Chomsky's contributions to the Linguistics Studies

Noam Chomsky is considered one of the most celebrated linguists twenty-first century. He is the author of several theories that have contributed and continue to help in the development of the linguistics studies. Chomsky established concepts like competence and performance. The first concept refers to the knowledge that the speaker has in relation to the grammar of the language, and the second one refers to the speaker's performance in how to use this particular knowledge. The author also suggests that language acquisition is innate, and that the language was born with the child and the acquisition of the mother tongue is like maturation of this. His hypothesis also argues that children's productions are not simple imitations of adults, as there are productions that do not occur in the speech of adults, so they are unique. Therefore, he argues that children have their own rules of speech, but through the contact with adults will shaping his speech with their rules. Certainly, one of Chomsky's most important theory was named Universal Grammar Theory, in which according to the author, the child is born with a grammar in his/her head where we keep all the rules, of all languages, a huge amount of content. But the child turns this grammar, the grammar of his/her language, removing only the necessary for the use and learning from it and discarding the rest. For Chomsky, the child has a mechanism that allows him/her to acquire language, called the Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which is part of the genetic heritage and that is triggered by the phrases or words (input) of adults with which will act, thus generating the grammar of the language in which the child is contextualized. In Chomsky's view he proposes that the child has a Universal Grammar built into the very structure of his mind, as discussed before, the children are born biologically (genetically) equipped with a grammar which they are all possible rules of all languages, one huge content information, that is called, a universal grammar. This approach postulates that the child performs mental operations that transforms the universal grammar in the grammar of the language to which it is exposed, as follows: a universal grammar consists of a set of rules, of which the child will select those rules for being used for that he/she can effectively acquire language that is submitted and exclude all others things that are not very used in his/her daily life.Thus, language is linked to characteristics of the human species, which reaffirms its universal character, taking language as a biological and cognitive factors. By taking this approach it is assumed that man by nature is a holder of a universal grammar that has universal principles that are part of language faculty and parameter that will be defined by the influence of the medium and / or the native language.