ABSTRACT
The human ability to communicate in sentences sets us apart from other animals. The “nativist” position holds that such a unique ability must depend on a unique human module-the language acquisition device-that enables us to apply syntactic rules. An alternative position is presented in this chapter. In this view, language learning obeys general laws of cognitive and motor development. Recent research has demonstrated that seemingly rule-guided behaviour can emerge from simple neural networks sensitive to statistical associations in the input. Words, concepts, and sentences might simply emerge from social reinforcement of children’s attempts to imitate and to generalize from experience.
