This may not come as any kind of a mild shock to some in this forum or anyone who doesn't study cognition/learning or doesn't already read a lot on this subject (for the fun of it?), but Chomsky's (in)famous theories on language learning (specifically, his idea of "universal grammar") are being increasingly refuted via actual evidence that has been building for at least the past two decades.
Scientific American recently published a pretty decent write-up about it this week:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning/#
Scientific American recently published a pretty decent write-up about it this week:
The research suggests a radically different view, in which learning of a child’s first language does not rely on an innate grammar module. Instead the new research shows that young children use various types of thinking that may not be specific to language at all—such as the ability to classify the world into categories (people or objects, for instance) and to understand the relations among things. These capabilities, coupled with a unique hu***man ability to grasp what others intend to communicate, allow language to happen. The new findings indicate that if researchers truly want to understand how children, and others, learn languages, they need to look outside of Chomsky’s theory for guidance.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evidence-rebuts-chomsky-s-theory-of-language-learning/#