ABSTRACT
Language is viewed by many linguists as an intrinsic property of the human brain (Chomsky, 1988). On view, the language faculty, though not evident at birth, develops according to a prescribed program, which permits the child to decode the elemental structural aspects of language. These structural elements are needed in order to "break the linguistic code, • and without them there can be no language proper. Proponents of this "strong nativist" perspective maintain that these elemental structural rules do not reside in the language input data available to the child; and thus it follows that the rules must reside in an innate language module within the child. Experience serves to activate this module but it does not shape its contents.
