期刊名称：Revista Virtual de Estudos da Linguagem - ReVEL
电子版ISSN：1678-8931
出版年度：2004
卷号：2
期号：2
出版社：Gabriel de Ávila Othero
摘要：One of the earliest and most significant contributions of modern linguistics to foreign (and second) language teaching was structural linguistics which when combined with the behaviourist theory of learning led to the development of the audio-lingual method. This method, considered to be the first “scientific” method of language teaching dominated the field for several decades prior to the arrival of Chomsky’s “linguistic revolution” in the late 60’s and the introduction of Universal Grammar (UG). The idea that there exists a universal grammar of human languages originated with Chomsky’s view of first language (L1) acquisition. He was looking for an explanation of the fact that virtually all children learn language at a time in their cognitive development when they experience difficulty grasping other kinds of knowledge that appear to be far less complex than language. He argued that this could not be accomplished by mere exposure to samples of the language in the environment because the language to which children are exposed is incomplete and sometimes “degenerate”. Furthermore, children appear to be able to acquire their L1 without any systematic corrective feedback or instruction. Chomsky thus concluded that children must have an innate language faculty – a mechanism they are born with that enables them to “crack the code” of the language they will eventually become native speakers of via a process of hypothesis formulation and testing.
