Early Grammatical Development: Nature or Nurture?

Abstract

As many people have become concerned about early language acquisition and hold their own different perspectives, the emphasis has been put on this aspect and abundant research studies have been implemented. Both parties held firm to their own views, one believes that can be attributed into input-driven tradition which relies more heavily on our environment as opposed to the other group supports Chomsky’s universal grammar, that considered as early language acquisition aptitude is the nature and innateness of individuals that infants are born with. In this review, we are going to show our views and reveal the weakness of mechanism of universal grammar (UG) and its nature. We show the arguments for and against UG and some ideas about input-driven theory at the same time, to demonstrate our critical analysis to nature and nurture. In my view, I reckon that environment has a universal impact between UG And input-driven, referring to the outcome of previous studies, children might use universal grammar more in their early stage and are affected more by the input-driven in the subsequent learning phase, but both of them cannot be separated from the environment. This research clearly explains how children acquire a language in the early stage, which promotes the development of language pedagogy.