ABSTRACT
Mounting evidence suggests that the young infant, under the age of one year, acts in a social and socializing fashion toward its caretakers. Language and its acquisition is central to the socializing process. All available evidence suggests that the average American child who is not visually, auditorily, or vocally impaired has by the age of four mastered the rudimentary elements of the English language. In its place emerged what is now termed "transformational" grammar, which is an attempt to explain how speakers of a language are able to rearrange elements in their native language. Transformational grammar identifies such operations as substitution, displacement, and permutation. Grammar, as a theory of language, must be able to generate all the grammatical sentences of a language. A theory of language and of language acquisition must be more than a theory of the grammar of a given language; it must be a theory of language in use.
