Mental Grammar Essay

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Humans are born with the innate capability and knowledge to learn any language. Children can construct mental grammar easily due to such innate knowledge of language. Mental grammar can be defined as unconscious rules/principles of a language a speaker has in his/her mind. However, the ability to learn language is constrained by critical period, a time period in development when the human brain is prepared to construct a mental grammar. After the critical period, our innate ability to learn language diminishes. Test situations centered on the critical period for language acquisition and the input received during such period is essential in furthering comprehending human language. They shed light on how mental grammar are constructed. If there is a critical period for language acquisition and a child receives no linguistic input during that critical period, the child would not be able to develop language to fully capacity. This will occur because the child did not receive the linguistic input during the necessary period to learn a language, critical period. However, because all humans have the innate knowledge to learn a language, the child might still …show more content…

You will not be able to observe a difference between a child who receives full linguistic input early in childhood and the adolescent who only received input after puberty. This will occur because there is no critical period for language acquisition, therefore they do not have a specific period or age in which they would have to learn language. To be more specific, there will not be any constrains on when language must be learned. In addition, the child is born with the innate knowledge and capacity to learn language. However, no evidence supports such scenario, the reasoning behind this is based solely on

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