导读与家长指南
本篇选文讲的是母语学习的第二种理论解释：通用语法学说，也称为内生理论。这种学说认为，儿童的大脑中有一种名叫“语言学习机制”（Language Acquisition Device，LAD，后期称为“通用语法”Universal Grammar，UG）的“黑匣子”一样的生理机能，这种机能会帮助儿童在仅仅接触到有限的语言样本、还不能保证这些样本都正确的情况下也能避免走错路，顺利掌握目标语言。这是语言学家乔姆斯基通过长期观察、思考，对行为主义理论做出的反应。
本篇中讲到，儿童学语言，就像他们学走路一样自然。学会走路，儿童需要的只是充足的营养与合理的行动自由；学会语言，儿童只需要有人跟他们说话就行了。其他语言学习的一切，都由LAD/UG来完成。这样一来，家长能够做的一般就是两件事：1、跟孩子说话；2、出现错误，适当纠正。
什么叫适当纠正？这很重要。文章中提到，家长一般不对语法进行详细的纠正，而是聚焦于意义，是用正确的语法结构把孩子说错了的东西重复一下，有时甚至还可以加以变化。尽管这时孩子不一定立刻改正，但家长的这种纠正也是有用的。
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以下英文原文取自上海外语教育出版社引进出版、授权转载的“外语教学法丛书”之九《语言学习机制》第一章“Learning a First Language”：
原文（作者：Lightbown & Spada）
译文（翻译：武太白）
Heading: Theoretical approaches to explaining first language learning
母语学习的几种理论解释
Innatism: It's all in your mind
内生理论：一切自足
The linguist Noam Chomsky claims that children are biologically programmed for language and that language develops in the child in just the same way that other biological functions develop. For example, every child will learn to walk as long as adequate nourishment and reasonable freedom of movement are provided. The child does not have to be taught. Most children learn to walk at about the same age, and walking is essentially the same in all normal human beings. For Chomsky, language acquisition is very similar. The environment makes a basic contribution—in this case, the availability of people who speak to the child. The child, or rather, the child’s biological endowment, will do the rest. This is known as the innatist position. Chomsky proposed his theory in reaction to what he saw as the inadequacy of the behaviourist theory of learning based on imitation and habit formation (Chomsky 1959).
语言学家诺姆·乔姆斯基称，儿童从生理上就具备学习语言的能力，语言在儿童身上的发展就和其他生理机能发展的方式一样。比如，只要有足够的营养，有合理的活动自由，每个孩子都将学会走路。孩子（这方面）不用教。绝大多数儿童都差不多同时学会走路，而走路在所有正常的人类身上基本上都是一样的。对乔姆斯基来说，语言习得也很像。环境做出了基本的贡献——在语言方面，“环境”就是有人跟孩子说话。孩子，或者说孩子的生理禀赋，会完成其他一切。这就称为“内生观点”。乔姆斯基提出他的这一观点，是对他所见的行为主义理论——以模仿和习惯形成为基础——的不足所做出的反应。
Chomsky argues that the behaviourist theory fails to recognize what has come to be called the logical problem of language acquisition. This logical problem refers to the fact that children come to know more about the structure of their language than they could reasonably be expected to learn on the basis of the samples of language which they hear. According to Chomsky, the language the child is exposed to in the environment is full of confusing information (for example, false starts, incomplete sentences, or slips of the tongue) and does not provide all the information which the child needs. Furthermore, the evidence seems very strong that children are by no means systematically corrected or instructed on language. Parental corrections of language errors have been observed to be inconsistent or even non-existent for children of pre-school age. When parents do correct, they tend to focus on meaning and not on language form, often simply repeating the child’s incorrect utterance in a more complete grammatical form. When parents do correct errors, children often ignore the correction, continuing to use their own ways of saying things.
乔姆斯基提出，行为主义理论未能辨别出语言习得的逻辑问题。“逻辑问题”指的是儿童逐渐学会的语言结构，要比我们期望他们从所听到的那些语言样本所能学到的语言更多。根据乔姆斯基的观点，儿童在环境中接触到的语言充满了令人困惑的信息（例如，虚指开头，不完整的句子，或口误等），也未提供儿童所需要的所有信息。进一步地，证据看起来非常有力：儿童并没有得到语言学习方面的系统纠正或教学。据观测，对学龄前儿童来说，家长对语言错误的纠正并不持续，或者根本就不存在。即便家长真的纠正，他们也倾向于聚焦意义而不是语言形式，经常就是把孩子的错误说法用完整的语法形式重复一下。家长真的纠正了错误，孩子也经常对纠正置若罔闻，继续使用他们自己说话的方式。
According to Chomsky, Children's minds are not blank slates to be filled merely by imitating language they hear in the environment. Instead he claims that children are born with a special ability to discover for themselves the underlying rules of a language system.
在乔姆斯基看来，儿童的头脑并不是一块块空石板，要由对环境中模仿来的语言加以填满。相反，他称儿童生来就有一种特别的能力，能够自行发现语言系统的内部规律。
Chomsky originally referred to this special ability as a language acquisition device (LAD) . This device was often described as an imaginary 'black box’ which exists somewhere in the brain. This ‘black box’，thought to contain all and only the principles which are universal to all human languages, prevents the child from going off on lots of wrong trails in trying to discover the rules of the language. For the LAD to work, the child needs access only to samples of a natural language. These language samples serve as a trigger to activate the device. Once it is activated, the child is able to discover the structure of the language to be learned by matching the innate knowledge of basic grammatical relationships to the structures of the particular language in the environment. In recent writings, Chomsky and his followers no longer use the term LAD, but refer to the child’s innate endowment as Universal Grammar (UG). UG is considered to consist of a set of principles which are common to all languages. If children are pre-equipped with UG, then what they have to learn is the ways in which their own language makes use of these principles and the variations on those principles which may exist in the particular language which they hear spoken around them (Chomsky 1981, Cook 1988, White 1989).
乔姆斯基最初把这种特殊能力称为“语言学习机制”（Language Acquisition Device, LAD）。这种机制经常被描述为一种想象中的“黑匣子”，存在于大脑的某处。这个“黑匣子”，被认为包含着对一切人类语言都通用的所有的、唯独的原则，防止儿童在尝试发现语言规则的时候走错路。LAD要起作用，儿童只需要接触到自然语言的部分样本。这些语言样本起到了触发器的作用，能够激活这种机制。一旦激活，儿童就能发现需要学习的语言的结构，具体方法是把内生的基本语法关系知识和环境中的具体语言结构相对比。在近年来的著作中，乔姆斯基和他的追随者们不再使用LAD这个术语，而是改用通用语法（Universal Grammar，UG）来称呼儿童的这种内生禀赋。UG被认为包含着一套原则，对一切语言都是通用的。如果儿童生来就具备UG，则他们需要学习的就是他们本国、本族的语言如何利用这些原则，以及他们听到周围人所说的具体语言中可能存在的对这些规则的变化（乔姆斯基1981，库克1988，怀特1989）。
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