In similar vein, it is argued that the skills required for language learning are not domain-specific, like in Chomsky's LAD ( language acquisition device ), but are generalizable across all cognitive domains.
12.
If language learning is a cognitive process, rather than a language acquisition device, as the school led by Stephen Krashen suggests, there would only be relative, not categorical, differences between the two types of language learning.
13.
Indeed, several nativist arguments were inspired by Chomsky's assertion that children could not learn complicated grammar based on the linguistic input they typically receive, and must therefore have an innate language-learning module, or language acquisition device.
14.
The "'empiricist theory "'suggests, contra Chomsky, that there is enough information in the linguistic input children receive and therefore, there is no need to assume an innate language acquisition device exists ( see above ).
15.
Slobin's " thinking for speaking " view can be described as a contemporary, moderate version of the language acquisition device " view of Noam Chomsky and others, who think of language acquisition as a process largely independent of learning and cognitive development.
16.
Chomsky labeled whatever relevant capacity the human has that the cat lacks as the language acquisition device ( LAD ), and he suggested that one of the tasks for linguistics should be to determine what the LAD is and what constraints it imposes on the range of possible human languages.
17.
These linguists argue that the concept of a language acquisition device ( LAD ) is unsupported by evolutionary anthropology, which tends to show a gradual adaptation of the human brain and vocal cords to the use of language, rather than a sudden appearance of a complete set of binary parameters delineating the whole spectrum of possible grammars ever to have existed and ever to exist.
18.
In modern times, this debate has largely surrounded Chomsky's support of a universal grammar, properties that all natural languages must have, through the controversial postulation of a language acquisition device ( LAD ), an instinctive mental'organ'responsible for language learning which searches all possible language alternatives and chooses the parameters that best match the learner's environmental linguistic input.
19.
Linguists have been interested in home sign for the insights it offers into the uniquely human ability to generate, acquire, and process language in general, and particularly as it pertains to such topics as the origins of language, notions of linguistic universals, the hypothesized critical period for language acquisition, children's natural tendency to invent language ( language acquisition device ), and the relationship between gesture and language.
