There is, however, still sympathy in the research community for the Chomsky school of thought. In his book The Language Instinct (1994), psychologist Steven Pinker argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. But instead of proposing a Universal Grammar he calls this faculty an “instinct” developed in biological evolution unique to humans. According to the Canadian scientist, this instinct was instrumental for communication among social hunter-gatherers and is comparable to other animal adaptations like those of spiders (web-weaving) or beavers (dam-building). As a mental module, this instinct represents specific structures in the human brain recognizing the general rules of other humans’ speech and in this confirms that “Chomsky’s theory (at any time) has attracted a plurality of linguists, but never a majority, since there have always been rival theories …” (Horgan 2016: n.p.):
The misconception that Chomsky represents the dominant view comes from the fact that the opposition is divided into many approaches and factions, so there’s no single figure that can be identified with an alternative. … Another problem with the claim that Chomsky’s theory of language “is being overturned” (as if it had ever been accepted, which is not true), is that it’s not clear what “Chomsky’s theory of language” refers to. He has proposed a succession of technical theories in syntax, and at the same time has made decades of informal remarks about language being innate, which have changed over the decades, and have never been precise enough to confirm or disconfirm. And it’s not so easy to say what “Universal Grammar” or an innate “language faculty” consists of; it’s necessarily abstract, since the details of any particular language, like Japanese or English, are uncontroversially learned (ibid.).
Further insights into the properties of L1 development, taken up by Pinker and related to in the Guide for Bilingual Parents (Meisel 2019), allegedly confirmed three relevant findings: (1) that L1 acquisition is always successful, (2) that it happens at first rate, (3) that in L1 grammatical development is uniform and children proceed through identical developmental phases (cf. Meisel: 33). The explanation seems like a resurgence of Chomskyan thought and maintains that children are equipped with—what Meisel calls—a Language Making Capacity (LMC; see above) guiding linguistic development. This innate LMC
does not relate to specific languages but contains principles and mechanisms enabling children to whatever language they are exposed to. The LMC is genetically encoded and species-specific, i.e. only humans possess a faculty for language. It is innate, meaning that children are endowed with it at birth, although initially they cannot make full use of it, either because they are cognitively not yet ready or because parts of the LMC only become accessible in the course of development (ibid.: 34).
Similar to the older UG version but also in accordance with Pinker’s theories, the LMC is supposed to be genetically encoded and innate, and as part of nativist positions it means that children inherit this capacity at birth—or in the words of the Guide for Bilingual Parents “LMC is an endowment for bilingual children” (ibid.: 44, 47). The assumption that all children share a common language acquisition mechanism also describes the milestones of L1 development as language perception, comprehension and production (cf. ibid.: 37, 40). Whether this can also be applied to L2 learning is a different discussion and needs to be considered separately, mainly in the context research about L1-L2 divergence and the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (FDH, see chapter 3). The focus here is on the acquisition of mental grammars, because grammar is considered the core component of linguistic competence (cf. Meisel: 30). Following this position, the consequences for language instruction are fairly obvious: no (formal) teaching would be required, neither any corrective feedback from parents:
… many parents try to foster children’s linguistic development by correcting their grammatical errors. It seems, however, that this has little effect on acquisition processes—these children do not fare better than those whose parents do not correct them. … they should know that language acquisition succeeds equally well without this kind of support (ibid.: 31).
In sum, the LMC position insinuates that for learning a language (and at that also foreign languages) no particular instruction is needed and best results are to be expected from immersion situations and programs. The further development of teaching strategies, however, has meanwhile acknowledged the differences between the acquisition of a mother tongue and foreign language learning, epitomized in the revision of the UG as a minimalist program—still as a rejection of behaviorist beliefs. In this context the FDH was established as a means to overcome fundamental criticism of the UG proposition and allow for different language development of children, adolescents and adults—with a growing need for effective instruction and more conscious learning. Details of the FDH will be discussed in the following juxtaposition of nature-versus-nurture in the next chapter (chapter 3).
2.5 The Input and Output Hypotheses
In conclusion, nativists—as exemplified by Chomsky and Meisel—tend to overestimate the challenges language learners have to face and underestimate the resources available to them. A child or adolescent does not represent a tabula rasa but they are able to lean on their own language development and can use their previous knowledge to perceive meaningful structures and extract helpful rules from further input. As a consequence for changes in teaching strategies and in the transition from young infants to older children, language learning appeared to be more convincing as a cognitive operation and replaced the assumption of a UG—even in its minimalist version or sole reliance on recursion—by a stronger focus on cognitive and mental solving capacities. In their theory of practice (cf. Coyle: 45) language instructors and linguistic researchers became convinced that, with growing age, conscious learning and language awareness would be more effective for developing grammar competence and lexical knowledge—always with a view to bridging the gap between competence and performance, as epitomized in the above-mentioned TOT and the Zone of Proximal Development.
This conviction and trend initiated a number of turns in (foreign) language learning and teaching encapsulating shifts from a previous focus on grammar to Task-Based Teaching and Learning (TBLT) and the growing importance of content. The ensuing transitions started with tendencies of learner-centered approaches and cooperative (group) working phases, a change in the instructor’s role from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side” and once again back to Direct Instruction in the version of explicit teacher influence and control and as opposed to exploratory models of inquiry-based learning. The two main sources for the “revival” of Direct Instruction—apart from much earlier versions in the 1960s—turned out to be DISTAR and John Hattie’s meta-analyses recommending this teaching strategy. The “Direct Instruction System for Teaching Arithmetic and Writing” (DISTAR) and the “Project Follow Through” (1968-1977) was a “cooperation between policy makers and educational practitioners” (De Florio 2016: 99) and proved most effective for teaching academic skills and providing positive outcomes for children like empowerment, self-esteem and a feeling of achievement. It was, however, criticized for limiting creativity due to its strict and scripted procedures. Hattie’s encouragement of Direct Instruction (as interactive whole-class teaching), not to be confused with traditional teacher-centered instruction (the chalk-and-talk version of “Frontalunterricht”6), was based on synthesized research of 304 studies with over 42,000 students showing a major effect size (d=0.59) and significantly larger than any other curriculum Hattie studied.
The UG theory had suggested that the nativist/innate language capacity (aka Meisel’s LMC; see above) of a child would be—more or less automatically—awakened by L1 contact and that L2 acquisition would follow the same mechanism. The fact, however, that under “normal” conditions L2 learning does not result in native-like competence and performance indicates that a direct and effortless access to the respective UG properties cannot be substantiated. Thus, and in another renunciation of behaviorism, the nativist position, namely Chomsky’s innate language theory, seems to have been superseded by