<P> Usually, productive language is considered to begin with a stage of preverbal communication in which infants use gestures and vocalizations to make their intents known to others . According to a general principle of development, new forms then take over old functions, so that children learn words to express the same communicative functions they had already expressed by proverbial means . </P> <P> Language development is thought to proceed by ordinary processes of learning in which children acquire the forms, meanings, and uses of words and utterances from the linguistic input . The method in which we develop language skills is universal; however, the major debate is how the rules of syntax are acquired . There are two major approaches to syntactic development, an empiricist account by which children learn all syntactic rules from the linguistic input, and a nativist approach by which some principles of syntax are innate and are transmitted through the human genome . </P> <P> The nativist theory, proposed by Noam Chomsky, argues that language is a unique human accomplishment, and can be attributed to either "millions of years of evolution" or to "principles of neural organization that may be even more deeply grounded in physical law". Chomsky says that all children have what is called an innate language acquisition device (LAD). Theoretically, the LAD is an area of the brain that has a set of universal syntactic rules for all languages . This device provides children with the ability to make sense of knowledge and construct novel sentences with minimal external input and little experience . Chomsky's claim is based upon the view that what children hear--their linguistic input--is insufficient to explain how they come to learn language . He argues that linguistic input from the environment is limited and full of errors . Therefore, nativists assume that it is impossible for children to learn linguistic information solely from their environment . However, because children possess this LAD, they are in fact, able to learn language despite incomplete information from their environment . Their capacity to learn language is also attributed to the theory of universal grammar (UG), which posits that a certain set of structural rules are innate to humans, independent of sensory experience . This view has dominated linguistic theory for over fifty years and remains highly influential, as witnessed by the number of articles in journals and books . </P> <P> The empiricist theory suggests, contra Chomsky, that there is enough information in the linguistic input children receive and therefore, there is no need to assume an innate language acquisition device exists (see above). Rather than a LAD evolved specifically for language, empiricists believe that general brain processes are sufficient enough for language acquisition . During this process, it is necessary for the child to actively engage with their environment . For a child to learn language, the parent or caregiver adopts a particular way of appropriately communicating with the child; this is known as child - directed speech (CDS). CDS is used so that children are given the necessary linguistic information needed for their language . Empiricism is a general approach and sometimes goes along with the interactionist approach . Statistical language acquisition, which falls under empiricist theory, suggests that infants acquire language by means of pattern perception . </P>

Aspect /component of language that includes the structure and rules of language