[Language Acquisition: How Do They Do It?]*

Languages are infinite, childhoods finite. The same ambiguity that bedevils language parsing in the adult bedevils language acquisition in the child. In all languages, words for objects and people are nouns or noun phrases, words for actions and change of state are verbs. This chapter certainly knows that there is something in the sperm and egg that affects the language abilities of the child that grows out of their union. Most of the language-impaired family members were average in intelligence, and there are sufferers in other families who are way above average; one boy studied by Gopnik was tops in his math class. Pinker says that ‘actually saying something aloud, as opposed to listening to what other people say, does not provide the child with information about the language’. Part of Sampson’s counterblast to innateness explanations of language acquisition focuses on Pinker’s reasoning and evidence, as exemplified.