ABSTRACT
Chomsky’s approach to language has permeated the main body of this book, and it is important to remind ourselves here of the emphasis he lays on the psychological aspects of language, going as far as regarding linguistics as a branch of psychology whose ultimate object would be the discovery and formal description of the mental structures which make possible the acquisition and subsequent use of language. Approaching language in this way, namely, from within the organism itself, the core structural properties of language at the levels of syntax, phonology, etc., are supposedly accounted for by the genetically programmed properties of the language faculty in the mind, ultimately by the anatomical structure of the brain areas concerned with language. From such a standpoint, it is more apposite to talk of language developing in the child than of the child learning language, in a way similar to the growth of arms and legs in the human organism, or of wings in birds.
