The article discusses, among other things, the ‘innate language ability’ of children. They are exceptionally skilled at discovering the correct grammatical rules. It is ‘innate’ because it is inherent to all people worldwide. It is a ‘language ability’ because it is specifically suited for learning a language.
With this ‘innate language ability,’ children construct an increasingly abstract language structure themselves. This was discovered and described by researchers Gideon Borensztajn, Jelle Zuidema, and Rens Bod in the paper: Children’s grammars grow more abstract with age (2008). The main consequence of this finding is that Noam Chomsky’s theory of continuity (about the essence of an adult grammar being innate) is thereby refuted.
This article was written by me in Dutch and published in the magazine FOCO of the Association of Spanish Teachers in the Netherlands (VDSN). Click here to download the PDF; enjoy reading.
