Outline and Evaluate Chomsky's Approach to Language Acquisition.

... Ideas About Language ELA020C014A Emma Lomas Assignment One Outline and Evaluate Chomsky's Approach to Language Acquisition. Noam Chomsky, born in 1928 in Philadelphia, is the most influential figure in the field of linguistics. He is also highly regarded for his work in politics and philosophy. His ideas on language acquisition were radical and controversial which is part of the reason that he is the most sited living author today. Before Chomsky, linguists such as Frederic Skinner had been working with the theory of Behaviourism. Skinner believed that behaviour was learnt. The theory suggests that everything is learned through experience including language, which was said to be behaviour. Skinner and Bloomfield, another influential linguist in the behaviourist theory, believed that a child is born with no knowledge of its language and that the language has to be learnt. Chomsky's review of Skinner's book Verbal Behaviour in 1957 was regarded to have shattered the ideas of

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