... with the environment. Therefore they hold that nurture or experience is responsible for language acquisition. There is substantial research evidence that supports a nativist approach as there is for the empiricist approach. The strengths and weaknesses of the approaches and the research evidence will be discussed and evaluated further. The two opposing sides have debated whether language acquisition is a domain-general process (empiricists) or a domain-general process (nativists). Chomsky, Pinker and Fodor are nativist theorists and their ideas and theories will be discussed first. They will then be compared to theories from Skinner, Piaget and Karmiloff-Smith, the behaviourists or empiricist. There are other ideas of how language is acquired, such as imitation and a social constructivist approach from Vygotsky that will be examined further. The linguist Noam Chomsky (1965) is most clearly associated with the nativist approach in modern day. His views and ideas developed further from Plato's original position of the ...

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