... development, it will do so by examining research that both supports and rejects an innate ability for language in infants. It is thought that every human goes through universal stages of development. Pre-linguistic, holographic, telegraphic, simple sentences, 3 - 4 years, early school years and the middle childhood stage can be seen in every child across a variety of countries and cultures. If language is simply learnt then how are such similarities possible? Noam Chomsky (1965, in Smith, Cowie and Blades, 2003) focuses on these similarities when explaining the biological approach to language development. He concentrates on the fact that acquisition in all societies is similar and has similar features such as phonemes and syllables, it also occurs in all human cultures. Chomsky argues that language is a formal system that uses structure dependant operations and is not simply an association as many behaviourists have suggested (Skinner, 1957, in Taylor, ...

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