... out the possibility that that language was learnt as a response to a stimulus. Mentalism theory looked at the internal processes of the mind. Chomsky believed that language was acquired and that it was innate. He wrote about his ideas on a child being born with the ability to acquire language, the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) and a Universal Grammar (UG). Chomsky used three questions in his work with linguistics to set out the targets of the science. These three questions are stated in Chomsky's Universal Grammar, An Introduction by V. Cook "What constitutes knowledge of language? How is such knowledge acquired? How is such knowledge put to use?" (Cook, 1991: 2) In this essay Chomsky's second question is the most important one but the questions are linked. In order to discuss how people acquire knowledge there has to be an understanding of what the knowledge of language people have. In ...

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