Over the last 40 years, linguists, especially Noam Chomsky, have advocated that much of our knowledge of language is innate. In other words, human beings are prewired for language acquisition; they are born with a Universal Grammar consisting of principles and parameters that underlies the specific grammars of all human languages. Over this same period of four decades, linguists have accumulated an impressive amount of evidence in support of the Innateness Hypothesis, much of which is discussed in various places in your textbooks.
Write a clearly organized, detailed, and convincing argument supporting the Innateness Hypothesis. Write as if you were presenting the paper to someone who knows little about the topic.
Although I will be more concerned with the content of the paper than with style, I expect the paper to adhere to Edited American English. In addition, the paper should be between seven and eight double-spaced pages, have one inch margins on all sides, and be written in a size 12 font. The title page and list of references are not included in the page count. Papers shorter than the required seven pages will receive a reduced grade.
You are not required to use any sources other than the textbooks for the course. Therefore, citations may be fairly informal, and you do not need to create a page of references if you just use the textbooks for the class. If you wish to cite, use the following format as an example. "A sentence is not a chain but a tree" (Pinker, 1994, 97). I do not object to your using quotes from the textbooks, but do so judiciously as you are trying to convince me that you know what you are writing about.
You may deliver the paper personally to the Department of English at CSUB, send it by mail, or submit it as an email attachment to my email address found on the syllabus; do not submit the paper as an email attachment in WebCT becuase the format of the paper may be destroyed. If you mail the paper, it must reach me by the due date on March 16 by 4:00 p.m. Any papers that are late will receive a grade no higher than a "D-". If you do mail the paper, please use the following address:
To successfully write a paper defending the innateness hypothesis, you must include evidence that actually supports the hypothesis. You should be able to support the hypothesis fairly easily after reading the two textbooks; however, a few students in the past have presented evidence that is less than convincing. As you read the two textbooks, think about the following points, and decide which ones are solid evidence for the innateness hypothesis:
Children learn their first language at approximately the same time.
Children acquire certain grammatical structures in the same order.
Even people with general cognitive deficiencies learn language.
Deaf children babble with their hands just like hearing children babble orally.
Different creole languages have similar grammars.
Children never make some types of grammatical errors.
These are just a few points; use them if they are strong, and develop them well. Other points may be very important to your paper as well. For example, pay close attention to the concepts of principles and parameters when you introduce the concept of universal grammar.
One good strategy for writing the paper is to start by demonstrating how other theories--imitation, reinforcement, and anology--fail to account for language acquisition. Such an approach does not directly support innateness, but it does show that competing theories are crucially inadequate, which means that a search for an adequate theory of language acquisition is needed in the field. If you use this strategy, be very concise and precise. Do not devote half of your paper debunking old theories because your primary task is to develop a coherent argument supporting the innateness hypothesis.
English 415 Online: Course Syllabus.