Which term describes the view that humans are born with mental structures specialized for language?

• A. Innatist
• B. Behaviorist
• C. Constructivist
• D. Connectionist

Answer: (A)

Innateness describes the view that language is supported by built-in mental structures present from birth. Proponents argue that children come equipped with an innate language faculty, such as a language acquisition device or universal grammar, which constrains and guides how they learn the rules of their language. This explains why children rapidly acquire complex grammar patterns even with limited and imperfect input, a phenomenon hard to account for if language were learned solely from experience. Other views—behaviorism, which emphasizes learning through imitation and reinforcement; constructivism, which stresses general cognitive development and knowledge construction; and connectionism, which models language as emerging from patterns learned by neural networks from exposure—do not posit specialized, language-specific mental structures at birth.