A mother asked the teacher of Class II how it was possible for her child to sometimes say things that she had never heard any adults or siblings say. How is it possible ?

Which one of the following is the apt answer to this question ?

The correct answer is: The human brain is innately wired to learn language.

To understand why this is the most appropriate answer, let us break down the linguistic theories behind child language acquisition:

1. Innatist Theory of Language Acquisition: Famous linguist Noam Chomsky proposed that human beings are born with an innate, biological capacity to acquire language. He termed this the Language Acquisition Device (LAD). According to this theory, the human brain contains a "universal grammar" or hardwired rules for language.

2. Generative Grammar: Because of this innate wiring, children do not merely memorize and repeat sentences they hear (which would be pure imitation). Instead, they acquire the underlying rules of grammar and use them to generate entirely new, novel sentences that they have never heard before. This explains how a second-grade child can produce unique utterances that no adult or sibling has ever spoken in their presence.

3. Evaluating the other options:
- "Children learn language only by imitating adults": This is incorrect because, if it were true, children would never produce novel or unique phrases that they haven't heard before.
- "As per the constructivist approach, children can invent new languages": While constructivism emphasizes active learning, children do not invent entirely new languages from scratch in normal development; they acquire and generate sentences within the language of their community.
- "A child learns language when we reinforce the development of the child’s language": This behaviorist view (reinforced learning) does not fully account for the rapid, creative, and rule-based generation of completely new sentences by young children.