INNATE FOUNDATIONS OF HUMAN LANGUAGE ABILITY: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS

Аннотация

This paper argues that human language ability is grounded in innate biological structures known as Universal Grammar. Evidence from child language acquisition shows that children learn grammar rapidly and in uniform stages, even when linguistic input is limited, suggesting that language emerges from an internal cognitive system rather than solely from environmental exposure. Neurolinguistic research further supports this view by revealing specialized brain regions devoted to linguistic processing, which are biologically prepared to handle hierarchical and rule-based structures. In addition, children’s creative production of sentences they have never heard before and the universal developmental patterns observed across cultures indicate the presence of inborn mechanisms guiding language development. Taken together, findings from acquisition studies, linguistic universals, and brain research suggest that grammar is fundamentally innate, while environmental input primarily shapes the specific vocabulary and surface features of a language