How do children acquire knowledge of linguistic How do children acquire complex linguistic

rules when they are not explicitly taught? structures despite limited input ?

Logical Problem of language Poverty or the Stimulus

UNIVERSAL
GRAMMAR Linguistic
Linguistic performance
Competence
Refers to actual language use in
Theory in
speaker's implicit Knowledge of Linguistics
real-world situations (written
the rules andstructure of that propose and spoken)
their language that the
ability to learn
grammar is
hard- wired
into the brain.

Noam Chomsky

Refersto the cognitive System, physically represent in the brain. It is

dedicated to the acquisition and use of language because it
Language faculty
possesses general Knowelage of the structure that all language have
in common.