Write a 10 pages paper on what, if any, linguistic knowledge does a human being possess at birth. Different languages are structured differently. so during the process of learning babies do not only have to learn how to speak but also to make sense out of what is said and respond (Freeman & Freeman, 2004).

During their young ages, babies make different babbling sounds in a bid to communicate before they develop a format and learn the structuring pattern of the language of their immediate surroundings. These sounds though as they develop get erased from their communication techniques because they really are not part of the normal language system (Wadhwa, 2005). Theories exist about the linguistic abilities of babies and how they develop and learn the systems of languages. These theories all have a different way of looking at a child’s linguistic development. Noam Chomsky for one believed that all human beings have language acquisition devices (LAD) at birth that contains knowledge about languages (Skinner, 2002). This paper therefore will look at the theories, their implications, and conclusions.

Noam Chomsky’s theory on linguistic was against the theories that had always been in place and received a lot of criticism. He for one was against the behaviorists’ theory that children learned by trying to imitate the speeches of adults and were reinforced to improve on their inadequacies by rewards or punishments (Macaulay, 2006). The theory insinuated that as time goes by and as children grow and develop, they start to notice and imitate whatever they saw. This in effect helped then communicate by repeating words that they heard said within their environs more often. Chomsky though refuted this arguing that there was no way children could learn a very complex aspect of life such as language by simply imitating (Macaulay, 2006).

In his theory, though Chomsky believes that after babies are born with the LAD capability in them, which enables a born baby to understand and embrace their native language.