What theory describes language knowledge as interconnected units activated through exposure to them together?

• A. Connectionism
• B. Competence
• C. Cognate
• D. CLT

Answer: (A)

This describes Connectionism. In connectionist models, language knowledge isn’t stored as fixed rules but as a network of interconnected units with weighted links. When you’re exposed to language, activation spreads across these units, and frequently co-occurring patterns strengthen the connections. Over time, this distributed, pattern-based learning allows you to process and produce language by pulling together related elements based on their past co-activation, rather than applying explicit grammatical rules. Competence is about knowledge of language in rule-based terms, cognates are words with shared origin across languages, and CLT is a teaching approach; none capture the idea of knowledge as interconnected, co-activated units like this.