Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

telegraphic speech
Sentences in 
which words not critical to the 
message are left out.
overgeneralization
The phenomenon 
by which children apply language 
rules even when the application results 
in an error.
learning-theory approach (to 
 language development)
The theory 
that language acquisition follows the 
principles of reinforcement and 
conditioning.
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268 Chapter 
8 
Cognition and Language
“Why won’t the dog eat?” Listeners understand both sentences equally well. Learn-
ing theory, then, has diffi culty fully explaining language acquisition.
Nativist Approaches: Language as an Innate Skill.
Pointing to such problems with 
learning-theory approaches to language acquisition, linguist Noam Chomsky (1968, 
1978, 1991) provided a groundbreaking alternative. Chomsky argued that humans 
are born with an innate linguistic capability that emerges primarily as a function of 
maturation. According to his  nativist approach  to language, all the world’s languages 
share a common underlying structure called a  universal grammar  . Chomsky sug-
gested that the human brain has a neural system, the  language-acquisition device 
that not only lets us understand the structure language provides, but also gives us 
strategies and techniques for learning the unique characteristics of our native lan-
guage (McGilvray, 2004; Lidz & Gleitman, 2004; White, 2007).
Chomsky used the concept of the language-acquisition device as a metaphor, 
and he did not identify a specifi c area of the brain in which it resides. However, 
evidence collected by neuroscientists suggests that the ability to use language, which 
was a signifi cant evolutionary advance in human beings, is tied to specifi c neuro-
logical developments (Sakai, 2005; Sahin, Pinker, & Halgren, 2006; Willems & 
Hagoort, 2007). 
For example, scientists have discovered a gene related to the development of 
language abilities that may have emerged as recently—in evolutionary terms—as 
100,000 years ago. Furthermore, it is clear that there are specifi c sites within the brain 
that are closely tied to language and that the shape of the human mouth and throat 
are tailored to the production of speech. And there is evidence that features of specifi c 
types of languages are tied to particular genes, such as in “tonal” languages in which 
pitch is used to convey meaning (Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch, 2002; Chandra, 2007; 
Dediu & Ladd, 2007; Gontier, 2008; Grigorenko, 2009). 
Still, Chomsky’s view has its critics. For instance, learning theorists contend that 
the apparent ability of certain animals, such as chimpanzees, to learn the fundamen-
tals of human language (as we discuss later in this module) contradicts the innate 
linguistic capability view.