Chomsky and Piaget: Assimilation and Accommodation.

... Chomsky and Piaget: Assimilation and Accommodation By Sarah Brayshaw This account compares the Piagetian and Chomskian views on language acquisition and attempts to present a framework in which each has a place. The majority of the evidence suggests that the domain specific processes are predominant in language acquisition, supporting Chomsky's (1983) claim that the abstract structure of language is innately specified in humans. However, as the innate specification can not explain the acquisition of language in its entirety, there is still support for cognitive involvement as prescribed by Piaget. This is the mapping of innate predispostions to the input of the child's native tongue through a complex process of semantic and syntactic bootstrapping. A substantial amount of evidence now supports a Chomskian view of language development with a number of studies providing support for the involvement of innate mechanisms in language acquisition (Gardner, Kornhaber, & Wake, 1996). The following account compares the Piagetian

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