Steve Pinker expands on Noam Chomsky's concept of "Universal Grammar" - a linguistic theory hypothesizing that all languages share common grammar principles which are innate to humans. Pinker postulates, however, that humans are born with the innate capacity for language but grammar (and vocabulary) principles are aquired through adaptation (i.e. the evolutionary mental module) to exposure to spoken language after birth.
Source(s):
Pinker & Universal Grammar: http://tinyurl.com/b83xrh (goes to Google Books)

Evolutionary Mental Module: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_module

Permalink | Report