Question

Chomsky and other nativists have argued that much of language is innate. One of their arguments has been that, during language acquisition, the speech that children hear from adults is impoverished and degenerate. An example of this would be:

1) Adults use baby talk, like 'Look at the itty bitty little tiny baby'
2) Adults use many short sentences, like 'I know. We can go tomorrow.'
3) Adults use many malformed sentences, like 'They not maybe tomorrow.'
4) All of the above

Answer 1

Chomsky and other nativists argue that much of language is innate, and they provide examples of adult speech during language acquisition to support their argument.

Step-by-step explanation:

Chomsky and other nativists argue that much of language is innate. They propose that during language acquisition, the speech children hear from adults is impoverished and degenerate. This can be seen in adults using 'baby talk' (like 'Look at the itty bitty little tiny baby'), using many short sentences (like 'I know. We can go tomorrow.'), and using malformed sentences (like 'They not maybe tomorrow.'). All of these examples support the argument that adult speech during language acquisition is limited and does not provide the full range of linguistic input that children need to acquire language.