DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY 295
them to continue learning new
words and phrases. Bandura
broadened the concept of
imitation, noting that children
imitated not only specific words
and sounds, but also the general
form and structure of sentences,
as though filling in templates with
specific words.
Linguist Noam Chomsky,
however, did not believe that
operant conditioning adequately
explained the productivity,
creativity, and innovation
of language. It also seemed
insufficient to explain children’s
spontaneous use of grammatical
rules that they have neither heard
nor learned, as well as their ability
See also: B.F. Skinner 78–85 ■ Jerome Bruner 164–65 ■ Steven Pinker 211 ■ Jean Piaget 262–69 ■ Albert Bandura 286–91
to understand the meaning of an
entire sentence without necessarily
understanding the meaning of each
word. For Chomsky, this ability is
innate in humans—he claimed that
“the language organ grows like any
other body organ,” likening it to other
features acquired through heredity.Nativism
Chomsky maintained that,
although a child’s environment
supplies the content of language,
grammar itself is an in-built and
biologically determined human
capacity. To illustrate his point, he
refers to other aspects of human
development that we accept as
being an inevitable outcome ofheredity. The onset of puberty, for
instance, is an aspect of human
growth that is like the “growth” of
the language organ. We assume
unquestioningly that it is a
genetically determined milestone,
and though the specific details of
its onset depend on several variable
environmental influences, the
fundamental process is the same
across the human species. We take
for granted that this is a result of
basic biological programming.
Language growth, Chomsky
emphasizes, is another genetically
programmed inevitability of human
development, on a par with the
processes that determine that we
have arms instead of wings, or that
build the structure of our visual or
circulatory systems.
The concept that language is
a part of our growth process is
important because it highlights
Chomsky’s belief that it is not a
consequence of learning. He
adopts a nativist perspective,
focusing on the inherited
contributions to behavior and
minimizing the importance of
environmental input. However,
he believes that the environment
plays a role in determining the
specific direction of language ❯❯Young children
spontaneously use
grammatical rules
that they have never
been taught.Young children can
understand the meaning
of an entire sentence
without understanding
all the words.Verbal imitation combined with approval and praise does not
explain the productivity and creativity of language.The human capacity to understand grammar
is innate and biological.The language organ grows like
any other body organ.Language is a process
of free creation.
Noam Chomsky