Routledge Dictionary of Language and Linguistics.pdf

Dictionary of language and linguistics 632Slobin, D.I. 1972. Leopold’s blbliography of child language, revised and augmented. Bloomington,IN.JournalsChild Development.First Language.Journal of Child Language.developmental language disorder, language acquisition device, languagedisorder, psycholinguistics, universal grammarlanguage acquisition device (abbrev. LAD)Specifically human mechanism postulated by N.Chomsky, in connection with thelinguistic interpretation of rationalism, to explain the phenomenon that children—although the linguistic utterances of their environment represent only deficient andincomplete input—gain a command of the syntactic rules of their mother tongue in arelatively short time and can produce and understand an almost unlimited number ofgrammatical expressions. Every child is equipped with an innate schema for validgrammars ( universals) and with a system of cognitive procedures for developing andchecking hypotheses about the input. Thus, a child formulates hypotheses about thegrammatical structure of the given sentences, makes predictions about them, and checksthese predictions with new sentences. He/she eliminates those sentences that contradictthe evidence and validates those that were not eliminated through the criterion ofsimplicity. This mechanism is engaged with the very first input. The child essentiallyforms a theory, comparable to that of a linguist who constructs a descriptively andexplanatorily adequate theory of a language. This parallel, at the same time, justifieslinguists in considering problems of language acquisition with linguistic methods ofinvestigation. See Levelt’s (1975) critique of the language acquisition device.ReferencesChomsky, N. 1965. Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, MA.——1975. Reflections on language. New York.Katz, J.J. 1966. The philosophy of language. London.Levelt, W.J.M. 1975. What became of LAD? The Hague.McNeill, D. 1970. The acquisition of language: the study of developmental psycholinguistics. NewYork.Piatelli-Palmarini, M. (ed.) 1980. Language and learning. London.language acquisition, mentalism, psycholinguistics, universals