Acquisition Device, Critical Period Hypothesis
Document Summary
Key idea: something must be innate to allow him/her to do this: the child automatically acquires language just by being exposed, can"t refuse. It"s genetic: fish gotta swim, bird gotta fly, child gotta speak, till he die. But this can"t be true for several reasons. Re grammar, the child produces many utterances that are not heard in the adult language. I broomed it up he"s keying the door he goed away allgone sticky daytime circle moon [my son] Re semantics, the child divides up the outside world differently doggie : dogs, cats, horses etc. (any quadriped) ball : ball, oranges, the moon, any round object. [ap ], referring to smooth round rocks; daddy, open it! Because there is an infinitive number of possible utterances, the child can"t be learning from negative evidence, i. e. failure to hear something in the data ( poverty of the stimulus ).
